The new Congress is slightly more religiously diverse than its predecessor, but it remains overwhelmingly Christian.
The new, 116th Congress includes the first two Muslim women ever to serve in the House of Representatives, and is, overall, slightly more religiously diverse than the prior Congress.
Among GOP House incumbents who lost their re-election campaigns, 23 of 30 were more moderate than the median Republican in the chamber.
The 2018 midterm elections significantly boosted the number of Millennials and Generation Xers in the lower chamber.
The public is generally positive about the outcome of last week’s midterm elections. Yet most Americans think that neither Democratic congressional leaders nor Donald Trump will be successful in getting their policies passed into law during the next two years.
With this year’s midterm elections just a week away, here are some key findings from Pew Research Center surveys over the past several months about some of the dynamics and issues shaping the battle for Congress.
Three-quarters of Republicans say they are optimistic about the future of the Republican Party. Democrats have a similarly bright outlook for their party.
Turnout in this year's primaries for Congress and most state governorships surged compared with the last midterms in 2014, particularly among Democrats. Nearly a fifth (19.6%) of registered voters – about 37 million – cast ballots in primary elections for the U.S. House of Representatives – a 56% increase over the 23.7 million who voted in 2014's House primaries. Turnout that year was 13.7% of registered voters.
The ways that social media shape political attitudes and the intricacies of lawmaking in Congress were two of many topics at the APSA annual conference.
Women are running for Congress in record numbers this year, and most Americans say this is a good thing. But there’s little consensus among the public about how – or whether – things would change if more women were elected. More than four-in-ten Americans say they personally hope a woman will be elected president in their lifetime.
