Today, the 4th edition of the lifetime vote ratings of all members of Congress. Today, it's the conservative end of the House of Representatives. Again, my methodology: to get an idea of the ideological balance of Congress, I take the yearly vote ratings from two organzations: one liberal (Americans for Democratic Action, or the ADA) and one conservative (the American Conservative Union, or the ACU). I use these two for the sake of historical comparison: the ADA has taken vote ratings since the late 40s, and the ACU since 1971. That way, I can compare the ideology of today's members of Congress against those from past decades, all evaluated using the same rating methodology. It's also a good way to compare how a current member of Congress voted 2-3 decades ago vs. today.
I average the ratings from the ADA & ACU to come up with what I think is an appropriate average number of where a Senator or Representative is on a scale of 0-100, 0 being most conservative, 100 most liberal. These are lifetime ratings, updated with votes from 2007.
Here's where I got my figures:
ADA
ACU
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