Credit claiming
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
Nov 14, 2025 · Posts on X (state legislators) · policy discussion; credit claiming; Taxation · Source
296
votes against the majority of Montana House Republicans
Party unity 71%, in the bottom tenth of the Montana House (average 89%). 2,755 roll calls in the MT 2025–26 session.
Party unity counts only party-line roll calls, where most Democrats and most Republicans voted on opposite sides, and is the share of those where Jones voted with the majority of Montana House Republicans; it is ranked within the Montana House. The count covers every roll call where Jones voted opposite that majority.
At a glance
5 measures against State House Republicans. 62% of Jones’s itemized money in the 2026 cycle came from Montana, in the bottom tenth of State House Republicans. Jones sits at +0.12 on the CSIP scale, more liberal than 85% of State House Republicans.
The measures on which Jones sits furthest from the middle of State House Republicans, each against the same group, with the CSIP score when there is one. Every number is explained in its own section below.
Party unity
71%
Montana House average 89% · ranks 89th of 97 · 296 votes against the majority of Montana House Republicans
From Montana, 2026
62%
Of itemized individual dollars · ranks 2120th of 2,335 State House Republicans
CSIP ideology
+0.12
More liberal than 85% of State House Republicans · ± 0.03
Attendance
98.9%
Montana House average 99.2% · ranks 73rd of 97 · 2,755 roll calls
Itemized, 2026
$34.0K
State House Republicans’ median $33.7K · ranks 1251st of 2,521
Statements
40
40 posts on X
Peer group: State House Republicans. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; the thick bar is Jones, the thin grey bar the peer average. The headline is the measure on which Jones is most unusual among peers (Methods, §08).
What Jones says
Jones attacks opponents personally less than 81% of State House Republicans. Personal attacks in 0% of 40 statements, against 2.9% for the average State House Republican; 642nd of 791.
An AI model reads each of Jones’s 40 statements in the MT 2025–26 session (40 posts on X) and marks the kinds of statement it contains: a personal attack, criticism of a policy, discussion of policy, bipartisanship, credit claiming, and extreme labels. A statement can carry several. Every rate is compared with the average for State House Republicans and ranked among them.
Kinds of statement
Share of statements carrying each label, the MT 2025–26 session
0%80%
Jones
Peers
Rank
Policy discussion34 statements
85%
32%
6th of 791
Credit claiming18 statements
45%
13%
8th of 791
Policy criticism15 statements
38%
9%
15th of 791
Bipartisanship1 statements
3%
2%
206th of 791
Personal attacks0 statements
0%
3%
642nd of 791
Show the data
| Row | Jones | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Policy discussion | 85% | 32% |
| Credit claiming | 45% | 13% |
| Policy criticism | 38% | 9% |
| Bipartisanship | 3% | 2% |
| Personal attacks | 0% | 3% |
40
statements classified
40 posts on X.
Show the data
| Part | Value |
|---|---|
| posts on X | 40 |
How to read the bars
The thick bar is Jones; the thin grey bar is the average State House Republicans. A longer thick bar means Jones does this more than peers. Rank 1 is the highest rate in the group.
Extreme labels
Jones used extreme labels in 7.5% of statements, 5.2 times the peer average. 3 statements; peers 1.4%.
- “extreme”2
- “MAGA”1
Who gets the labels
Targets named alongside an extreme label, by number of statements
No targets recorded.
What an extreme label is
Calls a politician, a party or a policy “far left”, “far right”, “MAGA”, “extreme”, “radical”, “woke”, “fascist” or “communist”. The target is who or what the label was aimed at. The lists show the five most used labels and targets; the toggle shows the rest.
Month by month
Share of statements per month, the MT 2025–26 session
Show the data
| Column | Statements | Personal attacks | Policy criticism | Policy discussion | Bipartisanship | Credit claiming | Extreme labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan ’25 | 4 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Feb ’25 | 5 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Mar ’25 | 2 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Apr ’25 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| May ’25 | 13 | 0.0% | 38.5% | 92.3% | 0.0% | 46.2% | 0.0% |
| Jun ’25 | 6 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Jul ’25 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Aug ’25 | 3 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Sep ’25 | 2 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Oct ’25 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Nov ’25 | 3 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Dec ’25 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Jan ’26 | 2 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Feb ’26 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Mar ’26 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Apr ’26 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| May ’26 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Jun ’26 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Jul ’26 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Aug ’26 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Sep ’26 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
| Oct ’26 | 0 | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) | — (fewer than 10 statements) |
How to read the strips
Each row is one kind of statement; each cell is a month, shaded against that row’s own peak (darker = closer to the peak), with the peak and the latest value written at the right. The top row counts statements. The strip covers every month of the MT 2025–26 session, the same span as the rates above, including months with no statements. A month with fewer than 10 statements is hatched, not shaded: one or two posts would swing its rate to 0% or 100%. 21 months are hatched here; 13 of them have no statements.
