Congress has long struggled to pass spending bills on time
Congress has passed all its required appropriations measures on time only four times in nearly five decades.
Congress
The changing face of Congress in 7 charts
The 119th Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse in history, and it includes the nation’s first openly transgender legislator at the federal level.
Faith on the Hill
Christians will make up 87% of voting members in the Senate and House of Representatives, combined, in the 2025-27 congressional session.
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Faith on the Hill
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.
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House Republicans who lost re-election bids were more moderate than those who won
Among GOP House incumbents who lost their re-election campaigns, 23 of 30 were more moderate than the median Republican in the chamber.
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Millennials, Gen X increase their ranks in the House, especially among Democrats
The 2018 midterm elections significantly boosted the number of Millennials and Generation Xers in the lower chamber.
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Turnout in this year’s U.S. House primaries rose sharply, especially on the Democratic side
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.
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Immigrants or children of immigrants make up at least 12% of 115th Congress
At least 65 of the current voting members of Congress are immigrants or the children of immigrants. These members represent nearly half of U.S. states.
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Younger adults, independents more critical of their district’s past congressional candidate fields
Younger Americans are less likely than their elders and partisans are more likely than independents to have positive views of past congressional candidate pools in their districts.
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Moderates in Congress go local on Facebook more than the most ideological members
For the average moderate legislator, about 54% of a member’s Facebook posts discussed local issues between 2015 and 2017. But for the average very liberal or very conservative legislator, just 38% of posts dealt with local issues.
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Senate’s August recess could be its shortest in decades
Mitch McConnell’s decision to shorten the chamber’s August recess isn’t unprecedented. But in an election year – when a third of senators are on the campaign trail – it’s unusual.
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U.S. population keeps growing, but House of Representatives is same size as in Taft era
The U.S. House of Representatives has one voting member (435 in total) for every 747,000 or so Americans. That’s by far the highest ratio of population to representatives of any industrialized democracy, and the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history.
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Proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution seldom go anywhere
The vast majority of proposed amendments die quiet, little-mourned deaths in committees and subcommittees.
