The Occupational Dimension of Party Coalitions

• In Event: Factions Within Parties and their Consequences

Abstract

The Democratic Party coalition is known to include voters from a diverse set of industries and occupations. The party's sources of electoral support range from workers in low-income service sectors to those in higher-income technology and science sectors. Less understood, however, is the party's relative responsiveness to these different components of its electoral coalition. I offer one means of answering this question by studying the US Census' workforce and demographic data at the level of the congressional district and associating it with each district's elected representative in the 111th-114th Congresses. For the outcome I study each representative's roll-call voting as well as bill cosponsorship activity as an indicator of credit-claiming in issue areas that include labor regulation, employment regulation, and social services provision. I find that districts with higher shares of service-sector workers elect representatives with greater levels of activity in bills related to labor and social spending, with the share of managerial and manufacturing occupations influencing activity related to social spending as well. However, there is no demonstrated effect of workforce composition on bills related to employee benefits. The results highlight the significance of the labor market in differentially motivating representative behavior while calling for further study of how the party negotiates the diverse background of its constituents.

Author

• Jack Garigliano, Northwestern University