The Partisanship Canard

The Wall Street Journal reports an interesting pattern of Congressional voting that shows increasing partisanship over the decades.

The table above from the Wall Street Journal shows that 40 years ago, individual Congressional Republicans and Democrats voted with the majority of their party in 61-63% of the time. Today, they do so to a much higher degree, 85% for Republicans and 89-92% for Democrats.

But the other interesting insight from this chart is that while 40 years ago Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to vote with their party, today Democrats are much more likely to do so. This year, House Democrats voted against their party's majority only 8% of the time, while Senate Democrats did so 11% of the time. Meanwhile, Republicans voted against their party's majority 15% of the time - 88% more often than House Democrats and 36% more often than Senate Democrats.

Obama and the media like to portray Republicans as the source of partisanship in American politics. This data shows partisanship is common to both parties, but particularly so to Democrats.