Help: Interest Group Ratings

Interest groups are a valuable source of data on congressional voting behavior. The number of groups that rate members has varied over time. The ratings prepared by these groups reflect the percentage of votes on which the individual member of Congress voted in accordance with the group's position on a selected set of issues of particular concern to the group. Analysis of these ratings offers considerable insight into the philosophical inclinations and legislative sympathies of individual members of Congress and of Congress as an institution.

CQ Congress Collection includes data from a number of interest groups, ranging from "liberal" to "conservative," and spanning a variety of issue areas: civil rights, conservation, consumerism, education, national defense, and taxation, to name a few.

How to Use the Search Page

The Interest Group Ratings link on the left navigation bar takes users to a search screen where they may select the member or members to analyze. Users may also limit their analysis to specific interest groups.

Selecting an Individual Member

To view the interest group ratings of an individual member of Congress, select the first letter of the member's name from the "Member 1" drop-down menu. After the page refreshes, select the specific member from the drop-down menu immediately to the right. Clicking on "Compare Members" now will return the rating of every interest group for every year for the selected member.

Optionally, you may use the "Date Range" and "Interest Group" drop-down menus to limit your search to a specific interest group, a specific year, or a specific range of years. For example, you may be interested only in the member's rating by the National Taxpayers Union, or only in the member's rating by the National Taxpayers Union for the year 1998.

Selecting Two Members to Compare

To compare the interest group ratings of two members, follow the directions above, but select a second member in the "Member 2" drop-down menus of the search page form.

Selecting Members Based on Demographics

Rather than select an individual member of Congress, or a pair of members to compare, you may want to view the interest group ratings of all members who fit a particular demographic or political profile. You must first select an interest group from the "Group" drop-down menu. You may now click "Find Ratings" to return the selected group's rating for every member in every year for which data are available.

Optionally, you may limit your search by the members' rating (for example, an "approval" rating of 51-75%), self-announced religion, state, sex, or party before clicking the "Find Ratings" button. Doing so will focus your results and speed the processing of your database query.

For example, it would be possible to request the American Conservative Union (ACU) rating for the year 1997 for all members who met the following criteria:

Execute the Search

Once all selections are made, click the "Find Ratings" button to execute their search.

Search Results

The results of your search for interest group ratings can be sorted by year or by member. The members' names are links to further information on the member, including a biography, demographic characteristics, and political and electoral history. Also included is a link to the member's record on CQ Key Votes.

The names of interest groups are represented by acronyms. To view the interest group's name, position your cursor over the acronym. Clicking on the acronym will link to a description of the group and an explanation of the their rating method.