In Jones’s words
Real statements from the classifier’s example set, with the labels it assigned
Policy criticism
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
Nov 20, 2025 · Posts on X (state legislators) · policy criticism; policy discussion; credit claiming; Taxation; Housing and Community Development · Source
Extreme label
The text of this post is on X; follow the source link to read it.
Jun 7, 2025 · Posts on X (state legislators) · policy discussion; credit claiming; Taxation; Health; Education; Economics and Public Finance; extreme label “extreme” · Source
Examples by category
Up to five recent statements in each category
Overtly questions a named person’s character, integrity or loyalty, or calls them names. Criticising a record or a policy does not count.
No statements in this category in this window.
All 40 statements
Newest first, the MT 2025–26 session
The full feed
Five statements at a time, newest first; filters apply to the statements loaded so far. Export saves the statements that match. Sources: 40 posts on X.
Policy
Economics and Public Finance is what Jones talks about most: 44% of policy statements, 3.6 times the peer share. Peers give it 12%.
Each policy statement is tagged by the AI model with one or more of 25 policy areas from the Congressional Research Service list, so the shares say what Jones talks about. The bills Jones sponsors and cosponsors carry the same areas, so the two can be compared.
What Jones talks about
Share of policy statements by area, the MT 2025–26 session
0%49%
Jones
Peers
Economics and Public Finance15 statements
44%
12%
Taxation15 statements
44%
8%
Education8 statements
24%
15%
Health6 statements
18%
10%
Housing and Community Development4 statements
12%
3%
Show the data
| Row | Jones | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Economics and Public Finance | 44% | 12% |
| Taxation | 44% | 8% |
| Education | 24% | 15% |
| Health | 18% | 10% |
| Housing and Community Development | 12% | 3% |
How to read the bars
The thick bar is the share of Jones’s policy statements in an area; the thin grey bar is the average share for State House Republicans. A statement counts once in each of its areas, so shares can add to more than 100%. The five largest areas are shown; the toggle shows the rest.
Talks about · legislates on
Left: share of statements by policy area. Right: share of bills. Areas in order of their share of statements; both sides run from 0 to 49%. Grey ticks are the State House Republicans averages.
No sponsored or cosponsored bills with a policy area in this window.
What agreement means, and what it doesn’t
Agreement is 1 minus the distance between the two distributions (Jensen–Shannon): 1 means Jones legislates on exactly the areas Jones talks about, in the same proportions; 0 means no overlap. It does not say whether the bills match the positions in the statements, only the subjects. Bills Jones sponsored count fully, cosponsored bills a quarter. Shown with at least 20 policy statements and 5 bills.
Ideology
Jones sits at +0.12 on the CSIP scale, right of 0, more liberal than 85% of State House Republicans. Approximate range +0.10 to +0.15, which understates the uncertainty; from 239 donors and 895 roll calls.
CSIP, the lab’s Common-Space Ideal Point, places every official, federal and state, on one left–right scale, estimated from roll-call votes, who gives money to whom, and the text of statements. Negative is left of 0, positive right of it; 0 is the centre of the scale, not a definition of “moderate”.
+0.12
CSIP ideal point
Approximate range +0.10 to +0.15. From 239 donors and 895 roll calls. Run 2026-10-25T215945. Blue is left of 0, red right of 0.
The outlined dot is Jones, coloured by its side of 0 (blue left, red right, deeper further out); the bar through it is the approximate range (±1.96 standard errors), which understates the uncertainty; the grey ticks below are the medians of Jones’s groups. 0 is the centre of the scale, not “moderate” by definition.
What this means, and what it doesn’t
The score summarises how an official votes, who funds them and how they talk, relative to everyone else. It does not grade positions as good or bad, and two officials with the same score can differ on any single issue. The ± range is 1.96 standard errors, which understates the uncertainty: scores whose ranges overlap may not differ at all, and even scores whose ranges do not overlap may not differ.
