2015 Report Card

Notes

The statistics on this page were last updated on Jan 9, 2016.

Legislative Year: “2015” refers to the legislative year that began on Jan 6, 2015 and ended on Dec 31, 2015. We only compare each legislator to other Members of Congress serving in the same chamber on Dec 31, 2015.

Enacted Joint Resolutions: When counting laws enacted, we also include joint resolutions that are enacted.

The Speaker’s Votes: Missed votes are not computed for the Speaker of the House. According to current House rules, the Speaker of the House is not required to vote in “ordinary legislative proceedings.” In practice this means the Speaker of the House rarely votes but is not considered absent.

Bipartisan Bills: When computing statistics for Writing Bipartisan Bills, we included only Members of Congress who sponsored more than 10 bills. Similarly for Joining Bipartisan Bills, we included Members of Congress who cosponsored more than 10 bills.

Leadership/Ideology: The leadership and ideology scores are not displayed for Members of Congress who introduced fewer than 10 bills, or, for ideology, for Members of Congress that have a low leadership score, as there is usually not enough data in these cases to compute reliable leadership and ideology statistics.

Transparency Bills: We identified several bills that improve access to government records or strengthen citizen participation in government and are on subjects that we believe are non-partisan.

Ranking Members (RkMembs): The chair of a committee is always selected from the political party that holds the most seats in the chamber, called the “majority party”. The “ranking member” (sometimes “RkMembs”) is the title given to the senior-most member of the committee not in the majority party.

Safe vs Competitive: Safe and competitive House seats are as listed in the Cook Political Report at the time these statistics were updated.

Freshmen/Sophomores: Freshmen and sophomores are Members of Congress whose first term (in the same chamber at the end of 2015) was the 114^th Congress (freshmen) or 113^th (sophomores). Members of Congress who took office within the last few months of a Congress are treated as having first taken office in the next Congress.