Bipartisanship in congressional voting

Abstract

Abstract “Bipartisanship in congressional voting” uses an original data set of important votes in the US Congress from 1991 to 2020 to identify patterns in political alignments on domestic and foreign policy issues. The analysis shows that bipartisanship is more common on foreign policy than on domestic policy, and that polarization is increasing more slowly on international than on domestic issues. The data also reveal that strong polarization is rare on foreign policy, while intra-party division, agreement between Congress and the president, and disagreement between the branches of government each occurs regularly. The voting patterns further indicate that international economic issues involve strong bipartisanship less often and involve intra-party division more often than international security issues. These findings set the stage for the remainder of the book, which investigates factors that contribute to polarization or different forms of bipartisanship on foreign policy issues.