status

• senate seen as more prestigious

• 6 year terms

• senators go on to be presidential candidates

• house members often aspire to be senators

house elected every 2 years

however, house speaker very important - when diff party to president they become effectively leader of the opposition. nancy perosi was hugely influential, Kevin McCarthy much less so

• senators are generalists - more concerned w national + international affairs

• represent broader range of opinion traditionally (though less republican moderates now following midterms)

• Traditionally more collegiate – though partisanship has increased dramatically more recently. Less committee based. 

• Representatives are specialists – they stand on specialist committees 

• Fewer constituents so a closer relationship with them – they also need to be more responsive to them

• Bigger, so needs more organisation and bureaucracy

representation

• There is voting every two years for some part of Congress

• Congressional elections use the FPTP system

• Members of both chambers are elected in single-member constituencies, whole states for the Senate, districts for the House

• Congressional elections are also subject to primaries, much like presidential elections, if a party has one or more candidate wanting to represent the area

incumbency

• Several factors help the incumbent in an election:

• Use of office – they can attract donors and establish popularity

• Safe seats and gerrymandering – the drawing of electoral boundaries to favour a certain social group or party

• Pork-barrel legislation – when a member of Congress proposes an amendment to legislation that brings benefits to a particular group (a kind of group bribe)

operation REDMAP

• after obama’s 2008 victory, republican tacticians drew up a cunning plan:

• target democrat states due to redraw house-district boundaries 

• in pennsylvania, republicans campaigned to target small number of democrats. republicans won majority. they then decided the boundaries

• new maps meant democrats won far less. 2012, democrat congressional candidates won 100,000 more votes but republicans won 13 of the 18 seats, 51% of the democrat vote ended up getting just 28% of the seats

pork-barrelling 

• effectively offering sweeteners to an area prior to an election

• often financial – infrastructure or service provision. dubbed ‘an earmark’

• 2010 republicans placed a moratorium on earmarks but still happens

• 2016 – representatives byrne and ribble supported spending $475 million on new navy ship that navy didn’t want but their districts represented shipbuilding companies

examples:

Example 1: The Big Dig (Boston, Massachusetts)

• Project Objective: Relocate a 3.5-mile (5.6 km) interstate highway underground.

• Final Cost: USD $14.6 billion (over $4 billion per mile).

• Political Involvement:

  • Advocated by Tip O'Neill (Democrat, Massachusetts), Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

  • Federal government funding was secured for the project under his leadership.

• Criticism: Widely regarded as a classic example of pork-barrel spending due to its high costs and perceived inefficiency.

Example 2: Gravina Island Bridge ("Bridge to Nowhere") - Alaska

• Project Objective: Construct a bridge to connect:

  • Gravina Island's 50 residents.

  • Ketchikan International Airport to Revillagigedo Island and Ketchikan.

• Projected Cost: USD $398 million.

• Political Involvement:

  • Supported by Republican Senator Ted Stevens during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.

• Criticism: Used as a prime example of wasteful government spending (pork-barrel spending).

financial advantage

• incumbents can attract more money

• challengers struggle to gain name recognition

• 2016 elections: incumbents raised 41.5 million per candidate as opposed to $0.21 million for challengers

• supreme court struck down attempts to limit terms of congressmen/women and senators

voting behaviour in congress

number of factors influence or pressurise Congressional politician

• public opinion

• party

• caucuses (group of senators/representatives that have something else that binds them together)

• interest groups

public opinion

• more accountable to public than president. elections every 2 years for house

• public often vote for individual policies of candidate (less so in midterms) as much as party line

• opposition to obamacare in 2009 by their constituencies meant several democrats changed their position. also several republicans who won former democrat seats opposed repealing obamacare in 2017

• many republicans (ron desantis, jd vance, etc.) have maintained a more right wing stance since 2020 hoping to ride trump’s coattails. 

party

• pressure to vote with party

• some patronage for compliance

•  team competition – us versus them

• partisanship and now – hyper-partisanship! 

caucasus

• definition: “groups of legislators who share special interests and meet to pursue common legislative objectives, such as black caucus, women’s caucus, hispanic caucus”

• black caucus has 40 members

• congressional steel caucus has 100 members

interest groups

• can influence politicians by large donations

• the AFL-CIO (american federation of labor and congress of industrial organisations) has a large, active and influential membership

• can mobilise and threaten removal

• NRA carries more weight than public opinion

• lobbyists and big business can lead to politicians getting high paid jobs once their political career ends