McCarthy was a senator from Wisconsin and was a Republican. He served from 1947 to 1957.
Misconduct
McCarthy abused a Senate committee. On Dec. 2, 1954, the Senate censured him, 67-22.
| Nov. 8, 1954 | Select Committee to Study Censure Charges unanimously recommended censure |
| Dec. 2, 1954 | Senate censured, 67-22 |
| May. 2, 1957 | Died before his term would have ended in 1958. |
![Photo of Sen. Joseph McCarthy [R-WI, 1947-1957]](/static/legislator-photos/407327-200px.jpeg)
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1947 to Apr 1957, McCarthy missed 178 of 1,521 roll call votes, which is 11.7%. This is much worse than the median of 6.6% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Apr 1957. 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
