CQ Vote Study Shows Democrats Are Organized Majority So Far

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http://www.cqpolitics.com/2007/04/cq_vote_study_shows_democrats.html#more

CQ Vote Study Shows Democrats Are Organized Majority So Far
By Greg Giroux

There are those who will scoff that putting “Democrats” and “party discipline” in the same sentence is an oxymoron. And over the first three months of the Democratic-controlled 110th Congress, much of the media has tended to focus on issues on which Democratic leaders have had to labor to forge a consensus — especially on how and when to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

Yet an early Congressional Quarterly study of House members’ voting records suggests that party unity is far more the rule than the exception for the new Democratic majority in the House.

According to an unofficial analysis of House votes performed by CQPolitics.com senior reporter Greg Giroux, the average “party unity” score of the 233 House Democrats is 98 percent so far.

CQ’s party unity calculations are based on the percentage of times each lawmaker votes with most members of his or her own party against most members of the opposing party. This party-line characteristic was in play on 113 of 213 roll-call votes in the first three months of this year, or 53 percent of the time.

Eighty House Democrats — more than one-third of the total — have 100 percent party unity scores, meaning they have not sided with the Republicans on a single party unity vote thus far. This grouping includes Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who votes only occasionally, and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland.

Another 47 House Democrats have joined Republicans on a party unity vote just once.

To be sure, the Democratic scores are very high early in the 110th Congress because they are in the majority for the first time in a dozen years, and they moved early to pass legislation that had strong public support in opinion surveys. The major bills the Democrats steered to passage early this year — such as an increase in the federal minimum wage — by and large have not been controversial, and Democrats have received significant Republican defections on some of them.

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