President James Buchanan
Former President of the United States
Buchanan was President of the United States and was a Democratic. He served from 1857 to 1861.
He was previously a senator from Pennsylvania as a Democrat from 1843 to 1845; a senator from Pennsylvania as a Democrat from 1837 to 1843; a senator from Pennsylvania as a Jackson from 1834 to 1837; the representative for Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district as a Jackson from 1829 to 1831; the representative for Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district as a Jackson from 1827 to 1829; the representative for Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district as a Jackson from 1825 to 1827; the representative for Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district as a Democratic Republican from 1823 to 1825; and the representative for Pennsylvania’s 3rd congressional district as a Federalist from 1821 to 1823.
![Photo of President James Buchanan [D, 1857-1861]](/static/legislator-photos/401954-200px.jpeg)
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1834 to Mar 1845, Buchanan missed 449 of 2,383 roll call votes, which is 18.8%. This is on par with the median of 16.5% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Mar 1845. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990 by Howard L. Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole.
- Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Keith Poole’s roll call votes data set, for political party affiliation for Members of Congress from 1789 through about year 2000
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for the photo
