Democratic Discipline

A persistent myth in American politics is that congressional Republicans are much more disciplined than Democrats. But when they are in the majority, Democrats typically are more unified. CQ's party unity data for 2009 underscore this point CQ measures "party support" as the percentage of the time that lawmakers vote with a majority of their party on partisan roll calls. In 2009 House and Senate Democrats both had average party support scores of 91 percent. The Senate figure was the highest ever, while the House figure was just a point below the all-time high of 2007 and 2008. For Republicans, the averages were 85 percent in the Senate, 87 percent in the House.