Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T01:51:40.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Scale Analysis of the Voting Records of Senators Kennedy, Johnson and Goldwater, 1957–1960

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Charles H. Gray
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Extract

This article reports the results of a scale analysis of the votes cast by three prominent senators, two Democrats and a Republican, on legislative measures pending during the second term of the Eisenhower administration. My method employed the Guttman scaling technique to identify the ideological issues presented in the roll calls and to rank the senators according to the positions they took on these issues, looking separately at their records in the 85th and the 86th Congresses. My purpose was twofold: first, to distinguish objectively the differences in the public postures the three men assumed as they voted; and second, to look for movement in the stance of each as the 1960 campaign approached.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For Guttman scaling, refer to Stouffer, Samuel A. et al. , Measurement and Prediction (Princeton University Press, 1950)Google Scholar.

2 So did Nixon, the Republican nominee in 1960, as the event proved, but he could not make a voting record in the Senate over which he presided; so did Humphrey, but he had not the resources to put hinself in the same league with Kennedy and Johnson as aspirants.

3 Gray, Charles Howard, Coalition, Consensus and Conflict in the United States Senate (1957–1960), Ph.D. thesis, University of Colorado, 1962Google Scholar.

4 Space does not permit a detailed description here of the roll calls fitting this or subsequent scales used in this report. Such a description, and the ranks of all senators, may be found in the study cited in the previous footnote.

5 For a detailed account of the struggle over the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and the strategies of the contestants, see the I. C. P., case study, Eisenhower, Brownell and the Congress (University of Alabama Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

6 Carney, Francis M., “Ideological Groupings in the United States Senate, 1953–1958, as Indicated by Scale Analysis,” unpublished monograph, University of California, RiversideGoogle Scholar.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.