House Republican cohesion ticked up just slightly last year, from a historically bad 2023, while Senate Democrats saw record success on votes that split the parties as both chambers dealt with narrow margins that left diminishing room for dissent.
CQ Roll Call’s annual vote studies found that the House GOP majority prevailed on 76.6 percent of party unity votes, the second-lowest rate since 2000. Still, that was up from 63.7 percent in 2023, which represented the lowest winning percentage for a majority party in the chamber since the Democrats during President Ronald Reagan’s first term.
Meanwhile in the Senate, topline data showed Democrats prevailing on 94.5 percent of the unity votes in 2024. That’s the highest rate on record for a majority party in the Senate, which Republicans went on to flip in last fall’s elections.
Congressional Quarterly has been tabulating party unity scores for Congress since the end of World War II. The calculations show the percentage of time lawmakers voted with their party on votes on which majorities of the two parties were on opposite sides. As we wrote in 1947 (and is still true today): “It should be emphasized that the analysis does not include votes in which the majority of both parties voted the same way; if such votes were included, the party loyalty record of each member of Congress would look better percentage-wise, but it would be less significant.”
Party unity in the House
The percentage of House floor votes that met the definition of party unity votes in 2024 dipped slightly to 65.3 percent of the total votes held, from 71.8 percent in 2023, a year that saw repeated votes over the election of a speaker.
Only two House Republicans had party unity scores lower than 80 percent in 2024. Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, one of three Republican congressmen to represent a district won by Kamala Harris last year, was at 71.9 percent. Fitzpatrick, the co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, won a fifth term in his suburban Philadelphia district last fall by double digits.
Oregon’s Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a freshman who narrowly lost reelection in November before President Donald Trump nominated her be Labor secretary, voted with the Republican majority on 79.6 percent of party unity votes.
House Democrats had more members breaking more frequently from the party line, with seven of them coming in with unity scores below 80 percent last Congress. Three of them finished at the bottom of the list for the entire chamber and also won tough reelection races in a year that proved less favorable for Democrats than they had originally anticipated.
They included Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who posted a 63.8 percent party unity score, Maine Rep. Jared Golden (67 percent) and Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar (71.1 percent).
The other House Democrats with unity scores below 80 percent were Reps. Don Davis of North Carolina and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, as well as two lawmakers who lost reelection, Mary Peltola of Alaska and Yadira Caraveo of Colorado.
Gluesenkamp Perez, Golden, Cuellar, Davis and Gonzalez are among the 13 House Democrats in the 119th Congress who represent districts that Trump carried last year.
On the other end of the spectrum, three House Republicans who served for the entire year voted in support of the GOP position on every party unity vote for a score of 100 percent: Reps. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, and Ronny Jackson and Roger Williams of Texas. (Ohio Republican Bill Johnson was with the majority on all 14 votes he cast before he resigned in January 2024.)
Among House Democrats, only Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly had a perfect score among members who were regularly voting throughout the year. Six Democratic members who were in regular attendance in 2024 opposed the party on a single vote.
Eight Republicans deviated from the party exactly once among the full-year participants. They include Tennessee Rep. Mark Green, who was eligible for all 337 of the unity votes but voted on 282 of them.
Party unity in the Senate
The story is somewhat different in the Senate, where 74.6 percent of floor votes met the definition of party unity votes in 2024.
Senate Democrats won a record rate of unity votes even with their governing margin reliant on independents and red-state Democrats on the ballot last cycle. Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who lost reelection last fall as Trump carried his state by 20 points, was the Democrat most likely to break from the pack but still voted with his party more often (96.5 percent) than Vermont independent Bernie Sanders (93.4 percent).
The votes of Sanders and two other independents – Angus King of Maine and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia – were included in CQ Roll Call’s tabulations for Democrats as they all caucused with the party. Manchin, who left the Democratic Party in May, had a party unity score of 82.8 percent, the lowest in the caucus.
Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema, who continued to get committee assignments through Democrats but had otherwise left the caucus, is not included. She voted with her former party 89 percent of the time.
On the Republican side, thanks largely to their votes in favor of President Joe Biden’s nominees, Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine each had party unity scores below 50 percent, nearly tying at the bottom of the list. Collins sided with Republicans slightly less frequently at 47.8 percent compared with 48.0 percent for her Alaska colleague.
No Republican had a perfect Senate unity score in 2024, while 10 Democrats who served for the entire year voted with the majority of their party every time.
Three Republican conservatives – Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Lee of Utah and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama – each cast one vote against their party.
For Lee and Tuberville, that vote came in support of an amendment led by Senate Democratic whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois that would impose warrant requirements on some government surveillance powers.
Blackburn’s lone deviation came on a broadly bipartisan measure that narrowly qualified as a party unity vote despite being spearheaded by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
The bill, which did not make the list for inclusion in the end-of-year stopgap spending package, would have extended and reauthorized compensation for people exposed to radiation. The measure, known as RECA, passed the Senate 69-30.
A majority of Republicans (28 senators) voted against the bill, while Democrats were almost unified in support.
The post Vote studies 2024: House GOP unity inched up as Senate Democrats set record appeared first on Roll Call.
