Important Congressional Votes, 1991-2020

This data set is designed to facilitate analysis of voting patterns in the U.S. Congress on important issues, with a focus on the alignments of Democrats and Republicans. Unlike most other data sets, the data set only includes votes on important legislation, facilitating the analysis of voting patterns on legislation with significant ramifications. At the same time, the data set includes both roll call votes and voice votes, enabling researchers to generate more accurate conclusions about the actual prevalence of polarization and bipartisanship in Congress. The data set also includes several measures designed to capture different dimensions of polarization and bipartisanship, enabling the examination of patterns related to inter-party, intra-party, and intra-branch agreement and disagreement. Finally, the data set includes variables representing the policy area covered by legislation, facilitating analysis of how political alignments vary across policy areas, particularly between foreign and domestic policy and among different areas of foreign policy.