legislators-current.yaml: Currently serving Members of Congress (as of last update).
legislators-historical.yaml: Historical Members of Congress (i.e. all Members of Congress except in the current file).
legislators-social-media.yaml: Current social media accounts for Members of Congress.

This database has been collected from a variety of sources:

GovTrack.us (http://www.govtrack.us).
The Congressional Biographical Directory (http://bioguide.congress.gov).
Congressional Committees, Historical Standing Committees data set by Garrison Nelson and Charles Stewart (http://web.mit.edu/17.251/www/data_page.html).
Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Rosenthal, Howard L., and Keith T. Poole. United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990 (http://voteview.com/dwnl.htm).
The Sunlight Labs Congress API (http://services.sunlightlabs.com/docs/Sunlight_Congress_API/).

The YAML files are currently maintained by hand.

File Structure

legislators-current.yaml and legislators-historical.yaml are YAML (http://www.yaml.org/) files containing biographical information on all Members of Congress that have ever served in Congress, that is, since 1789, as well as cross-walks into other databases.

YAML is a serialization format similar in structure to JSON but typically written with one field per line. Like JSON, it allows for nested structure. Each level of nesting is indicated by indentation or a dash.

Each legislator record is grouped into four guaranteed parts: id's which relate the record to other databases, name information (first, last, etc.), biographical information (birthday, gender), and terms served in Congress. A typical record looks something like this:

- id:
	bioguide: R000570
	thomas: '01560'
	govtrack: 400351
  name:
	first: Paul
	middle: D.
	last: Ryan
  bio:
	gender: M
  terms:
  - type: rep
	start: '2011-01-05'
	end: '2012-12-31'
	state: WI
	district: 1
	party: Republican
	url: http://www.house.gov/ryan
	address: 1233 Longworth House Office Building;  20515-4901
  - type: rep
	start: '2009-01-06'
	end: '2010-12-22'
	state: WI
	...

An optional fifth part, other_names, will list other names the legislator has gone by officially. This is helpful in cases where a Legislator's legal name has changed. These listings will only include the name attributes which differ from the current name, and a start or end date where applicable. An excerpted example:

- id:
	bioguide: B001228
	thomas: '01465'
	govtrack: 400039
	opensecrets: N00007068
	votesmart: 1434
  name:
	first: Mary
	middle: Whitaker
	last: Bono Mack
  other_names:
  - last: Bono
	end: '2007-12-17'
  ...

Where multiple names exist, other names are listed chronologically by end date.

The split between legislators-current.yaml and legislators-historical.yaml is somewhat arbitrary because these files may not be updated immediately when a legislator leaves office. If it matters to you, just load both files.

Legislators are listed in order of the start date of their earliest term.

A separate file legislators-social-media.yaml stores social media account information. Its structure is similar but includes different fields.

