POLS 223: American Political Process: The Congress (HC)

Find district profiles which briefly cover party politics as well as social and economic issues.

Profiles of districts from the Census Bureau. Includes statistics on jobs, education, and other key factors.

Ballotpedia provides details and maps on individual districts.

The Brookings Institution gathers analysis, news, commentary, and more about issues of political and social importance. For material on Congress, see the research section on U.S. Politics and Government.

Public Agenda is a nonpartisan research and citizen education organization. The website provides guides to specific policy issues and the public debates involved.

A database of elections data, political analyses, concise explanations, and historical materials to help researchers investigate and understand voting and elections in America from 1789 to the present. In particular under the Browse Topics tab, see Congressional Elections.

This series of volumes Includes election data by county and by district for the House and Senate. Volumes cover 1956 through the present. More recent years are available online.

See especially the chapter "Issues and Congressional Votes."

Presidential and Congressional elections (2002-2012) by precinct.

Includes statistics about Congressional members, often across time. Topics treated include House and Senate seats that changed party and districts with a racial or ethnic minority representative or a “majority-minority” population. The latest volume available online covers 2015-16. Volumes published in 1988 through 2004 are available in print copies in the Tripod catalog.

This statistical study is sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute. It was first done in 1980 and is regularly updated online. The authors track the changing makeup of Congress through history and across several dimensions, such as region, party, occupation, religion, committee assignments, staff size, and political stances. They document trends in critical areas such as voter turnout, ticket splitting, incumbency and turnover, margin of victory and polarization. The authors, acknowledged experts in campaign finance, provide detailed information on candidate, party, and PAC spending.

Brief report from the Census Bureau on statistical trends in voting.

Important database from CQ/Sage covering Congressional floor votes, roll call votes and membership profiles from the 79th Congress (1945) to the present. Also includes data analysis tools for Congressional voting as well as background information on the way Congress works and information on aspects of public policy.

Provides sketches of current members of Congress including biographies, votes and bills with ratings, election results, staff, and committees.
Note the different links in Tripod for various years of the Almanac online.

Well researched and edited profiles of Congressional members and their districts including biographical information, voting record, and district map. Published under different titles from 1982 to the present. 2014-2018 are available online in Tripod under the title CQ's Politics in America.

Note the links for Research Collections and Bibliography which may provide helpful research leads.

Official directory for the House of Representatives with links to the members web pages.

Analysis of voting and bill sponsorship done by the organization Civic Impulse.

Find fund raising information for members of Congress through this search page.

Includes biographical information, public statements, finances, and views on issues.

Use the Member search to find details on lawmakers activities including entries in the Congressional Record. Go to the Demographics tab under Members and Committees to find brief biographic profiles. Covers 1985 to the present.

This official directory includes speeches, video, and news about individual senators.

Volumes cover one 4-year presidential term. Divided into chapters on various policy issues, e.g. economic policy, education policy, health & human services, etc. Each chapter opens with an introductory overview, followed by a chronology of legislative actions.

Like CQ above, this weekly journal covers the activities of Congress but with more emphasis on the executive branch concerning all areas of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. The web site also includes directories, reports, poll information, and other features.

Presents essays by leading scholars focusing on different aspects of congressional politics, including the institution's responsiveness to the American public, its procedures and capacities for policymaking, its internal procedures and development, relationships between the branches of government, and the scholarly methodologies for approaching these topics.

Online access to a 2010 reference work on American politics. Scholars were commissioned to write the 190 articles on a wide range of political topics including aspects of religion, popular culture, and education.

The 2020 report cards for members of Congress show how aggregate data can put an individual's record into a clearer context. Check the website for more examples.

2018 data on the richest and poorest members of Congress. Coverage of 2003-2014 is available from Roll Call.

The group Opensecrets compiles this data.

Find out in detail about federal government spending.