This dataset contains variables describing congressional service and selected biographical characteristics for each person who has served in the United States Congress. This release of the data includes members of the 104th Congress. Approximately 11,455 individuals are represented in this file, each identified by a unique five-digit identification number. A data record exists for every Congress in which an individual served, as well as for each chamber in which a person may have served in a given Congress. To illustrate, a member of the House of Representatives who is appointed to fill a vacancy in the Senate during a term of service will have two data records for that Congress. The congressional service variables include political party affiliation, district, state and region represented, and exact and cumulative dates of service in each Congress and each chamber, as well as total congressional service. The biographical variables cover state and region of birth, education, military service, occupation, other political offices held, relatives who also have held congressional office, reason for leaving each Congress, and occupation and political offices held subsequent to service in Congress. Many of these specific variables are summarized in a collapsed variable.

Us Senators serving Macon-Bibb County.The two Senators that serve the State of Georgia are Johnny Isakson and David Perdue.The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which along with the United States House of Representatives—the lower chamber—comprise the legislature of the United States.The composition and powers of the Senate are established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The Senate is composed of senators, each of whom represents a single state in its entirety, with each state being equally represented by two senators, regardless of its population, serving staggered terms of six years; with fifty states presently in the Union, there are 100 U.S. Senators. From 1789 until 1913, Senators were appointed by legislatures of the states they represented; following the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, they are now popularly elected. The Senate chamber is located in the north wing of the Capitol, in Washington, D.C.As the upper house, the Senate has several powers of advice and consent which are unique to it; these include the ratification of treaties and the confirmation of Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, federal judges, other federal executive officials, flag officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors, and other federal uniformed officers. In addition to these, in cases wherein no candidate receives a majority of electors for Vice President, the duty befalls upon the Senate to elect one of the top two recipients of electors for that office. It further has the responsibility of conducting trials of those impeached by the House. The Senate is widely considered both a more deliberative and more prestigious body than the House of Representatives due to its longer terms, smaller size, and statewide constituencies, which historically led to a more collegial and less partisan atmosphere.The presiding officer of the Senate is the Vice President of the United States, who is President of the Senate. In the Vice President's absence, the President Pro Tempore, who is customarily the senior member of the party holding a majority of seats, presides over the Senate. In the early 20th century, the practice of majority and minority parties electing their floor leaders began, although they are not constitutional officers.

Roll call voting records for the United States House of Representatives and Senate through the 100th Congress are presented in this data collection. Each data file in the collection contains information for one chamber of a single Congress. The units of analysis are the individual members of the House of Representatives and Senate. Each record contains a member's voting action on every roll call vote taken during that Congress, along with variables that identify the member (e.g., name, party, state, and uniform ICPSR member number). In addition, the codebook provides descriptive information for each roll call, including the date of the vote, outcome in terms of yeas and nays, name of initiator, the relevant bill or resolution number, and a synopsis of the issue.

Every four years in the United States, the electoral college system is used to determine the winner of the presidential election. In this system, each state has a fixed number of electors based on their population size, and (generally speaking) these electors then vote for their candidate with the most popular votes within their state or district. Since 1964, there have been 538 electoral votes available for presidential candidates, who need a minimum of 270 votes to win the election. Because of this system, candidates do not have to win over fifty percent of the popular votes across the country, but just win in enough states to receive a total of 270 electoral college votes. Popular results From 1789 until 1820, there was no popular vote, and the President was then chosen only by the electors from each state. George Washington was unanimously voted for by the electorate, receiving one hundred percent of the votes in both elections. From 1824, a popular vote has been conducted among American citizens (with varying levels of access for women, Blacks, and poor voters), to help electors in each state decide who to vote for (although the 1824 winner was chosen by the House of Representatives, as no candidate received over fifty percent of electoral votes). Since 1924, the difference in the share of both votes has varied, with several candidates receiving over 90 percent of the electoral votes while only receiving between fifty and sixty percent of the popular vote. The highest difference was for Ronald Reagan in 1980, where he received just 50.4 percent of the popular vote, but 90.9 percent of the electoral votes. Unpopular winners Since 1824, there have been 51 elections, and in 19 of these the winner did not receive over fifty percent of the popular vote. In the majority of these cases, the winner did receive a plurality of the votes, however there have been five instances where the winner of the electoral college vote lost the popular vote to another candidate. The most recent examples of this were in 2000, when George W. Bush received roughly half a million fewer votes than Al Gore, and in 2016, where Hillary Clinton won approximately three million more votes than Donald Trump.

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South Carolina has taken part in all U.S. presidential elections ever held, with the exception of the 1864 election when the Palmetto State was a part of the Confederate States of America. In these 58 elections, South Carolina has allocated all of its electoral votes to the nationwide winner on 33 occasions, giving a success rate of 57 percent (one of the lowest in the country). South Carolina, as with other southern states, was a Democratic stronghold throughout most of the nineteenth century, before turning Republican in the 1960s; South Carolina has voted for the Republican Party's nominee in all elections since 1980, and in 14 of the 15 most recent elections. In the 2020 election, South Carolina was a comfortable victory for Donald Trump, although his margin of victory was lower than his 14 point victory there in the 2016 election. South Carolinians in the White House Only one U.S. president, Andrew Jackson, was born in South Carolina, however, he was born there during the colonial era and the exact location remains unknown. It is known that Jackson was born in the Waxhaws region along the border of North and South Carolina; some historians have suggested that Jackson was born on the northern side of the border, and that he only claimed to be from the south to garner political support, however most historians have accepted Jackson's claim that he was born south of the border. Charles C. Pinckney is the only other South Carolinian to have headed a major party ticket, although he lost in both the 1804 and 1808 elections, while Strom Thurmond was the only third-party candidate from South Carolina to win electoral votes. Electoral votes As with most of the original thirteen colonies, South Carolina's influence on presidential elections has generally decreased throughout U.S. history. In early elections, South Carolina's allocation of electoral votes increased from seven in 1789, to eleven votes between 1812 and 1840. This number then fell going into the Civil War and Reconstruction era, before plateauing at eight or nine votes since 1884. South Carolina holds the distinction of being the final state to introduce a popular voting system to choose the statewide winner, making the switch after it was readmitted to the union in 1868; the winners in all presidential elections held in South Carolina between 1789 and 1860 were decided by the state legislature.