Where Jones sits
Every official in each group, on the CSIP scale
State House Republicans2,917 · median +0.4
Montana House100 · median +0.1
All State House5,324 · median +0.1
Show the data
| Group | Officials | Median | Share left of Jones |
|---|---|---|---|
| State House Republicans | 2917 | +0.4 | 15% |
| Montana House | 100 | +0.1 | 49% |
| All State House | 5324 | +0.1 | 53% |
How to read the strips
Every small dot is one official on the same scale, coloured by its own score (blue left of 0, red right of 0, grey at 0, deeper further out) and spread up and down only to keep dots apart; where a group is crowded the dots overlap, and darker patches mean more officials. The large outlined dot is Jones in every row; the rule is each group’s median. The table under the figure gives the share of each group to the left of Jones.
Money
Jones reported $34.0K in the 2026 cycle, close to the State House Republicans’ median of $33.7K. State filings report no small-donation total. 62% of itemized individual money came from Montana.
Campaign money from state campaign-finance filings, as aggregates only; the lab never shows an individual donor. Campaigns must report by name every person who gives them more than $200 in a cycle (“itemized”); smaller gifts are reported only as one total (“unitemized”), so donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations describe itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift total, so these figures add up itemized contributions only.
$34.0K
itemized in the 2026 cycle
From 82 itemized donors. State House Republicans’ median $33.7K.
Where the money came from
Each square is one percent of itemized contributions in the 2026 cycle.
- Individuals (itemized)74 squares$25.1K
- PACs and other committees20 squares$6,930
- Party committees6 squares$2,000
Show the data
| Source | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Individuals (itemized) | $25.1K | 73.8% |
| PACs and other committees | $6,930 | 20.4% |
| Party committees | $2,000 | 5.9% |
What this means, and what it doesn’t
Totals say how much a campaign took in, not how it was spent, and they rise sharply when a seat is up for election; compare cycles with that in mind.
Receipts by cycle
Itemized contributions, 2020 to 2026. The grey line is the State House Republicans’ median for 2026.
Show the data
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2020 cycle | $8,412 |
| 2022 cycle | $25.1K |
| 2024 cycle | $47.8K |
| 2026 cycle | $34.0K |
Top donor states, 2026
Itemized contributions by donor state. 62% came from Montana.
- Montana$15.6K
- New York$2,473
- California$1,610
- Texas$1,125
- Oklahoma$940
Small donations
State filings report no total for small gifts.
Not reported in state filings.
Where itemized donors live
Individuals who gave more than $200, by donor state
Show the data
| State | Value |
|---|---|
| Montana | $15.6K |
| New York | $2,473 |
| California | $1,610 |
| Texas | $1,125 |
| Oklahoma | $940 |
| Colorado | $574 |
| Washington | $470 |
| West Virginia | $470 |
| District of Columbia | $470 |
| Alaska | $250 |
| Ohio | $250 |
| Illinois | $250 |
| Wisconsin | $208 |
| Utah | $200 |
| Rhode Island | $167 |
| Massachusetts | $100 |
| Maine | No data |
| Vermont | No data |
| New Hampshire | No data |
| Idaho | No data |
| North Dakota | No data |
| Minnesota | No data |
| Michigan | No data |
| Oregon | No data |
| Nevada | No data |
| Wyoming | No data |
| South Dakota | No data |
| Iowa | No data |
| Indiana | No data |
| Pennsylvania | No data |
| New Jersey | No data |
| Connecticut | No data |
| Nebraska | No data |
| Missouri | No data |
| Kentucky | No data |
| Virginia | No data |
| Maryland | No data |
| Delaware | No data |
| Arizona | No data |
| New Mexico | No data |
| Kansas | No data |
| Arkansas | No data |
| Tennessee | No data |
| North Carolina | No data |
| South Carolina | No data |
| Louisiana | No data |
| Mississippi | No data |
| Alabama | No data |
| Georgia | No data |
| Hawaii | No data |
| Florida | No data |
82
itemized donors
People who gave more than $200
62%
from Montana
Of itemized individual dollars
How to read the map
Every state the same size. Darker states gave more itemized money; hatched states had no itemized donors; the outlined state is Montana. Gifts of $200 or less carry no address and are left out.
Top donor occupations
Itemized, 2026 cycle.
- RETIRED$7,634 31 donors
- NOT EMPLOYED$3,305 8 donors
- CONSULTANT$533 3 donors
- ATTORNEY$350 3 donors
Top committees
PAC and committee contributions, 2026 cycle.
