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Data - Congressional Votes

Voteview

September 20, 2021

Congressional Vote Data

This data export contains data about each rollcall taken by Congress in the selected chamber(s) and congress(es). Note that this data refers to the overall result and ideological parameters of the vote, not any individual member's positions. For information about individual member positions, please see Member Votes

Quick Links: - CSV (simplest) https://voteview.com/static/data/out/rollcalls/HSall_rollcalls.csv - JSON (has more fields) https://voteview.com/static/data/out/rollcalls/HSall_rollcalls.json

Informational Fields:

  • congress: Integer 1+. The number of the congress that this member's row refers to. e.g. 115 for the 115th Congress (2017-2019)
  • chamber: House, Senate, or President. The chamber in which the member served.
  • rollnumber: Integer 1+. Starts from 1 in the first rollcall of each congress. Excludes quorum calls and vacated votes. This number does not match the clerk_rollnumber field.
  • date: Date on which the rollcall took place.
  • session: Integer 1 or 2. Indicator for which session of the congress in which a rollcall occurred.
  • clerk_rollnumber: Number assigned by Congress to the rollcall. Includes quorum calls and vacated votes, starts from 1 at the beginning of the session (not at the beginning of the congress).
  • bill_number: String. Number of the bill on which rollcall was held.
  • vote_result: Official result of rollcall, may not exist for all votes.
  • vote_desc: Description fo the rollcall assigned by Congressional staff.
  • vote_question: String. Question addressed by the rollcall. e.g. "On Agreeing to the Amendment".
  • dtl_desc: Description of the rollcall, collected from historical sources.
  • congress_url (JSON only.) URL of congress.gov bill page.
  • issue_codes: (JSON only.) Poole and Rosenthal specific issue codes.
  • crs_policy_area: (JSON only.) Congressional Research Service policy area.
  • clausen_codes: (JSON only.) Clausen (1973) issue-area codes.
  • peltzman_codes: (JSON only.) Peltzman (1984) issue-area codes.
  • source_documents.publication: (JSON only.) Title of the publications documenting the motion.
  • source_documents.page_number: (JSON only.) Page number of the in the publications documenting the motion.

Ideological Fields:

  • mid_1: NOMINATE First-dimension midpoint estimate.
  • mid_2: NOMINATE Second-dimension midpoint estimate.
  • spread_1: NOMINATE First-dimension spread estimate.
  • spread_2: NOMINATE Second-dimension spread estimate.
  • log_likelihood: NOMINATE estimated log-likelihood.

Citation

To cite this data, please use the following citation:

Lewis, Jeffrey B., Keith Poole, Howard Rosenthal, Adam Boche, Aaron Rudkin, and Luke Sonnet (2021). Voteview: Congressional Roll-Call Votes Database. https://voteview.com/