How can I filter House roll call vote data by date, bill number, or member party in downloadable formats?
Executive summary
Congress.gov now exposes enhanced House roll call vote browsing and downloadable results for votes from the 118th Congress onward, with filters for member, party, state, and vote type and a download control atop result lists [1] [2]. For bulk historical datasets and researcher-ready exports, the Clerk’s official EVS pages provide compiled roll call lists and Voteview offers large downloadable databases [3] [4].
1. How to filter and download single-query vote lists on Congress.gov
Use Congress.gov’s global search box, change the drop‑down to “All Congresses,” enter the search token entity: vote, then open the filters at left to narrow by date range, Congress, vote type and other criteria; the interface shows “Roll Call Votes” as a selectable browse and provides a “download your search results” control at the top of the results page [1] [2]. Individual member profile pages also list “House Roll Call Votes,” let users filter that member’s votes by Congress, and include a download button to export that member’s roll call list [1]. Each individual roll‑call vote page on Congress.gov includes a Download control so researchers can pull the detailed record for that particular vote [5] [6].
2. Filtering specifically by bill number (and how Congress.gov surfaces bill context)
Congress.gov’s vote records display metadata including the vote question, vote number, Congress and date, and are linked to the bill or measure involved, so users can search by bill identifier and then limit results to matching roll calls; the site’s search and filters let researchers find votes tied to a given bill number and then download the matched vote entries [2] [7]. The enhanced roll‑call access added in 2025 makes it easier to gather all roll calls tied to bills in the 118th Congress forward via the global search + filter workflow [1].
3. Filtering by date or date range
Congress.gov results list each roll call with its date and allow filtering by Congress or session, which effectively lets users narrow to a specific date range within the available coverage [2]. For exact date-based retrievals across many years, consult the Clerk’s EVS index pages, which organize roll calls by number ranges and session years and can be navigated chronologically for authoritative compiled lists [3].
4. Filtering by member or party: per‑member pages and party filters
Congress.gov explicitly supports filtering roll calls by member and by party on the House Votes browse screen, and member profile pages expose that member’s roll call history that can be filtered by Congress and downloaded [2] [1]. For analyses that require party-coded longitudinal data (e.g., party unity measures or DW‑NOMINATE alignment), Voteview’s downloadable data contain party affiliations and ideological scores useful for party-based filtering and statistical work [4].
5. Bulk downloads and researcher datasets (Clerk, Voteview, and archival routes)
For large-scale or programmatic workflows, Voteview supplies major data dumps (including archival MongoDB dumps and researcher datasets) updated regularly and intended for analysis of roll‑call behavior and NOMINATE scores, with files intended for download by journalists and academics [4]. The Office of the Clerk’s EVS site is the official repository of House roll call compilations by Congress and session and provides the basic authoritative records and index pages that researchers use as primary source material [3]. Congress.gov’s download feature is best for targeted exports or member-specific downloads, while Voteview and Clerk pages support bulk and archival needs [1] [4] [3].
6. Caveats, completeness and tips for trustworthy filtering
Congress.gov’s “enhanced access” for House roll calls explicitly covers votes from the 118th Congress (starting January 3, 2023) to the present, so older roll call retrievals may require Clerk archives or other library guides and compiled print sources [1] [2] [8]. The Clerk’s EVS are the definitive machine‑compiled roll call lists but differ in presentation from Congress.gov’s enriched search and download interface, and Voteview’s datasets are researcher‑oriented exports that may include analytic fields (DW‑NOMINATE) not present on roll‑call pages [3] [4]. When exporting for reproducible research, document which source (Congress.gov vs. Clerk vs. Voteview), which Congresses, and which file format were used because update cadence and field sets differ across these sites [1] [4] [3].