Using publicly published data from Congressional Quarterly, we averaged a couple of different types of scores that they published, looking at all votes going back to January 1, 1991. After going through a number of steps and gyrations, we came up with a list of seven hard-core progressive United States Senators (7% of that body) and 40 hard-core progressive United States Representatives (about 9% of that body). The algorithm that we've used to come up with these progressive scores is as follows: We take ANY VOTE in which a majority of the progressives we've identified--so in the House say, if there were no absences, it would be 21 of the 40--voted in opposition to a majority of the Republican caucus and have that vote qualify for the database. The same process is used in the Senate. So, non-ideological votes such as National Groundhog Day: 429-0 with 6 absences, do not qualify for the database. ANY vote in which a majority of progressives in the progressive cohort listed just below here votes against a majority of Republicans qualifies for the database. The percentage of votes which qualify using this algorithm remains remarkably constant from one Congress to another, about half of all votes cast.

"The Progressive Position" by definition, is the position of the majority of the Progressives. The “Conservative Position” is the position of the majority of the Republicans. We've tested this algorithm in the real world and it works extremely well. In the case of members of Congress elected before November 1990, the “Progressive Lifetime Scores” include only votes cast in Congress since January 1, 1991 (1991-92 was the first full Congress where vote records were computerized). In the case of members of Congress elected on or after November 1990, the scores include all votes that have ever been cast while that member has been in Congress. The column labeled “ Progressive ’09-’10 Scores” is for the current Congress and shows scores for votes since January 2009, which allows for an apples-to-apples comparison for the same time period of all current members of Congress. For example, the total number of qualifying votes according to this criteria in 2007 was 747 in the House and 269 in the Senate. After we catch up with a programming backlog, we will post the specific roll call vote numbers of the votes that qualified for inclusion on Progressive Punch scores. The composite scores include ALL votes qualified by our algorithm, whether we’ve written the narrative vote descriptions that allow us to put them into categories or not. So the category scores can look different from the composite scores.

The votes used to calculate the scores in the “Crucial Votes ’09-‘10” column are a subset of the overall votes that qualify according to the Progressive Punch algorithm described above. They show the impact that even a small number of Democrats have when they defect from the progressive position. These are votes where EITHER progressives lost OR where the progressive victory was narrow and could have been changed by a small group of Democrats voting differently. The definition of a vote where progressives lost is one where a majority of the progressive cohort (see list below) was on the losing side of the vote. Narrow progressive victories are defined as votes in which progressives won by 20 votes or fewer in the House (so a shift of 10 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result) or by 6 votes or fewer in the Senate (so a shift of 3 votes from one side to the other would have changed the result). The total number of votes in 2007 that qualified for Crucial Votes was 154 in the House and 167 in the Senate. After we catch up with a programming backlog, we will post the specific roll call vote numbers of the votes that qualified for inclusion on Crucial Votes scores.

There is no surefire objective way to compute how progressive, or for that matter how conservative, a member of Congress is. A lot of thought went into coming up with this methodology. That doesn't mean it can't be critiqued. What we have done is to try to take human beings out of the equation as much as possible. In other words, the percentages calculated on this site do not necessarily correlate with the individual political positions of Joshua Grossman, the primary author of this website. There are some criticisms that could be levied against our methodology. One is that it treats every vote equally, when they're obviously not all equally important. Another is that lonely principled stands, that might be viewed by some as progressive, such as Barbara Lee's sole vote against war in Afghanistan, do not qualify for the database, because not enough Progressives rallied around her flag (no pun intended). One other thing that no voting index can measure is intensity of support/leadership.

The research functions currently available on this site are just the first step in terms of what we plan to make available to the public.
List of Members Used as Control Group to Contrast with Republican Caucus to Determine Progressive Scores (alphabetical by last name)

List of Members Used as Control Group to Contrast with Republican Caucus to Determine Progressive Scores (alphabetical by last name)