Senate Voting Habits

The voting habits of U.S. Senators have been heavily discussed in legislative research to understand and predict the votes cast in the senate. Specifically, the research on factors that lead to senators voting against their party has become prominent because of the increasing partisan polarization in Congress (Poole and Rosenthal 2007). Finding statistically significant factors that influence Senate voting is important in understanding Senators’ willingness to vote against their party in a system that depends on bi-partisan cooperation in order to pass laws. Senators’ unique personal experiences and backgrounds can play a part in their willingness to vote for certain bills. By studying these factors influence on Senators’ voting habits, it
Characteristics that shape the views of constituents can also be the same characteristics that influence senate voting, so finding significant correlations between the characteristics and views of constituents can be used inspire similar tests with Senators. Furthermore, this research paper was stimulate by previous studies finding on how having a daughter can effect a person’s political beliefs. A recent study found that having a daughter makes parents more likely to have conservative social views, primarily because of the conservative policies that “increase the genetic fitness of women,” by reducing male promiscuity and future investment in children (Conley and Rauscher 2013). For the purposes of this study it is more important to look at the relationship between parents with at least one daughter and their desire to discourage male promiscuity. Although the Conley and Rauscher study focuses on the general population, it can supplemented by looking at senators with at least one daughter because these senators share a common trait with those surveyed in the study
This study seeks to add new findings to other existing scholarship dealing with the impact of having a daughter on decisions by looking at a distinct population, senators. Specifically, this study looks to find if republican senators with at least one daughter were more likely to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2013, which received unanimous support from the senate democrats. The independent variable is whether or not senators have at least one daughter. The dependent variable is whether or not the republican senator voted the reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. By finding a correlation between these two, this study can be an addition to the literature already mention in this paper. This study sets out to prove if senators having at least one daughter were more likely to vote to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. In addition to the effect of having a daughter, this study will compare republican senators’ willingness to vote with the democrats based on how far they are away from their next election. This will be tested with the assumption that republican senators that are further away from their next election will be more likely to vote with the democrats to reauthorize VAWA. Overall, if the predictions of this study are correct, it will add to previous studies that aim to