- PONDERA COUNTY REPUBLICAN CENTRAL CMTE.$2,000
- HEALTH CARE SERVICES CORPORATION EMPLOYEES' PAC$920
- MCA BACKPAC$500
- MODEPAC$470
- MONTANA CONTRACTORS ACCOCIATION PAC ACCOUNT$470
Top employers
Itemized, 2026 cycle.
No employers reported.
Aggregates only. Individual donors are never named.
Votes
Jones voted with the majority of Montana House Republicans on 71% of party-line votes and missed 1.0% of 2,755 roll calls. Montana House on average: 89% party unity, 99.2% attendance. Across all roll calls, Jones voted against the majority of Montana House Republicans 296 times.
2,755 roll calls Jones could vote on in the MT 2025–26 session, compared with Montana House. Attendance is the share with a vote recorded. Party unity counts only party-line roll calls, where most Democrats and most Republicans voted on opposite sides, and is the share of those where Jones voted with the majority of Montana House Republicans. The count of votes against that majority covers every roll call where the majority took a side.
296
votes against the majority of Montana House Republicans
Party unity 71%, Montana House average 89%, ranks 89th of 97. 2,755 roll calls in the MT 2025–26 session.
Attendance and party unity
The thick bar is Jones, the thin grey bar the Montana House average. The scale runs from 70% to 100% to show the gap.
70%100%
Jones
Peers
Rank
Attendance
98.9%
99.2%
73rd of 97
Party unity
71%
89%
89th of 97
Show the data
| Row | Jones | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance | 98.9% | 99.2% |
| Party unity | 71% | 89% |
What this means, and what it doesn’t
A missed roll call has many causes, from illness to campaigning, so attendance says how often, not why. A vote against the majority can be on procedure as well as substance, and many fall on roll calls where both parties split; the key votes below show the ones that decided something.
Key votes
Roll calls the lab flags as key
No votes in this window met the key-vote rules.
How key votes are chosen
Automatically: a final-passage or override vote where the measure became law, the margin was under 10%, at least 10% of either party voted against its majority, or the bill was among the 25 most mentioned in officials’ own statements. Up to 25 per window, most recent first; five are shown. Bars show yea on the left, nay on the right, per party.
Votes most often with
The colleagues who voted the same way as Jones most often
- Ken WalshR2,697 shared votes96%
- Valerie MooreR2,727 shared votes95%
- Eric TillemanR2,726 shared votes95%
- Dave BedeyR2,725 shared votes95%
- Brad BarkerR2,699 shared votes95%
Votes least often with
The colleagues who voted the same way as Jones least often
- Mary CaferroD2,678 shared votes64%
- Zooey ZephyrD2,675 shared votes65%
- Kelly KortumD2,727 shared votes67%
- S.J. HowellD2,726 shared votes69%
- Jane WeberD2,727 shared votes70%
How to read the agreement lists
The share of roll calls both members voted on where they voted the same way, among colleagues sharing at least 50 such votes. High agreement with members of the other party is common on routine votes.
Full voting record
MT 2025–26 session, loads in batches
Legislation
No bills for the MT 2025–26 session.No sponsored or cosponsored bills are recorded for this official in this time window.
Online
A site that has not changed in 90 days. Jones’s official site had 1 page when last crawled on Oct 1, 2026.
The lab crawls Jones’s official and campaign websites (weekly for Congress, monthly for the states) and keeps every page’s text, so changes can be read later; it also records social accounts and describes the images Jones posts with a vision model.
Websites
- 1
pages crawled
0changes in 90 days
- 12
pages crawled
7changes in 90 days
How to read the counts
“Pages crawled” is the size of the site at the last crawl; “changes in 90 days” counts pages whose text differed from the previous crawl. Sites change for many routine reasons, such as new press releases, so a high count is not by itself notable.
Social accounts
- XBlissLlew
- Facebookwww.facebook.com/llew.jones.75
- Instagramwww.instagram.com/mtllew/
- LinkedInwww.linkedin.com/in/llew-jones-45235019/
- Emailllew.jones@legmt.gov
Images Jones posted
No images from Jones’s posts have been described.
About the descriptions
Written by a vision model and may be wrong. Open the post to see the original. Five are shown; the toggle shows the rest.
State floor speeches
5 turns, Jan 7, 2025 to Apr 24, 2025
Floor speeches
Transcribed from chamber video or captions by the lab. They are not classified for kinds of statement.
