FiveThirtyEight: “We analyzed every House floor vote from the first year of the 118th Congress (2023) and applied an algorithm to divide representatives into eight clusters based on similarities in their voting records, using eight official ideological congressional caucuses as a comparison. We then dug into what these clusters say about which issues and votes set members apart, and how these divides fell along the lines of ideology, tenure, district partisanship and more.”
“We called these clusters ‘quiet caucuses’ to reflect that they’re the unspoken voting cohorts that members align with, regardless of their declared affiliations or how they say they plan to legislate.”
“No matter how we tweaked the parameters, the algorithm produced five Republican clusters and three Democratic clusters, reflecting more division among the GOP conference than among the Democrats. And by including every floor vote in this analysis, from passage of major legislation to doomed ‘messaging’ amendments that were defeated by 60-point margins, our analysis found that some of the biggest differences among Republicans were on messaging.”
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