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Electoral Change and Policy Consequences

Representation in the 97th Congress

University of Houston - University Park

This article compares constituency opinion and roll call voting behavior of U.S. representatives in the 96th (1979-1980) and 97th (1981-1982) Congresses for four classes of district types: those that switched party in the 1980 election, those that replaced a representative with a new member of the same party, those that returned Democrats, and those that returned Republicans to Congress. Switched-seat districts exhibit the largest changes in voting behavior from the 96th to the 97th Congress, yet the behavior of the new representative is not always consistent with constituency preferences. All four groups of representatives voted more conservatively in the 97th Congress than they or their counterparts had in the 96th, suggesting that House members may have interpreted the 1980 election as a mandate for conservatism. Yet more often than not this conservatism moved representatives away from, rather than toward, constituency preferences, suggesting that voters made retrospective rather than prospective choices in 1980.

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