| This study examines the theory of descriptive representation and its implications for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Specifically, this study first tests to determine whether the interaction of the race and party of a congressional representative, designated as the variable raceparty, is independent of a congressional member voting of yea or nay on a particular piece of legislation, designated as the variable vote. To research this question, a chi-square test was run individually on six different bills voted upon by members in the House of Representatives. These bills cover six policy areas: gay rights, abortion, minimum wage, welfare reform, gun control, and immigration. The chi-square results were statistically significant for each bill, indicating that raceparty and vote are not independent of one another. The interaction of vote and race was further examined with likelihood ratio testing and logistic regression analysis. The statistical results indicated that race was a statistically significant indicator of vote choice at the α = .01 level on two out of the six legislative acts—specifically in the areas of welfare reform and gun control—while political party was a statistically significant indicator of vote choice at the α = .01 level on all six legislative acts. Further investigation, and comparison to General Social Survey responses, suggested that of those two policies where race was a statistically significant indicator, black representatives only voted in accord with black respondents on one of those policies. The results are used to provide implications concerning further use of descriptive representation theory to substantiate the continued renewal of and current interpretation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. |
