124 Congressional politics
maintained a majority in the House of Representatives (221 Republicans;
212 Democrats) and in the Senate the two parties were initially equally
balanced with 50 seats each. The long experience of ‘divided government’
seemed to be ending. However, in May 2001, Senator Jeffords of Vermont an-
nounced that he was leaving the Republican Party to become an independent
and would vote with the Democrats on the organisation of the Senate, giving
the Democrats the slimmest of majorities in the Senate. In the mid-term
election of 2002 the Republicans took control of both Houses of Congress.
The attack on the Twin Towers in 2001 and President Bush’s reaction to it
had raised his public approval rating to 90 per cent and, contrary to the usual
expectation that the president’s party will lose ground at mid-term, the Re-
publicans gained seats in the House and won back control of the Senate.
The second factor was the continued realignment in the politics of the South
and the increasing grip of the Republicans on the Southern Senate seats. A
major consequence of this development is the concentration of conservatives
in the Republican Party and the diminution of intra-party strife among the
Democrats. Finally, the dominance of the neoconservatives in the admin-
istration and in a number of congressional seats gave an unusually strong
ideological coherence to the Republican Party, which influenced a number
of the less ideological Republicans to go along with their leaders’ policies.
Surprisingly, however, the coming together of all these factors did not result
in a significantly higher degree of partisanship in Congress than during the
Clinton administration. In the Senate, on average, Republicans voted with
a majority of their party only on 84 per cent of the party votes, and Demo-
crats on 83 per cent. In the House, party unity scores were higher but only
marginally. As always, Southern Democrats were most likely to vote against a
majority of their own party. One Democratic Senator from Georgia, Senator
Zell Miller, voted with a majority of his party only on 40 per cent of the party
votes in which he participated. As the next election loomed, Senator Miller
announced that, although he intended to remain a Democrat, he would vote
for George W. Bush in 2004.
The second aspect of the nature of party loyalty and identity that we can
observe is the extent to which the president, who is a party leader as well as
head of state and chief executive, wins the support of Congress for his poli-
cies. One measure of this support is the presidential success rate calculated
by the Congressional Quarterly. This measure is based upon the number of votes
taken in the Congress upon issues where the president has clearly stated
his position, so that it can be seen whether the majority of Senators and
Representatives have accepted his recommendations. This measurement of
the relations between president and Congress has its limitations. It deals
only with those issues on which the president has made a clear public expres-
sion of his position, and it takes no account of those issues upon which the
president and the administration have abandoned all hope of convincing the
Congress, and have therefore decided not to press their views. Nevertheless,