Data Dictionary

legislators-current.yaml and legislators-historical.yaml

id
- bioguide: The alphanumeric ID for this legislator in http://bioguide.congress.gov. Note that at one time some legislators (women who had changed their name when they got married) had two entries on the bioguide website. Only one bioguide ID is included here.
- thomas: The numeric ID for this legislator on http://thomas.gov and http://beta.congress.gov. The ID is stored as a string with leading zeros preserved.
- lis: The alphanumeric ID for this legislator found in Senate roll call votes (http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/a_three_sections_with_teasers/votes.htm).
- govtrack: The numeric ID for this legislator on GovTrack.us.
- opensecrets: The alphanumeric ID for this legislator on OpenSecrets.org.
- votesmart: The numeric ID for this legislator on VoteSmart.org.
- icpsr: The numeric ID for this legislator in Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research databases.
name
- first: The legislator's first name. Sometimes a first initial and period (e.g. in W. Todd Akin), in which case it is suggested to not use the first name for display purposes.
- middle: The legislator's middle name or middle initial (with period).
- last: The legislator's last name. Many last names include non-ASCII characters. When building search systems, it is advised to index both the raw value as well as a value with extended characters replaced with their ASCII equivalents (in Python that's: u"".join(c for c in unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', lastname) if not unicodedata.combining(c))).
- suffix: A suffix on the legislator's name, such as "Jr." or "III".
- nickname: The legislator's nick name when used as a common alternative to his first name.
bio
- birthday: The legislator's birthday, in YYYY-MM-DD format.
- gender: The legislator's gender, either "M" or "F".
- religion: The legislator's religion.
terms (one entry for each election)
- type: The type of the term. Either "sen" for senators or "rep" for representatives.
- start: The date the term began (i.e. typically a swearing in), in YYYY-MM-DD format.
- end: The date the term ended (because the Congress adjourned, the legislator died or resigned, etc.). For terms that end in the future, this value is typically a rough guess at the end date of the Congressional session (currently 2012-12-31). This is the last date on which the legislator served this term.
- state: The two-letter, uppercase USPS abbreviation for the state that the legislator is serving from. See below.
- district: For representatives, the district number they are serving from. At-large districts are district 0. In historical data, unknown district numbers are recorded as -1.
- class: For senators, their election class (1, 2, or 3). Note that this is unrelated to seniority.
- party: The political party of the legislator. If the legislator changed parties, it is typically the most recent party held during the term.
- url: The official website URL of the legislator (only valid if the term is current).
- address: The mailing address of the legislator (only valid if the term is current).

Except where noted, fields are omitted when their value is empty or unknown.

In most cases, a legislator has a single term on any given date. In some cases a legislator resigned from one chamber and was sworn in in the other chamber on the same day.

Historically, some states sending at-large representatives actually sent multiple at-large representatives. Thus, state and district may not be a unique key.

The social media file legislators-social-media.yaml stores current social media account information.

Each record has two sections: id and social. The id section identifies the legislator using biogiude, thomas, and govtrack IDs (where available). The social section has social media account identifiers:

twitter: The current official Twitter handle of the legislator.
youtube: The current official YouTube handle of the legislator.
facebook_graph: The numeric ID of the current official Facebook Page of the legislator in the Facebook Graph.

When a legislator leaves office, their social media account information is left in this file for historical preservation.

The file is in lexical order by bioguide ID for convenience. Legislators are only present when they have one or more social media accounts known. Fields are omitted when the account is unknown.

State Abbreviations

Although you can find the USPS abbreviations for the 50 states anywhere, non-voting delegates from territories --- including historical territories that no longer exist --- are included in this database. Here is a complete list of abbreviations:

The 50 States:

AK Alaska
AL Alabama
AR Arkansas
AZ Arizona
CA California
CO Colorado
CT Connecticut
DE Delaware
FL Florida
GA Georgia
HI Hawaii
IA Iowa
ID Idaho
IL Illinois
IN Indiana
KS Kansas
KY Kentucky
LA Louisiana
MA Massachusetts
MD Maryland
ME Maine
MI Michigan
MN Minnesota
MO Missouri
MS Mississippi
MT Montana
NC North Carolina
ND North Dakota
NE Nebraska
NH New Hampshire
NJ New Jersey
NM New Mexico
NV Nevada
NY New York
OH Ohio
OK Oklahoma
OR Oregon
PA Pennsylvania
RI Rhode Island
SC South Carolina
SD South Dakota
TN Tennessee
TX Texas
UT Utah
VA Virginia
VT Vermont
WA Washington
WI Wisconsin
WV West Virginia
WY Wyoming

Current Territories:

Legislators serving in the House from these territories are called delegates, except for the so-called "Resident Commissioner" from Puerto Rico.

AS American Samoa
DC District of Columbia
GU Guam
MP Northern Mariana Islands
PR Puerto Rico
VI Virgin Islands

Historical Territories:

These territories no longer exist.

DK Dakota Territory
OL Territory of Orleans
PI Philippines Territory/Commonwealth

README.md Unescape Escape

congress-legislators

File Structure

Data Dictionary

Social Media Data Dictionary

State Abbreviations

README.md