Congressional Similarity Visualizer

This applet provides a visualization and interface that are designed to facilitate seeing the similarities between legislators.

Dots' colors represent how much a legislator represents an ideal voter from each party. Legislators that vote similarly to one another are grouped together.

• Click on a dot to highlight the legislator it represents
• Click on it again to recreate the graph from that legislator's perspective
• While you have a legislator highlighted, right-click on another dot to launch a vote-by-vote comparison of the two legislators
• To switch between the House and Senate, click on the icon in the upper right-hand corner

For a more thorough discussion of what you're looking at and how to use it, please read the explanation.

The applet includes a complicated physical simulation. Please make sure you've got the latest version of Java installed and that you're using a relatively fast computer. The applet is about 2 megs, so please be patient as it loads.

click here to launch the applet