By Karl Kurtz
Anyone who has ever done comparative research on American legislatures, especially the Congress, has relied on the "Vital Statistics on Congress" published every two years by Thomas E. Mann of the Brooking Institution, Norman Ornstein of AEI and Michael Malbin of the Campaign Finance Institute. That trio, along with Andrew Rugg, have now released a free, online version of this invaluable volume on the Brookings website. Here's an excerpt from their announcement, followed by a short video with highlights of this edition:
Vital Statistics’ purpose has always been to collect useful data on our first branch of government – in the election and composition of its membership as well as its formal procedure, such as the use of the filibuster, informal norms, party structure and staff. This dataset also documents the increasing polarization of Congress and the demographics of those who serve in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.
Over the years, we’ve received innumerable requests for updated versions of the chapters in between printings of the published book. We heard you and have now changed the way we present Vital Statistics’ data: We’ve put the book online, making each chapter available online as a collection of spreadsheets for download at no cost. This new interactive format allows us to update and correct the data more frequently and make it accessible to anyone interested in learning about Congress. We’ve formatted the tables so that each is both printer-friendly and read-writable.
This is a great contribution to legislative studies. Thanks, Tom, Norm and Mike!
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