The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

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Exhibit 701

The Party or the Purse? Unequal Representation in the US Senate

Exhibit 701 · Peer-reviewed article

The Party or the Purse? Unequal Representation in the US Senate

We find that affluent influence is overstated and itself contingent on partisanship—party trumps the purse when senators have to take sides. The poor get what they want more often from Democrats. The rich get what they want more often from Republicans, but only if Republican constituents side with the rich.

Evaluates income bias and partisan bias together on 49 Senate roll-call votes, 2001-2015. Uses three measures (responsiveness, congruence, taking-sides). Per Elkjaer and Klitgaard 2024 (p. 321), the authors call the responsiveness regressions 'messy to interpret' because of multicollinearity (p. 928) and find smaller disparities with the other measures.

Source
Jeffrey R. Lax, Justin H. Phillips and Adam Zelizer, American Political Science Review 113(4), pp. 917-940
Date
November 2019
Quoted from
Abstract (publisher page citation_abstract metadata)
Grade
Peer-reviewed
Document
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000315
Accessed
2026-11-09
Cited by
Findings citing this exhibit

Cited by

Finding POL-2.9
Peer-reviewed Lax, Phillips and Zelizer analyzed 49 Senate roll-call votes from 2001 to 2015 and found that affluent influence is overstated and depends on partisanship. The poor get what they want more often from Democrats, and the rich more often from Republicans, but only if Republican constituents side with the rich.