Glossary

Passage vote

The final yes/no on the bill itself. A “yes” advances the bill to the other chamber, or to the President if it's already cleared both. Passage votes are what we use to compute alignment scores — procedural and amendment votes are excluded because they don't directly decide whether a bill becomes law.

Cloture

A Senate-only vote to end debate and force a final vote. Requires 60 senators to agree. About process, not the bill's merits — but in a polarized Senate cloture is often where the real fight happens, because failing cloture means the bill never gets a passage vote at all. A senator who votes “yes” on cloture and “no” on passage is signaling “let the chamber decide” without endorsing the bill itself.

Procedural vote

A vote on how the chamber operates rather than on the bill's content — motions to proceed, motions to table, suspending the rules, ending debate on a non-cloture matter. Procedural votes matter for floor strategy and which bills get heard, but they don't themselves decide a bill's fate.

Amendment vote

A vote on a proposed change to the bill's text, usually before the final passage vote. A bill can pass with the amendment included, without it, or fail entirely. Bills often look meaningfully different by the time amendment votes are done — which is why tracking amendments matters for understanding what a member actually voted for or against.

Motion to proceed

A Senate motion to begin consideration of a specific bill on the floor. It's the first step before any substantive votes — and because cloture can be invoked on the motion to proceed itself, contested bills sometimes face two cloture cycles (one to start debate, one to end it).

Roll call

A vote where each member's yes/no is individually recorded. We only display roll-call votes — voice votes and unanimous consent votes don't produce a per-member record we can score. Roll-call numbers (“Cloture #74”, “Passage #87”) come from the Senate and House Clerk and reset each year of each Congress.

Yea / Nay

Formal Congressional terms for “yes” (yea) and “no” (nay). We display them as “Yea”/ “Nay” on vote chips because that's how the official record reads, but they mean the same as yes/no.

Present

A member voted but explicitly chose neither yea nor nay. Counts toward quorum but not toward the outcome. Often used by members who have a conflict of interest, were pressured against voting yea or nay, or who want to register that they showed up without taking a side.

Not voting

Member was absent or otherwise didn't cast a vote. Doesn't count toward the outcome. Excluded from alignment scoring — we can't say a missed vote agreed or disagreed with you.

Cosponsor

A member who formally signs onto a bill alongside its primary sponsor. Cosponsorship signals support before any vote is taken, and bills with broad bipartisan cosponsor lists generally have a clearer path to passage. The first member listed is the “sponsor”; everyone else is a “cosponsor.”

Conference report

When the House and Senate pass different versions of the same bill, a conference committee reconciles them and produces a single text. The conference report goes back to both chambers for a final up-or-down vote — no more amendments, no more changes.

Senate classes (Class 1, 2, 3)

Senators serve six-year terms, staggered into three groups so the whole chamber is never up at once. One class faces election every two years: Class 2 in 2026, Class 3 in 2028, Class 1 in 2030. When a page says “Class 2 on the ballot,” it means only senators in that group — roughly a third of the Senate — are up this cycle.

Vulnerability score (composite)

Our 0–100 estimate of how contested an incumbent's seat looks, recomputed daily. It combines four public signals: how much their challengers have raised, how consistently their statements match their votes, late STOCK Act disclosures, and recent news pressure. “Composite” just means several signals rolled into one number — higher is more at risk. It is not a prediction of who wins.

Primary types (closed, open, top-two…)

Which voters can pull which ballot depends on state law. Closed: only registered party members. Open: any voter may choose one party's ballot. Semi-closed: party members plus unaffiliated voters. Top-two / jungle: all candidates from all parties share one ballot and the top finishers advance to the general regardless of party. A few states layer ranked-choice voting (RCV) on top, where voters rank candidates instead of picking one.

CRS summary

The Congressional Research Service is Congress's nonpartisan in-house research agency. It writes plain-language summaries of bills as they move; when one exists we show it as the neutral baseline. Bills without a CRS summary yet may show an AI-generated summary instead, always labeled as such.

Independent expenditure (Schedule E)

Money spent to support or oppose a candidate by a group that is legally barred from coordinating with any campaign — most often a super PAC. These outlays are reported to the FEC on Schedule E, which is where our race-level outside-money figures come from. They don't appear in a campaign's own fundraising totals.

PAC

A political action committee pools contributions to spend on elections. Traditional PACs give directly to campaigns under strict contribution limits; super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts but only independently of campaigns (see independent expenditure). Our PAC boards aggregate FEC-reported giving across races.

Missing a term you'd like to see explained? Email hello@deepsyte.app — we add definitions as the product surfaces new vocabulary, so user nudges shape this page.