Help: Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis

Congressional Quarterly Inc. (CQ) each year selects a series of key votes in each chamber of the U.S. Congress on major issues. Bringing its unique editorial judgment to bear, CQ evaluates an issue by the extent it represents one or more of the following:

For each series of related votes on an issue, only one vote is usually identified as being key. This vote is the floor vote in the House or Senate that in the opinion of CQ was the most important in determining the outcome. Typically, CQ selects about sixteen key House votes and sixteen key Senate votes per year, though the numbers vary from year to year.

Behind CQ Congress Collection is a database that stores the voting record of each CQ Key Vote. The database allows users to perform statistical searching on floor votes and members. The database also provides information on various voting patterns, for example, how a state delegation voted on a particular issue.

CQ Congress Collection database contains information on all CQ Key Votes for 1981 to the present.

Selecting a Key Vote

In the CQ Congress Collection, advanced analysis is always performed on one CQ Key Vote at a time. The first step in analysis, therefore, is selecting a vote to analyze.

You may browse or search through the CQ Key Votes in a number of ways. From any page within the CQ Congress Collection, you may click on the Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis link on the left navigation bar, which takes you to the Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis search page. From the CQ Congress Collection home page, you have these additional options under the Floor Votes heading:

The browse function defaults to only CQ Key Votes. To view all floor votes, select "Show All Floor Votes" option located in the browse screen. To toggle back to only CQ Key Votes, click on the "Show Only CQ Key Votes" option in the browse screen. As you navigate through various browse topics, your display mode will continue unless you toggle back to the previous mode.

Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis: The Search Page

The Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis search page can be accessed from the left navigation bar at any time by clicking on Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis. The search screen allows you to select the vote on which to perform analysis.

On the Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis search page, you first select a Congress from the "Congress" drop-down menu. After the page refreshes, select a vote from the "CQ Key Vote" drop-down menu. (Analysis is always performed on one vote at a time.)

Now that you have selected the vote to analyze, you may

The demographic drop-down menus allow you to select members of Congress based on their

• party affiliation
• type of vote cast on the CQ Key Vote under analysis (yea, nay, or either)
• state
• year of birth
• self-announced religion
• previous occupation
• sex
• military service

It would be possible, for example, to see how the female members of Congress voted on the CQ Key Vote that you had selected for analysis. Or you could see how male members with prior military service voted on it. Or you could search on members from the state of New York who professed a Methodist faith and voted "yea" on the selected measure. Of course, if you are interested in how a particular member, or two particular members, voted, you could select those individuals from the drop-down list and leave all of the demographic search parameters set to their default values.

Advanced Floor Vote Analysis

If you want to perform this analysis on a vote that is not a CQ Key Vote, you must first search for that vote, open the vote from the search results, and choose to "Analyze this Vote" from the vote page.

Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis: The Floor Vote Results Page

The results page for a CQ Key Vote search reiterates the title of the vote on which you were searching and restates the search parameters—if any—that you entered on the search page.

The results page will display one line for each member of Congress who met your search criteria. For example, if you were searching for two specific members, they will be on separate lines, and you will see their name, vote (yea, nay, or other) on the selected CQ Key Vote, party affiliation, and state. If you were searching not for two specific members but for all male Democrats, the search would return one line for each male Democrat who voted on the selected CQ Key Vote.

The results can be sorted by member's last name, vote, party, or state. Each member's name is a link to that person's biography and Member Box Score.

Across the top of the search results page are a number of useful links:

• Save to Favorite List: Each line of the search results page is preceded by a check box. Any boxes that are checked when the "Save to Favorite List" is clicked will send those checked documents to your list of favorite documents. If you are logged in with a personalized "Your Profile" account, your list of favorite documents will be available to you on your next visit to CQ Congress Collection.
• Modify Search: This link will return you to the Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis search page, with all of your earlier selections intact. This feature allows you to run a new search without entering all of your selections a second time.
• New Search: Returns you to the Advanced CQ Key Vote Analysis search page, but with all of your earlier selections reset to the CQ Congress Collection defaults.