The factors influencing legislative voting behavior have often been studied. This is especially true regarding antebellum federal preemption legislation. Several conjectures have been posited and evaluated within the literature, with historical analysis suggesting geographic coalitions playing a dominant role. However, more recent empirical research based on a distributive theory of politics casts doubt on this hypothesis (Gailmard and Jenkins Gailmard and Jenkins, Public Choice 175:259–275, 2018). This paper adds to this debate by extending the empirical analysis to include several other potential factors relevant to the decision-making process. These include the ideological disposition of a given legislator, voter preferences, and special interest influences. Our econometric results support the distributive theory model and add additional nuance as well. Specifically, we find that a legislator’s ideological disposition and constituent preferences are a strong indicator of voting behavior, as is geographic location (though not in the manner suggested by historical analysis).

人们经常研究影响立法投票行为的因素。对于战前联邦先发制人立法尤其如此。文献中已经提出和评估了几个猜想，历史分析表明地理联盟发挥了主导作用。然而，最近基于政治分配理论的实证研究对这一假设提出了质疑（Gailmard and Jenkins Gailmard and Jenkins, Public Choice 175:259–275, 2018）。本文通过扩展实证分析以包括与决策过程相关的其他几个潜在因素来增加这一争论。其中包括特定立法者的意识形态倾向、选民偏好和特殊利益影响。我们的计量经济学结果支持分配理论模型并增加了额外的细微差别。具体而言，我们发现立法者的意识形态倾向和选民偏好是投票行为的有力指标，地理位置也是如此（尽管不是历史分析所建议的方式）。