The discussion we had last Thursday about shirking in the US Senate led me to speculate what sort of factors play into the likelihood that a senator votes with ideology rather than the interests of their constituents. One factor we didn't discuss that occurred to me was that senators who are in firmly Republican states or firmly Democratic states would be less worried about losing reelection, so they may vote against their constituents interests (or "shirk") more often than senators in more contended states. In this blog I would like to assert that this factor is indeed significant when it comes to whether a senator will vote with or across party lines.
I looked at FiveThirtyEight’s resource, Tracking Congress in the Age of Trump, and confirmed that Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jerry Moran of Kansas are two of Republican senators who deviated most from legislation that Trump supported. In the 116th Congress, Rand Paul has only voted 63.6% in line with Trump’s position, and Jerry Moran only voted 64.1% in line with Trump’s position. Most notably, both of these Senators voted for S.J. Resolution 54 on 9/25/2019, which was an attempt to overturn President Trump’s emergency declaration for border wall funding, while 36 other GOP senators voted against it. Another significant vote was for S.J. Resolution 68 on 2/13/2020, which attempted to restrict President Trump from taking military action against Iran without congressional approval, which 44 other senators voted against. While both of these senators are from states that largely support President Trump and his policies, I believe the fact that these two senators are in states that haven’t had Democratic senators in decades gives them “longer leashes” that allow them to get away with voting against their constituents beliefs and preferences in favor of their own ideologies.
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