Comments on: Congressional Voting Records

Question: Congressional Voting Records

SAC — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:55:15 -0800

Can I get Congressional Voting Records in an easily parsed format? I've found this, but I'd rather not have to navigate my way back and forth through pages. Where would one get the raw data? I don't really have a preference for format as I figure I can write something to parse it as I need. I would prefer one big file over a separate file for each vote, but I'm not too picky at this point.

I don't really know what I want to do with the data yet, but I'd like to be able to sift through it all more easily. Thanks.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:09:24 -0800

Here's an API.

Alternatively, go here and start wget-ing... though it looks like you'd like to avoid some of that. Looks like the structure makes some sense. Shouldn't be too hard to scrape.

(You can even get a breakdown by starsign. - invaluable, I'm sure...)

By: shadow vector

shadow vector — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:13:25 -0800

Forget all that official Congressional or media jazz, go straight to the people who need this stuff professionally: political scientists.

Keith Poole's data page. Scroll down a bit for roll call data.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:14:46 -0800

Or, if you can rip the text out of pdf....

go here
2007 version

actually... ignore my previous answer... this one has a nice copyable table in it....

By: SAC

SAC — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:23:39 -0800

pompomtom and shadow vector, thanks for both your answers. I'm still looking through them, but so far, both the API and the Keith Poole links look exactly like what i was looking for.