Database of [United States] Congressional Historical Statistics, 1789-1989

This data release is composed of tables from a database of United States Congressional statistics spanning the time period 1789 through 1989. The sources of the data were studies in the ICPSR collection and other historical texts and studies. There are eleven data files in total, including two additional tables that have been added since the first release. Some files contain records for additional Congresses. The rows in the various files describe different entities. For example, in the Votes Table file, each row contains a record of a vote by a particular member on a particular roll call vote. The Member Table file contains a record for each member of Congress, while the Serves Table file contains a record for each member for every Congress in which he or she served. See the descriptions of each file in the codebook for details about its contents. The data from the various files can be combined by matching the fields that they have in common. Cross-file searches should be conducted using the Member_ID field. However, not every file has the Member_ID field. In those cases, an alternative common field should be used.