This study examines individual roll call votes on energy issues taken in Congress during the years 1973 to 1983. Logit analysis is used to compare the influence of partisan identification; personal ideology, as measured by support and opposition to the conservative coalition; and district or state energy characteristics, including energy consumption and production. The potential for misleading results due to the multicollinearity of party and ideology is eliminated through the use of a residual variable representing the non-party component of ideology. The results indicate that members of Congress demonstrated considerable variability in voting on energy matters. The House of Representatives was more responsive to variations in energy constituencies. Both the House and the Senate showed a different response when the substantive character of energy issues varied. Questions with an economic impact were more influenced by partisanship, while environmentally related issues were more strongly influenced by ideology. The gross impact of changes in public opinion and changes in the presidency are noticeable throughout, but most especially after the election of Ronald Reagan, when many of the policy changes made previously were dismantled. The results of this study support the basic proposition that individual roll call votes are a product of constituency influence. The results also indicate that the political partisanship and ideology of members are representative of a member's supportive and reelection constituency. The statistical methods used allowed a direct comparison of the influence of party, ideology, and variables representing the characteristics of member's districts. The results obtained substantiate the importance of constituent influence in congressional voting.

Congressional roll-call votes are often used to investigate legislative voting behavior. To depict adaptive roll-call behavior in response to demographic changes that occur during redistricting, I use issue specific interest group scores from the ADA, NFU, and COPE. This exploits the bias in the selection of the issues that interest groups utilize to rate U.S. representatives, by using them to reflect changes in response to significant demographic fluctuations in the constituency population. The findings indicate that while party is the most significant factor in whether legislators adapt their voting in favor of certain groups, they do notice group composition changes within district and adapt their voting accordingly. This illustrates the impact of redistricting on policy and legislators' adaptation to changes in district composition.

In this study, data-processed averages of the congressional voting ratings of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE), and Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA) were utilized comparatively for the thirteen consecutive 1947-1972 postwar American Congresses. ADA, COPE, and ACA rating averages served as tracers to plot the 1947-1972 ideological dispositions, differentials and directions of the American Congress, congressional parties, House and Senate, geopolitical regions, demographic, and religious groupings. ADA, COPE, and ACA averages consistently corroborated 1947-1972 ideological trends.Congress experienced four ideological epicycles during 1947-1972. Following a 1947-1949 conservative reactionism, a 1949-1958 liberalizing moderation climaxed in a 1959-1966 crescendo of epic liberalism, succeeded by a 1967-1972 moderating liberalism. The 1947-1972 congressional parties manifested changing degrees of ideological polarity.The ideologically divergent postwar congressional parties converged during the 1949-1958 era of liberalizing moderation as urbanizing congressional Republicans moderated appreciably. During the 1959-1966 liberal surge, congressional Republicans fashioned a conservative pro-Southern strategy in order to achieve power. From 1967 to 1972, the parties converged ideologically; Southern congressional Democrats rapidly conservatized and social-issue conscious urban congressional Democrats ideologically moderated while suburbanizing congressional Republicans liberalized.The 1947-1972 House and Senate changed ideological positions. The House was ideologically superseded by a belatedly more urban and, therefore, more liberal post-1961 Senate. Urban liberal Senate Republicans accounted for the greater liberalism of the Senate; the urbanized House Democracy continued to exceed the liberalism of the Senate Democracy.Rural, suburban and urban groupings displayed greater degrees of liberalism from the least to the greatest density of population. Rural congressional district and state averages were conservative, and suburban and urban averages were moderate and liberal respectively. The 1969-1972 suburban and urban averages moderated. Protestant, Catholic and Jewish congressional district averages were conservative, liberal and strongly liberal respectively.The standard geopolitical regions of East, South, Midwest and West experienced dramatic 1947-1972 ideological and partisan transition. The East realigned from a congressional Republican bastion to a congressional Democratic bastion and revolved from the most conservative to the most liberal region. The South shifted from the most liberal to the most conservative region and began a rapid, pro-Republican realignment. The Midwest liberalized and realigned Democratically and the West conservatized and gravitated toward the GOP.Thus, congressional Democrats were becoming the liberal party of the North and congressional Republicans were becoming the conservative party of the Heartland. These 1947-1972 ideological and partisan transitions were apparent in the behavior of the Yankee Zone and Sun Belt geopolitical subregions. The conservative Republican Yankee Zone revolved into a bastion of liberal Democracy while the solidly Democratic Sun Belt conservatized and trended Republican.The depopulation of rural areas and cities and the population plurality of suburbia were disclosed in the 1970 census. The 1966-1972 emergence of congressional Republicans to majority control of suburban constituencies suggests the advent of a suburban political cycle of ideological moderation and Republican supremacy. The depopulation of the liberalizing and Democratizing East and Midwest and the population of the conservatizing and Republicanizing South and Sun Belt corroborate this projection.