Ethnicity and the 1893 Wisconsin Assembly

Abstract

IN recent years historians have reexamined patterns of popular voting from the Jacksonian era through the New Deal. While the interplay of factors that governed the behavior of voters in the American past have not yet been fully explained, studies show that partisan preferences varied significantly among ethnic groups during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.' Social issues frequently aroused voters' sensitivities, partisan loyalties of particular ethnic groups persisted over long periods of time, and patronage rewards were strategically distributed to members of ethnic groups, which composed each party's electoral coalition. Although historians now know that ethnic diversity had an impact on electoral patterns in the nineteenth century, they know less about ethnic influences on other parts of the political system, such as the legislative process. Some conflicts over public policy-making in legislatures, one can postulate, derived from differences in legislators' ethnic background. Studies of legislative roll call voting indicate that among the factors which analysts have examined, party affiliation is the most frequent basis of voting divisions when two-party situations exist.2 A hypothesis on the influence of ethnicity on legislative behavior, therefore, should provide for the possible