Districts

Find a congressional district for a given coordinate, or for a zip code. Congressional districts are calculated based on data from the 2010 Census.

For zip code lookup, we use ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs), also published by the Census.

Methods

All requests require a valid API key, and use the domain:

https://congress.api.sunlightfoundation.com

/districts/locate

Find congressional districts by a latitude and longitude, or a zip code. There is no support for pagination, operators, ordering, or partial responses.

Please use encryption (https://) for all requests to /legislators/locate.

At-large districts, which encompass an entire state, are assigned a district number of 0.

By latitude/longitude

/districts/locate?latitude=42.96&longitude=-108.09

For a given latitude and longitude, this should return 1 congressional district.

By zip code

/districts/locate?zip=11216

A zip code may intersect multiple Congressional districts, so it is not as precise as using a latitude and longitude.

In general, we recommend against using zip codes to look up members of Congress. For one, it’s imprecise: a zip code can intersect multiple congressional districts. More importantly, zip codes are not shapes. They are lines (delivery routes), and treating them as shapes leads to inaccuracies.

Fields

{
  "state": "NY",
  "district": 8
}

state
The two-letter state code of the state this district is in.

district
The number of the congressional district. For “At Large” districts, where a state has only one representative, the district number is 0.