The United States has had 46 presidents since George Washington's election in 1789. While Washington himself was not affiliated with any political party, and even argued against partisanship (something that the other Founding Fathers agreed with), political differences and personal rivalries between the Founding Fathers eventually led to the founding of the Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson. Washington's successor, John Adams, was the only Federalist president, before the Democratic-Republicans occupied the White House from 1801 until 1829.

Formation of the Democratic and Republican parties

The 1820s again saw political and personal rivalries lead to a split among the country's leadership, and the Democratic-Republican Party made way for the formation of the Democratic Party and the National Republican Party. The Democratic Party was formed by Andrew Jackson and his supporters, and was traditionally the more conservative of the major political parties in the U.S. until the mid-twentieth century. The National Republican Party was short lived, and eventually amalgamated with the Whig Party in the 1830s, who would go on to be the main opposition to the Democratic Party for the subsequent two decades. Four U.S. presidents belonged to the Whig Party, although it may be important to note that these four men only served a combined eight years in office, as two of them died a short while into their tenure. The issue of slavery was the most dominant and divisive issue in U.S. politics in the mid-nineteenth century, and regional splits emerged in both parties; the rifts did not break apart the Democratic Party, who favored state sovereignty on the issue, whereas the divide in the Whig Party saw it splinter into the right-wing Know Nothing Party in the south, and anti-slavery Republican Party in the north. The 1856 election was the first to feature candidates of both the Democratic and Republican Parties, marking the beginning of the major political rivalry that has dominated U.S. politics for the past 160 years.

Realignment

Abraham Lincoln became the U.S.' first Republican president with his victory in the 1860 election. From then until 1933, twelve of the U.S.' 16 presidents belonged to the Republican Party, while just four* were from the Democratic Party. Due to the legacy left by the American Civil War, the southern, former-Confederate states were a political stronghold for the Democratic Party, and rarely voted for Republican candidates in presidential elections; in contrast to this, the north, west and newly-admitted states tended to vote Republican. In the 1910s, the Republican Party transitioned into the more ideologically conservative option of the two major parties, and more fiscally conservative following the Great Depression; however, it was not until the Johnson administration in the 1960s, particularly due to matters regarding African-American civil rights, where the core voter bases switched into what is typically expected today. In the past century, there have been ten Republican and nine Democratic presidents (including Joe Biden), with Democrats occupying the White House for roughly 52 of these years. Republican voters in the twenty-first century are generally more conservative and right-leaning in regards to both economic and social issues, whereas Democratic voters tend to be the opposite. There are also strong correlations between political parties and their voters, based on issues such as location, ethnicity, wealth, education and age.

45 men have served as the President of the United States. Of these 45 men, 31 have had a military background, with ranks ranging from a militia private to five-star generals. There is some correlation between the ages of the presidents and major wars in U.S. history; explaining why none of those in office between 1909 and 1945 had any military background, and why six of the ten veteran presidents since then served in the National Guard or Naval Reserve. Three US presidents have held the highest position in the U.S. military, they were; George Washington, Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the War of Independence; Ulysses S. Grant, Commanding General of the US Army during the American Civil War; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe in the Second World War. Popular professions In terms of non-military roles, the most common profession for U.S. presidents before taking office was that of a lawyer. 27 U.S. presidents studied and practiced law before entering the world of politics, while Harry S. Truman met all the criteria to become a lawyer, before political and personal circumstances prevented this (although he was posthumously awarded an honorary law license in 1996). Joe Biden is the most recent U.S. president to have held this job; however, the profession was most common in earlier years, as 22 of the first 32 presidents had been lawyers. Eight presidents had also worked in the education sector, with four schoolteachers, three college professors and one university dean being elected to office, and a number went on to teach or serve on university boards after their time in office. More uncommon jobs for U.S. presidents include Hollywood actor (Ronald Reagan), inventor (Thomas Jefferson), peanut farmer (Jimmy Carter) and reality TV host (Donald Trump). Donald Trump was the only U.S. President without any military or political background before assuming office. Political roles A total of 15 vice presidents have ascended to the presidency; eight were due to the death of their respective president, six were elected for their first term, and Gerald R. Ford assumed the presidency following the resignation of Richard Nixon. Of the nine men who assumed the presidency following a death or resignation, five were re-elected to serve a full term. Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon are the only vice presidents to have won two presidential elections, and Jefferson is the only one to have completed both full terms. The most common political background of a U.S. president is that of a Congressman in the House of Representatives, with 18 presidents having served in this role, while 17 also served in the U.S. Congress as Senators. Additionally, 17 U.S. presidents had served as state governors, and William Howard Taft was the Governor-General of the Philippines from 1901 to 1903, when it was a U.S. territory. Six U.S. Presidents had previously served as Secretaries of State, while Taft and Grant had served as Secretaries of War, and Herbert Hoover had been the Secretary of Commerce.