CONDITIONAL PARTY GOVERNMENT
AND MEMBER TURNOUT ON SENATE
RECORDED VOTES, 1873-1935
Richard Forgette*
Miami University
rforgett@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu
and
Brian R. Sala
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
b-sala@uiuc.edu
December 1997
Abstract:
According to the conditional party government thesis, party members bond or precommit
themselves to supporting “party” positions under certain circumstances. A test of this
thesis asks whether party members are more likely to participate in a roll call vote when
the question has been identified by party leaders as important to the party. We show that
party leadership signals systematically affected member turnout levels in the U.S. Senate
during 1873-1935. On average, two-party turnout on party-salient votes rose by more than
five members during 1873-1923 and more than three members during 1923-35 relative to
“non-salient” votes. These results also provide evidence of cohesive partisan behavior in
the Senate well before the parties began the regular practice of designating floor leaders
and whips.
*Forgette: Department of Political Science, Miami University, Oxford OH 45056; Sala: Department of
Political Science, University of Illinois, 361 Lincoln Hall, 702 S. Wright St., MC 452, Urbana, IL 61801.
We acknowledge the ICPSR for the roll call data used in this paper. Thanks to Keith Poole and Howard
Rosenthal for additional data. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 1996 Annual Meetings
of the Midwest Political Science Association, Western Political Science Association and Southern Political
Science Association, respectively. Partial support for this research was provided by a grant from the
Dirksen Center and by the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois. Thanks
to Timothy Nokken and Alan Wiseman for research assistance. Along the way, we received helpful
comments from Janet Box-Steffensmeier, Brian Gaines, James Garand, Jim Granato, Brinck Kerr, Jim
Kuklinski, Keith Poole, Paul Quirk, Robert Rich and Ray Wolfinger.