Douglas was a senator from Illinois and was a Democrat. He served from 1859 to 1861.
He was previously a senator from Illinois as a Democrat from 1853 to 1859; a senator from Illinois as a Democrat from 1847 to 1853; the representative for Illinois’s 5th congressional district as a Democrat from 1845 to 1847; and the representative for Illinois’s 5th congressional district as a Democrat from 1843 to 1845.
![Photo of Sen. Stephen Douglas [D-IL, 1859-1861]](/static/legislator-photos/403567-200px.jpeg)
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Dec 1847 to Mar 1861, Douglas missed 1,520 of 3,547 roll call votes, which is 42.9%. This is much worse than the median of 20.5% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Mar 1861. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses and major life events.
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