ARTICLES Beyond Pivotal Politics: Constituencies, Electoral Incentives, and Veto Override Attempts in the House PATRICK T. HICKEY West Virginia University Veto override attempts offer an ideal opportunity to study the president’s influence in Congress. A bill’s content is identical during final passage and veto override votes, yet some members of Congress vote differently on these two roll-calls. This article focuses on those members of Congress who switch their votes to join, or defect from, the president’s coalition during veto override votes. The empirical analysis investigates veto override attempts from 1973 to 2011 to determine which members of Congress are most likely to change their votes during veto overrides. I find that the president’s ability to win, or keep, members’ support on veto override votes is determined in part by members’ electoral incentives and the president’s strength in members’ constituencies. In particular, the president’s strength in members’ constituencies makes presiden- tial party members more likely to join the president’s veto override coalition and also makes opposition party members more likely to defect from the president’s veto override coalition. Accounting for the influence of constituencies and electoral incentives augments party-based and ideology-based theories of congressional behavior and thus helps build richer, more comprehensive, and more accurate theories of member behavior. President George H. W. Bush famously employed a veto strategy in the 101st and 102nd Congress to project strength and defend “his party and his powers” (Mullins and Wildavsky 1992, 36). This strategy served President Bush rather well until he suffered a serious defeat at the end of his time in office. On September 17, 1992, the House of Representatives adopted the conference report on S. 12, the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, by a margin of 280-128 (CQ Almanac 1992). This supposedly “veto-proof” margin barely surpassed the two-thirds supermajority needed to override the president’s veto. President Bush vetoed the bill on October 3, 1992. Bush’s veto set up a highly public confrontation between Congress and the Patrick T. Hickey is an assistant professor of political science at West Virginia University. His research investigates how presidents build winning coalitions in Congress and the systematic influences that cause some members of Congress to vote against their party’s position on presidential support votes. Presidential Studies Quarterly 44, no. 4 (December) 577 © 2014 Center for the Study of the Presidency