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posted by martyb on Sunday January 15 2017, @08:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the keeping-track dept.

Vital Statistics on Congress, first published in 1980, long ago became the go-to source of impartial data on the United States Congress. Vital Statistics’ purpose is to collect and provide useful data on America’s first branch of government, including data on the composition of its membership, its formal procedure (such as the use of the filibuster), informal norms, party structure, and staff. With some chapters of data dating back nearly 100 years, Vital Statistics also documents how Congress has changed over time, illustrating, for example, the increasing polarization of Congress and the diversifying demographics of those who are elected to serve.

Vital Statistics began as a joint effort undertaken by Thomas E. Mann of Brookings and Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, in collaboration with Michael Malbin of the Campaign Finance Institute. The datasets were published in print until 2013 when the project migrated online for the first time. This year, Brookings’ Molly E. Reynolds spearheaded Vital Statistics’ most recent update. The eight chapters [...] contain more than 90 tables of data which were collected through the years of this project and updated most recently in January 2017.

Source: The Brookings Institution

https://www.brookings.edu/multi-chapter-report/vital-statistics-on-congress/#datatables


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 15 2017, @11:59PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 15 2017, @11:59PM (#454200) Journal

    The percentage is pretty consistent, in that greater numbers vote in presidential elections than in off-year elections. Roughly 1/3 of eligible voters vote in off-years, and a little more than 1/2 vote in presidential elections. The numbers vary a little from 1930 to 2014, but not by a great deal. 1940 and 1960 are the highest percentages, with 65.2 and 64.9, respectively.

    I really expected to see a different story on that chart.

    Not on that page, 2016 voter turnout is estimated at 57.9. So much for CNN's bogus headline, "Voter Turnout at 20-year low in 2016". But, most of us recognize that CNN is fake news anyway.

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