Federalist Party - Party Strength in Congress

Party Strength in Congress

Many Congressmen were very 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 1808 1810 1812 1814 1816 1818 1820
Federalist 37 39 51 47 57 60 38 39 25 24 50 36 68 64 39 26 32
Democratic-Republican 28 30 54 59 49 46 65 103 116 118 92 107 114 119 146 160 155
% Democratic-Republican 43% 43% 51% 56% 46% 43% 63% 73% 82% 83% 65% 75% 63% 65% 79% 86% 83%
Senate 1788 1790 1792 1794 1796 1798 1800 1802 1804 1806 1808 1810 1812 1814 1816 1818 1820
Federalist 18 16 16 21 22 22 15 9 7 6 7 6 8 12 12 9 7
Democratic-Republican 8 13 14 11 10 10 17 25 27 28 27 30 28 26 30 37 44
% Democratic-Republican 31% 45% 47% 34% 31% 31% 53% 74% 71% 82% 79% 83% 78% 68% 71% 80% 92%

Source: Kenneth C. Martis, The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789–1989 (1989); the numbers are estimates by historians.

The affiliation of many Congressmen in the earliest years is an assignment by later historians. The parties were slowly coalescing groups; at first there were many independents. Cunningham noted that only about a quarter of the House of Representatives, up until 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.

Read more about this topic:  Federalist Party

Famous quotes containing the words party, strength and/or congress:

    “The party of God and the party of Literature have more in common than either will admit; their texts may conflict, but their bigotries coincide. Both insist on being the sole custodians of the true word and its only interpreters.”
    —Frederic Raphael (b. 1931)

    “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
    —Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 90:10.

    The Book of Common Prayer (1662)

    “What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years?... All their speeches put together and boiled down ... do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown on the floor of the Harper’s Ferry engine-house,—that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)