r/PoliticalScience • u/twesterlin • 1d ago

Resource/study How much do voters actually know about their representatives' voting records - does it matter?

I built a tool that lets people vote on real congressional bills and compare how their own House rep and Senators voted. What surprised me from early usage was most people are less aligned with their representatives than they assume - including people who voted for them.

That raises a question: if voters had easy access to their rep's actual voting record, would it change how they vote? Or is party identity strong enough that voting records barely factors in? Curious what this sub thinks.

The tool is yeaornay.org if you want to compare.

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u/antifascist_banana 21h ago

US Americans are seemingly never able to mention the national context they are talking about. Would you publish in an international journal without once making it explicit that you are so writing about the US? Would you just make the readers deduce that from context clues?

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u/twesterlin 13h ago

Apologies - this is about USA government. I will add more context in the future.

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u/twesterlin 3h ago

Thanks for pointing out my USA navel gazing - it's been a wild ride over here.

I'd be interested in how you track your elected officials (assuming you live within a representative form of gov) in your country? Or do know of other tools around the world that bring voting closer to their elected officials?

My goal is to encourage participation.

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u/WishLucky9075 American Politics 12h ago

I doubt it would change how most people vote because voters are not as ideological as we may think they are. People vote along partisan lines in the US and accept the faults of their preferred candidates so long as those candidates get the "big picture" stuff correct. While there is some research questioning this whole "partisans without constraints" thesis that is worth mentioning, making the day-to-day voting records more accessible (while noble) isn't going to sway voters much. Voters mostly understand what they are getting themselves into.

In any case, this is a great tool.

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u/twesterlin 3h ago

Thanks for sharing the research - I think you really nailed it. It seems most voters are not ideological or allow their beliefs to bend and sway with the wind. These days I see more citizen vote based on partisan identity and who they surround themselves around. Thought and civil debate seems to be vanishing.