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The Congressional Cohort: W&M Students Present Paper on Congressional Behavior

Two weeks ago, W&M Government students took their research to the West Coast. On Friday, April 3, Professor Larry Evans and a cohort of students attended the Western Political Science Association conference in San Diego. Student coauthors Nick DeSante ‘26, Colin Hudson ’26, Amelia Johnson ‘26, and John Powers ‘26 presented a paper entitled “Bicameral Difference and Congressional Voting, 1995-2024.” In addition to the four students attending the conference and listed as coauthors, four other students assisted with the preparation: Mona Garimella ‘27, Meagan Kenney ‘27, Shannon Raymond ‘27, and Ryan Taylor ‘26. Critical financial support for the project was provided by the Arts & Sciences Faculty Grants Fund, and the Government Department.

An attempt to bring congressional analysis outside of the classroom, the paper evaluates whether partisan polarization has caused the House and Senate’s political preferences to converge. Using an original dataset of 776 roll call votes on “linked” legislation, where both chambers voted on near-identical language, the authors compared behavior between congressional chambers on similar policy content. They found that the Senate is less partisan than the House, and that cross-chamber discord tends to concentrate in one party. Ultimately, systematic differences do exist between both chambers, but the days of pork-barrel spending and localism have been replaced by geographic divisions among the electorate.

The students fielded engaging questions from an audience of political scientists studying Congress and institutions. They received robust feedback on a research project which, in many ways, is still a work in progress. Traveling together as a group also proved interesting, as they not only shared their collective work, but took in the sights and sounds of San Diego. 

 Coauthor John Powers first became involved with this project by working with Professor Evans to identify the “linked” votes over the summer. He recommended that W&M students perform some kind of undergraduate research during their time here, because “being part of a team that's producing original scholarship gives you a completely different understanding of how political science actually works.” The opportunities offered by the Government Department allow students to apply their learned knowledge outside the classroom to actively participate in the scholarly conversation.

 Congratulations to Professor Evans and our W & M students!