Party Strength in Congress
Historians have used statistical techniques to estimate the party breakdown in Congress. Many Congressmen were hard to classify in the first few years, but after 1796 there was less uncertainty.
| Election Year | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| House | 1788 | 1790 | 1792 | 1794 | 1796 | 1798 | 1800 | 1802 | 1804 | 1806 |
| Federalist | 37 | 39 | 51 | 47 | 57 | 60 | 38 | 39 | 25 | 24 |
| Democratic-Republican | 28 | 30 | 54 | 59 | 49 | 46 | 65 | 103 | 116 | 118 |
| Percentage Democratic-Republican | 43% | 43% | 51% | 56% | 46% | 43% | 63% | 73% | 82% | 83% |
| Senate | 1788 | 1790 | 1792 | 1794 | 1796 | 1798 | 1800 | 1802 | 1804 | 1806 |
| Federalist | 18 | 16 | 16 | 21 | 22 | 22 | 15 | 9 | 7 | 6 |
| Democratic-Republican | 8 | 13 | 14 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 17 | 25 | 17 | 28 |
| Percentage Democratic-Republican | 31% | 45% | 47% | 34% | 31% | 31% | 53% | 74% | 71% | 82% |
- Source: Kenneth C. Martis, The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789-1989 (1989). The numbers are estimates.
The affiliation of many Congress-men in the earliest years is an assignment by later historians; these were slowly coalescing groups with initially considerable independent thinking and voting; Cunningham noted that only about a quarter of the House of Representatives, up till 1794, voted with Madison as much as two-thirds of the time, and another quarter against him two-thirds of the time, leaving almost half as fairly independent. Albert Gallatin recalled only two caucuses on legislative policy between 1795 and 1801, one over appropriations for Jay's Treaty, the other over the Quasi-War, and in neither case did the party decide to vote unanimously.
Read more about this topic: Democratic-Republican Party
Famous quotes containing the words party, strength and/or congress:
“Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children’s party taken over by the elders.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Any officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress ought to be scalped.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)