Related Resources

Direct to Capitol Hill (More or Less)

  • The House of Representatives and the Senate have their own Web pages. Lots of stuff here.
  • The Library of Congress is another great site. Of particular interest is the link of legislative sites.
  • CapWeb is a site created by a cadre of congressional staffers to work around the frustration of using the SLOOOOOOW congressional and Library of Congress sites. (The official congressional sites are much better now.)
  • The House Rules Committee hosts an indispensable site that gathers together the Congressional Research service reports on the legislative process. This is the collection of information about the nuts and bolts of legislation.
  • Digitized fascimiles of early congressional documents. Totally cool! You can also search the House and Senate Journals up to the 42nd Congress (up to 1873), in addition to other documents.
  • C-SPAN to see live television from the floor of the House and Senate.
  • Roll Call is the "home town newspaper" of Capitol Hill. Information ranging from straight news to hometown gossip. The Hill is an upstart competitor that's a little edgier.
  • The Dirksen Center has created a site called CongressLink, which contains a mixture of good congressional links and academic exercises.
  • A research project at UNC-Chapel Hill is trying to develop a user-friendly filter for searching the Congressional Record.

Campaign Finance

Data and Publications About Congressional Action

  • The Washington Post has a very good page that points to U.S. Government information sites, including Congress.
  • The Dirksen Center honors the memory of Sen. Everett M. Dirksen. It has grants and educational programs that are of some interest to the professional and student, alike. Their CongressLink page has a lot of resources that are helpful to teachers and students of Congress.
  • Congressional Observer Publications has a bunch of information (including roll call votes) about Congress. This is a commercial site, but it looks good.
  • Congressional Information Service indexes and offers access to most congressional documents. Available to MIT users only.
  • Keith Poole at the University of Houston has the most interesting and useful roll call information up and running for recent years. (I hope Keith doesn't mind putting his home page on mine...). (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)
  • David Lublin, at American University, has posted his congressional district data.
  • While it's not data - it's software - the PoliSim election simulator provides a pretty neat visualization of how spatial models of electoral competition work. (The page is now abot 5 years old. Please take the fellow up on his challenge to update it.)
  • The Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association has its own home page, including the electronic version of its newsletter and other legislative links.

Elections and Politics

  • Pollingreport.com has the most comprehensive set of reports about recent public opinion polls.

Direct to Boot Hill