Frequently asked questions

Short answers, with links to the full details.

What does this site show?

How members of the House and Senate voted, and, where independent surveys asked people about the same bills, how each member's vote compared with what most people where they live said. Everything comes from public records and published surveys, listed on the Sources page.

Who runs it, and is it connected to a party?

It's an independent civic project. It isn't affiliated with the U.S. government, Congress, any political party or campaign, or any survey organization, and it takes no advertising. The same methods, wording and design apply to every member. See About.

Does "voted against the majority" mean a member did something wrong?

No. Members weigh many things: their own judgment, the details of a bill, what they promised voters, and their party. A vote against a majority can be a principled one. The site shows the comparison and leaves the judgment to you.

How do you know what people in my district think?

Large surveys such as the Cooperative Election Study ask tens of thousands of people about specific bills. We estimate each state's and district's support from the people surveyed there, leaning on the statewide answers and on Census figures about the district where only a few people were asked. Each estimate comes with a range. Methods explains it step by step.

What does "too close to call" mean?

The range of likely support crosses 50%, so the survey can't tell which side most people were on. Those votes are shown but never counted for or against a member. See the Glossary.

Sometimes Congress never voted on exactly what a survey asked, but voted on something close: a bill that included the proposal among other things, for example. We show those votes so you can see them, but only votes on the same proposal the survey asked about are counted.

Why don't you combine the surveys into one score?

Surveys ask different questions in different ways at different times. Adding them together would hide those differences, so each source is always shown on its own.

Why is my member compared on only a few votes?

Surveys ask about a small number of major bills each year, and only those can be compared. The rest of the voting record is still shown in full, and the All votes page lists every vote loaded.

It removes party names, the way each party voted, and the party figures from every page, so you can look at a member's votes on their own merits. Nothing else changes. Your browser remembers the choice on your device only. You can also share a link with party labels hidden by adding ?parties=hidden to it.

What's on the state pages and the compare page?

A state page lists the state's members, how each one's surveyed votes compared with the people they represent, and what the state's residents told each survey. Compare puts two members side by side: attendance, how often they voted the same way when both voted, the votes where they split, and their surveyed votes. Both pages only count what's in the records; open any vote to check it.

How current is the information?

House votes are checked every two hours. Senate votes come from Voteview, which can trail the official record by days or weeks. Surveys are added when their data is published. The footer of every page shows the latest vote loaded.

Do you collect information about me?

No accounts, no cookies, no tracking. A few conveniences are kept in your own browser only. See Privacy.

I found a mistake. What happens if I report it?

Write to corrections (at) uscongressvsvoters.org or use the contact form. We check every report against the original source. When a figure on the site was wrong, we fix it and record the fix in the corrections log.

Can I check the work myself?

Yes. Every vote links to its official record, every survey to its published data, and all the code that builds this site is public.