---
license: mit
task_categories:
  - tabular-classification
language:
  - en
tags:
  - congress
  - legislators
  - politics
  - usa
size_categories:
  - 1K<n<10K
---

# Paper Trail Data

Processed congressional data for the Paper Trail API. Derived from the [Dustinhax/tyt](https://huggingface.co/datasets/Dustinhax/tyt) dataset.

## Files

### distinct_legislators.parquet

Deduplicated list of US legislators from 1979 (96th Congress) to present.

| Column | Type | Description |
|--------|------|-------------|
| bioguide_id | string | Primary key (unique per legislator) |
| bioname | string | Full name (LAST, First format) |
| state_abbrev | string | Most recent state represented |
| party_code | float64 | Most recent party (100=Dem, 200=Rep, 328=Ind) |
| congresses_served | list[int16] | Array of all congress numbers served |
| first_congress | int16 | Earliest congress (for range queries) |
| last_congress | int16 | Latest congress (for range queries) |
| nominate_dim1 | float64 | Economic ideology score (-1 to +1) |
| nominate_dim2 | float64 | Social issues score (-1 to +1) |

**Stats:**
- 2,303 legislators
- Congress 96-119 (1979-2026)
- ~53 KB (ZSTD compressed)

**Source:** Voteview HSall_members, aggregated by bioguide_id

## Data Sources

All data derived from:
- **Voteview** (Lewis, Poole, Rosenthal, Boche, Rudkin, Sonnet) - https://voteview.com/
- **Congress Legislators** (@unitedstates) - https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators

## License

MIT (processing code) / Public domain (source data)