Two-Party Competition and Senate Politics: The Permanent Campaign on the Floor of the U.S. Senate

Intense competition for majority party control—a continuous reality since the Republican Party won control of the Senate in 1980—has transformed Senate floor politics. This article shows how minority party senators have exploited floor amendments for partisan purposes to a much greater extent in the post-1980 period than in the past. During the 1960s and 1970s, floor activism was a function of an individual senator's stylistic choices and policy preferences, with more extreme senators offering more and more unsuccessful amendments, but party having no meaningful effect. During the post-1980 period, by contrast, minority party senators are considerably more active on the floor than majority party senators, and party has become a strong predictor of amending success. Indeed, the most ideologically extreme senators of the majority party are more successful in getting their amendments accepted than the most centrist members of the minority party.