Charted: What the 2020 Democratic candidates did in Congress

[ehrnst]

(from March 2019, but still a useful guide for those who are curious about how the remaining candidates compare)

Quartz charted data from GovTrack—a site that tracks legislation and voting records and writes a “report card” for each candidate—to get a sense of how productive and involved they had been in Congress. (GovTrack says it “receives no funding in any form from outside organizations,” and has no political affiliations.)




Ranking the candidates by enacted legislation isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison—some candidates have been in Congress much longer than others. Kamala Harris first joined Congress as a senator in 2017, for example, while Sanders has been in Congress since 1991 (first as a House member and, since 2008, as a senator).



Sanders has the worst track record among candidates for “missed votes,” at 6.4% of all votes from January 2007 to February 2019, well above the Senate lifetime median of 1.3%. That appears to be due mostly to a jump in missed votes when he was campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president in late 2015 and 2016.



This is more of an apple-to-apples comparison than lifetime-enacted bills, in that it looks just at performance in one legislative session, the 115th Congress (which met from Jan. 3, 2017 to Jan. 3, 2019). GovTrack considers co-sponsorship important because it “shows a willingness to work with others to advance policy goals.”



This category only counts bills that a member introduced and that became a law during the 115th Congress. Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate during that session, making it more difficult for Democrats to get bills introduced and passed.

https://qz.com/1560188/what-the-2020-democratic-candidates-did-in-congress/

[33taw]

1. It would be interesting to see what the legislation is and what was missed.

[DesertRat]

2. Thanks for posting. k&r

[2naSalit]

3. I'm seeing a trend...

the women are more productive, show up and don't miss many votes.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

6. and they work with others.

[2naSalit]

7. Yes!

They seem to be more practical and realistic in my view.

[George II]

4. Sanders also missed every vote from late June 2019 through early January 2020.....

More than 290 consecutive votes.

[blm]

5. That first chart isn't a fair comparison. Klobuchar and Sanders were elected in 2006.

They were the majority party their first 4yrs in office.

Warren was building the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for 2yrs before Obama and Reid asked her to run against Scott Brown in 2012. The GOP has been in the majority her entire time in the senate.