Democratic-Republican Party - Party Strength in Congress

Party Strength in Congress

Historians have used statistical techniques to estimate the party breakdown in Congress. Many Congressmen were hard to classify in the first few years, but after 1796 there was less uncertainty.

	Election Year
House	1788	1790	1792	1794	1796	1798	1800	1802	1804	1806
Federalist	37	39	51	47	57	60	38	39	25	24
Democratic-Republican	28	30	54	59	49	46	65	103	116	118
Percentage Democratic-Republican	43%	43%	51%	56%	46%	43%	63%	73%	82%	83%
Senate	1788	1790	1792	1794	1796	1798	1800	1802	1804	1806
Federalist	18	16	16	21	22	22	15	9	7	6
Democratic-Republican	8	13	14	11	10	10	17	25	17	28
Percentage Democratic-Republican	31%	45%	47%	34%	31%	31%	53%	74%	71%	82%

Source: Kenneth C. Martis, The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789-1989 (1989). The numbers are estimates.

The affiliation of many Congress-men in the earliest years is an assignment by later historians; these were slowly coalescing groups with initially considerable independent thinking and voting; Cunningham noted that only about a quarter of the House of Representatives, up till 1794, voted with Madison as much as two-thirds of the time, and another quarter against him two-thirds of the time, leaving almost half as fairly independent. Albert Gallatin recalled only two caucuses on legislative policy between 1795 and 1801, one over appropriations for Jay's Treaty, the other over the Quasi-War, and in neither case did the party decide to vote unanimously.

Read more about this topic: Democratic-Republican Party