Congress

In the four decades that the current system for budgeting and spending tax dollars has been in effect, Congress has managed to pass all required appropriations bills on time only four times.

Doug Jones' victory in Alabama gives that state its first split Senate delegation in more than two decades. But delegations with two senators of different parties still are much less common than they used to be: With 14 split delegations, the current Senate is tied for the second-fewest in the past 50 years.

Political divides in the American news landscape do not end with Americans’ preferences for different news sources; rather, they extend to how members of the U.S. Congress communicate with constituents in the digital age.

Senate seats have rarely flipped to the other party in recent special elections, and turnout usually lags compared with regular elections for the same seat.

While the future of the Affordable Care Act is in question, the American public increasingly thinks the law has had a positive impact on the country.

In the week after the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas, partisan differences were on full display in how elected officials responded on Facebook.

Taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes, though they accounted for only 4.5% of all returns filed (6.8% of all taxable returns). By contrast, taxpayers with incomes below $30,000 filed nearly 44% of all returns but paid just 1.4% of all federal income tax.

This Congress has passed more substantive bills so far in its session than any since 2007 – though nearly a third of them were to undo Obama-era rules.

Special elections to the U.S. House of Representatives tend to be low-turnout events, historically speaking, and seldom result in seats switching from one party to another.

The president has been slow to nominate people to fill key posts, and most of those he has named have had to overcome the cloture hurdle before being confirmed.