The 8 types of Democrats and Republicans in the House
We analyzed voting patterns to see if members actually vote with their caucuses.
A new 538 analysis of voting data reveals that while many members' formal caucus affiliations matched up pretty well with their voting behaviors, some did not. We analyzed every House floor vote from the first year of the 118th Congress (2023) and applied an algorithm to divide representatives into eight clusters based on similarities in their voting records, using eight official ideological congressional caucuses as a comparison. We then dug into what these clusters say about which issues and votes set members apart, and how these divides fell along the lines of ideology, tenure, district partisanship and more. Check out our new interactive to read more about these "quiet caucuses" and explore how representatives' words and voting records don't always align in the ways you might expect.