State Population Growth and Senate Roll Call Votes on DR-CAFTA

In this paper I consider one possible demographic determinant of Congressional vote choice on free trade agreements. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that U.S. senators are less likely to support free trade agreements when their states are experiencing population stagnation or decline. To test this hypothesis, I examine roll call votes for the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), which was passed by the Senate in 2005, using a logit model and an ordered logit model, finding that there was a statistically significant relationship between population growth and Senate roll call votes on DR-CAFTA. This variable furthermore had a stronger influence on senators' vote choice than variables such as state union membership rates and export levels, suggesting that population growth rates are a strong predictor of trade preferences