Methods and sources
How this page was made. Profile built Oct 28, 2026; site last built Oct 28, 2026. Every number on the page is computed from the sources listed here, by the same rules for every official; nothing is written by hand.
The headline
The headline is the measure on which Jones is most unusual among State House Republicans, chosen by one rule for every official of every party. The candidates are the rate of each kind of statement and of extreme labels, party unity, attendance, the small-donor share, the in-state share and total receipts of the latest cycle, the share of sponsored bills that got out of committee, talk-to-bills agreement, and the CSIP score’s place within the party group.
The builder ranks every measure within the same peer group the page compares it with, and writes each official’s percentile: the share of the group below the value, ties counting half, so 0.5 is the median and a value shared by many never ranks first. A measure’s score is how far that percentile sits from the median (0 in the middle, 0.5 at either end), and the highest score leads if it is above 0.25, outside the middle half of the group. Scores within 0.03 of each other are a tie, broken in this order: votes against the party majority, kinds of statement, ideology, roll calls missed, small donations, in-state money, legislation, agreement, extreme labels, receipts.
A measure counts only with at least 200 statements, 100 roll calls or 5 sponsored bills behind it and a peer group of at least 10. Two things never lead: high party unity or attendance, where most members sit, and a high rate of a kind of statement backed by fewer than 10 statements. When nothing qualifies, the headline is a neutral fact instead: statements classified, or years in office. The wording always names the direction (“in the bottom 5% of …”, “votes against the majority of …”).
Identifiers
- Profile id
- ed3e498d-5160-4f6a-8580-ee2a4d877b5d
- Open States
- ocd-person/ed3e498d-5160-4f6a-8580-ee2a4d877b5d
Bulk files with the same data for every official:
Freshness of this profile’s data
- What politicians sayOct 27, 20261 days agoMembers of Congress: tweets since 2017; press releases, newsletters and floor speeches since 2022. State legislators: tweets since May 2024. Governors: tweets since January 2025. Labels from an LLM classifier.
- Roll calls (state)Oct 21, 20267 days agoOpen States floor roll calls, 2019 on (none for AK and MO).
- Bills (state)Oct 28, 2026todayOpen States bills and sponsors, 2019 on; stages from roll calls.
- Campaign money (state)no dateState campaign-finance agencies, 2019 on; aggregates only.
- Ideology (CSIP)Oct 25, 20263 days agoCommon-Space Ideal Points (CSIP), current validated run.
- WebsitesOct 25, 20263 days agoWeekly crawls of federal sites since April 2026; monthly state crawls since June 2026.
- State floor speechesOct 21, 20267 days agoState floor speech turns (published transcripts and captions), 2020 on; not LLM-classified.
How the measures work
- What politicians say
- Every post, press release, newsletter and congressional floor speech is read by a language model and marked for personal attacks, policy criticism, policy discussion, bipartisanship and credit claiming. A statement can be in several. Rates are shares of statements in the window. The methods paper.
- Extreme labels
- A statement has an extreme label when it calls a politician, party or policy “far left”, “far right”, “MAGA”, “extreme”, “radical”, “woke”, “fascist” or “communist”. The target is who the label is aimed at.
- Policy areas and agreement
- Statements and bills share 25 Congressional Research Service policy areas (state bills are assigned by a language model). Agreement is 1 − Jensen–Shannon distance between the two distributions, shown with at least 20 policy statements and 5 bills.
- Ideology (CSIP)
- Common-Space Ideal Points place federal and state officials on one left–right scale, estimated jointly from roll calls, campaign contributions and the text of statements, with standard errors. Only a validated run is shown. The methods paper.
- Campaign money
- Campaigns report by name only donors who give more than $200 in a cycle; smaller gifts are reported as one total. Federal totals and the small-donor share come from the FEC’s financial summaries of each campaign committee. Donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations cover itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift totals, so state figures are itemized only. The lab never publishes donor names.
- Votes and key votes
- Attendance, party unity and the count of votes against the majority of an official’s own party come from roll calls (Voteview for Congress, chamber records for the states). Key votes are final-passage or override votes that became law, were decided by under 10%, saw at least 10% of a party vote against its majority, or concerned one of the 25 bills most mentioned in officials’ statements.
- Peers and ranks
- Comparisons are with the same party, chamber and level (for example House Democrats); state legislators are compared within their state and chamber for votes. Every comparison names its group. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; tied values share the average of their ranks, and the percentile is the share of the group below the value, ties counting half.
America’s Political Pulse · Polarization Research Lab