The Voting Behavior of Freshmen Congressmen.

The article focuses on the voting behavior of freshmen Congressmen of the United States. The writers on Congress have commented on the special position occupied by the freshman Senator or Representative. The freshman Congressman, they suggest, is baffled and handicapped by the rules of procedure, more subject to the social lobby, forbidden by powerful custom from speaking freely, easily controllable through party discipline by the apportionment of committee assignments, and so forth. There have been suggestions that the first-term Representative may be more subject to party discipline, but no systematic analysis has been employed to verify or disprove the proposition. That some practicing politicians believe such a difference does exist. This paper is an attempt to determine whether freshman status had a significant influence upon voting in the House of Representatives on major policy questions during the Eighty-third and Eighty-fourth Congresses.