Where You Sit is Where You Stand: The Impact of Seating Proximity on Legislative Cue-Taking

This article builds on Matthews and Stimson's (1975) study of legislative cue-taking, analyzing the extent to which legislators sitting next to each other influence each others' voting behavior. Data come from three decades of roll call votes in the California Assembly, a chamber in which each member is paired with a deskmate. By comparing deskmate pairs with nondeskmate pairs, I find that legislators vote identically to their deskmates on a sizeable subset of roll calls. This deskmate effect appears to remain strong even as a rival influence — legislative partisanship — increases in strength.