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
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday January 15 2017, @08:52PM
Vital Statistics also documents how Congress has changed over time, illustrating, for example, the increasing polarization of Congress
Indeed. This table [brookings.edu] and this table [brookings.edu] are particularly sobering. The percentage of "party unity votes," i.e., votes where at least 50% of Democrats oppose at least 50% of Republicans has risen to 75% of all votes in the House and ~70% in the Senate. Aside from the past 4 years or so, the closest we were ever to THAT many partisan votes as a percentage of all votes was back in the 1995 era with Gingrich's "Contract with America" after the 1994 midterms.
And when you look at the second linked table, you see that in those "party unity votes," we're now well above 90% on average for both parties in terms of members voting with their parties on these votes. (There's always been quite a bit of party loyalty, but historically the table shows that these party-line votes traditionally would receive an average of somewhere in the 70-85% range of loyalty for each party. The past 20 years or so shows a significant trend upward though. Not a lot of room for "independent thinking" in Congress these days.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @05:26PM
Not a lot of room for "independent thinking" in Congress these days.
Term limits would fix that.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 15 2017, @09:44PM
Reelection rates. Still hovering above 95%, and all but one or two are democrats and republicans. Horrible...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday January 16 2017, @03:56PM
A Republican senator just introduced a bill that would impose Congressional term limits - something Trump campaigned on. Whether or not anything will come of it - only time will tell.
Now the "party unity" will not be Democrat vs. Republican, it will be Democrat policitian + Republican politician vs. Democratic voter + Republican voter.
Good way to move toward unifying the country's politics, IMO.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday January 16 2017, @09:26PM
Now the "party unity" will not be Democrat vs. Republican, it will be Democrat policitian + Republican politician vs. Democratic voter + Republican voter.
That's the way it has always been. Democrat and republican are one, and term limits will do nothing to fix that.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @03:41PM
I think it will help make congressional elections more important in the public eye. Too few people are aware of who their Congresscritters are and how they are represented by them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday January 15 2017, @10:06PM
Seems like polarization should increase when parties start making up their own realities, and turn towards irrationality. There are infinitely many irrational, faith base explanations for things, and no way to prove or disprove any of them, not that they care about proof. The Moon landings were faked, the CIA assassinated JFK, Climate Change is a liberal academic hoax, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @05:29PM
The cis-het-male patriarchy is holding us down, etc.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 15 2017, @11:59PM
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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Max Hyre on Monday January 16 2017, @02:38AM