So, the two chambers of the US Congress are different. How about that?
In contrast to the vote in the House of Representatives on the ‘rescue’ package earlier in the week, in the Senate those Republicans in the more competitive races were somewhat more likely to vote for the package.
Of course, any focus on the institutional differences between the chambers1 has to acknowledge that these were not actually the same bills. And that there was more information from the stock market about just how some folks felt about the defeat in the House.
Nonetheless, what is striking about the inter-cameral comparison is that in the House, the most vulnerable members regardless of party2 were much more likely to vote against the bill.
Overall, in the House, of course, Democrats were much more likely to vote for the bill than were Republicans (though neither party put on an impressive display of unity).
The upshot is that the House “vulnerables” tended to vote less with the party that has the greatest wind at its back as we head into the election.3 In the Senate it was the reverse, albeit less significantly so.
Essentially, Senators in both parties and regardless of vulnerability were more likely to vote for the bill (which passed 74–25). The institutional explanation would point to Senators’ more diverse constituencies making them more insulated from apparent public opposition (even a month before an election!). Yet the tendency of vulnerable Representatives to vote against the majority position of the party riding higher in the polls remains puzzling (to me; maybe readers have a hypothesis, “institutional” or otherwise).
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Two thoughts on this.
(1) The definition of “competitive race” used to classified senators appears to have been much broader than the one used to classify representatives. I think that would tend to dilute any correlation between constituent backlash and vote on the bailout.
(2) Even with the broadest possible definition, the number of senators judged to be in competitive races is only 14. Could there be a sample size problem?
Seed planted by Bob Richard — 03 October 2008 @ 13:02
On the House vote, see the interesting graph posted by Epstein and O’Halloran.
Regarding Bob’s sample-size question, sure. The Senate is smaller and the number of competitive races really small. (It could never be more than 34, and then only if all seats up in a given year were “competitive.”)
However, I do not see how this sample-size issue could wash away the rather substantial institutional difference.
Seed planted by MSS — 03 October 2008 @ 13:26
Senate electorates average 4.35 times the size of House electorates (and none is smaller). A 2% margin for a Representative may represent, say, 100,000 votes. For the typical Senator, a 2% margin is larger in absolute terms.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 03 October 2008 @ 18:11