The Statecraft Blueprint

Congress Has Stopped Deliberating

Percentage of all House votes on which the parties did not split — where a majority of Democrats and a majority of Republicans landed on the same side, 1969–2025. In 1970, 73% of votes were bipartisan. In 2025, 15% were — the lowest ever recorded.

What counts as bipartisan here. This is the exact complement of CQ Roll Call's party-unity measure: a vote is counted bipartisan when a majority of Democrats and a majority of Republicans landed on the same side. That includes unanimous and routine procedural votes, so a high bipartisan share is not by itself evidence of debate. What the collapse shows is narrower and harder to explain away — the set of questions on which the two parties can end up together at all has shrunk to about one vote in seven.
Bipartisan votes (annual)
10-yr average
73%
of House votes were
bipartisan in 1970
15%
of all votes in 2025 —
lowest ever recorded
28%
avg. rate members broke
with their party, 1970
6%
avg. rate members broke
with their party, 2025

Sources: Brookings Institution, Vital Statistics on Congress, Ch. 8, Tables 8-3 & 8-4 (1969–2022); CQ Roll Call Annual Vote Studies (2023–2025). Plotted as 100 minus the party-unity-vote share: a party-unity vote is one where a majority of Democrats opposed a majority of Republicans, so the remainder is every vote where the two majorities agreed. No House party-unity-votes figure is available for 2023 (shown as a break in the annual line, bridged by the moving average). Full data and methodology: sources.md  |  Raw data: data.csv