In the House, It's Unanimous

Amid the current partisan rancor in the House of Representatives there is also an unusual level of agreement. Of the first 244 votes in the House this year, 65 have been unanimously approved -- more than one in every four votes. So far, that's a far higher rate than in any of the previous Congresses dating back to 1991. The 108th Congress saw 241 unanimous House votes, or about 20 percent. That dipped to about 15 percent in the 109th that ended last year. Over in the Senate, one in every five votes this session have been unanimous, but that's off the pace set by the Senate in the 107th Congress, when the "world's greatest deliberative body" all agreed on 21.2% of votes.

It didn't use to be this way: between the 102nd and the 106th Congress (1991-2000) when the percentage of unanimous votes was usually in the single digits for both chambers. Are members of Congress agreeing more often or are they just voting on what they can agree on?

Explore votes with wide margins in the House and Senate using our Congress Votes Database.