Legislators

Data on members of Congress, dating back to 1789. All member information is sourced from the bulk data at github.com/unitedstates. Feel free to open a ticket with any bugs or suggestions.

Unique ID: the bioguide_id will be present and unique for all members of Congress. It is an official ID, assigned by Congress, and is the most suitable for use as a unique ID.

Methods

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

https://congress.api.sunlightfoundation.com

/legislators/locate

Find members of Congress by a latitude and longitude, or a zip code.

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

There is no support for further operators, ordering, or partial responses. All you can do is filter by location.

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

By latitude/longitude

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

This will return both representatives and senators that currently represent the given point or zip. For a given latitude and longitude, this should return up to 1 representative and 2 senators.

By zip code

/legislators/locate?zip=11216

A zip code may intersect multiple Congressional districts, so locating by zip may return multiple representatives, and possibly more than 2 senators if the zip code crosses state borders.

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.

/legislators

Search and filter for members of Congress. All standard operators apply.

By default, all requests will return currently serving members, but you can override this by supplying all_legislators=true.

Filtering on fields

/legislators?party=D&chamber=senate

Filter by any fields below that have a star next to them. All standard operators apply.

Locating a particular member, whether in office or not

/legislators?bioguide_id=F000444&all_legislators=true

Searching by a string

/legislators?query=mcconnell

This will search legislators’ name fields: first_name, last_name, middle_name, nickname, other_names.last

Disabling pagination

You can turn off pagination for requests to /legislators, but doing so will force a filter of in_office=true (that cannot be overridden).

/legislators?per_page=all

Fields

* = can be used as a filter

{
  "in_office": true,
  "party": "D",
  "gender": "M",
  "state": "OH",
  "state_name": "Ohio",
  "district": null,
  "title": "Sen",
  "chamber": "senate",
  "senate_class": 1,
  "state_rank": "senior",
  "birthday": "1946-12-24",
  "term_start": "2007-01-04",
  "term_end": "2012-12-31"
}

* in_office
Whether a legislator is currently holding elected office in Congress.

* party
First letter of the party this member belongs to. “R”, “D”, or “I”.

* gender
First letter of this member’s gender. “M” or “F”.

* state
Two-letter code of the state this member represents.

* state_name
The full state name of the state this member represents.

* district
(House only) The number of the district that a House member represents.

* state_rank
(Senate only) The seniority of that Senator for that state. “junior” or “senior”.

* title
Title of this member. “Sen”, “Rep”, “Del”, or “Com”.

* chamber
Chamber the member is in. “senate” or “house”.

* senate_class
Which senate “class” the member belongs to (1, 2, or 3). Every 2 years, a separate one third of the Senate is elected to a 6-year term. Senators of the same class face election in the same year. Blank for members of the House.

* birthday
The date of this legislator’s birthday.

* term_start
The date a member’s current term started.

* term_end
The date a member’s current term will end.

Identifiers

{
  "bioguide_id": "B000944",
  "ocd_id": "ocd-division/country:us/state:oh",
  "thomas_id": "136",
  "govtrack_id": "400050",
  "votesmart_id": "27018",
  "crp_id": "N00003535",
  "lis_id": "S307",
  "icpsr_id": 14263,
  "fec_ids": [
    "H2OH13033"
  ]
}

* bioguide_id
Identifier for this member in various Congressional sources. Originally taken from the Congressional Biographical Directory, but used in many places. If you’re going to pick one ID as a Congressperson’s unique ID, use this.

* ocd_id
Identifier for this member across all countries and levels of government, as defined by the Open Civic Data project.

* thomas_id
Identifier for this member as it appears on THOMAS.gov and Congress.gov.

* lis_id
Identifier for this member as it appears on some of Congress’ data systems (namely Senate votes).

* govtrack_id
Identifier for this member as it appears on GovTrack.us.

* votesmart_id
Identifier for this member as it appears on Project Vote Smart.

* crp_id
Identifier for this member as it appears on CRP’s OpenSecrets.

* icpsr_id
Identifier for this member as it is maintained by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

* fec_ids
A list of identifiers for this member as they appear in filings at the Federal Election Commission.

Names

{
  "first_name": "Jefferson",
  "nickname": "Jeff",
  "last_name": "Brown",
  "middle_name": "B.",
  "name_suffix": null
}

* first_name
The member’s first name. This may or may not be the name they are usually called.

* nickname
The member’s nickname. If present, usually safe to assume this is the name they go by.

* last_name
The member’s last name.

* middle_name
The member’s middle name, if they have one.

* name_suffix
A name suffix, if the member uses one. For example, “Jr.” or “III”.

* aliases
An array of common names combinations for a Congressperson if a combination does not exist, the result will be null and the index will be consistent. 

[
  first_name last_name,
  title. first_name last_name,
  first_name middle last_name,
  first_name last_name suffix,
  nickname last_name,
  title. nick_name last_name,
]

Contact info

{
  "phone": "202-224-2315",
  "website": "http://brown.senate.gov/",
  "office": "713 Hart Senate Office Building",
  "contact_form": "http://www.brown.senate.gov/contact/",
  "fax": "202-228-6321"
}

phone
Phone number of the member’s DC office.

fax
Fax number of the member’s DC office.

office
Office number for the member’s DC office.

website
Official legislative website.

contact_form
URL to their official contact form.

Social Media

Social media accounts for members of Congress.

* twitter_id
This is the offical government account of a member of Congress. This data comes from the @unitedstates project.

* campaign_twitter_ids
This is an array of twitter accounts of a congressperson’s campaign. This comes from Sunlight’s Politwoops project. If you think you have uncovered a new account, email us at twoops@sunlightfoundation.com.

{
  "twitter_id": "SenSherrodBrown",
  "campaign_twitter_ids": ["SherrodBrown",]
  "youtube_id": "SherrodBrownOhio",
  "facebook_id": "109453899081640"
}

Most social media account data is sourced from the unitedstates/congress-legislators project on GitHub. If you spot any missing or incorrect accounts, please file a ticket or open a pull request!

twitter_id
The Twitter username for a member’s official legislative account. This field does not contain the handles of campaign accounts.

youtube_id
The YouTube username or channel for a member’s official legislative account. This field does not contain the handles of campaign accounts. A few legislators use YouTube “channels” instead of regular accounts. These channels will be of the form channel/[id].

facebook_id
The Facebook username or ID for a member’s official legislative Facebook presence. ID numbers and usernames can be used interchangeably in Facebook’s URLs and APIs. The referenced account may be either a Facebook page or a user account.

All social media account values can be turned into URLs by preceding them with the domain name of the service in question:

Terms

An array of information for each term the member has served, from oldest to newest. Example:

{
  "terms": [{
    "start": "2013-01-03",
    "end": "2019-01-03",
    "state": "NJ",
    "party": "D",
    "class": 1,
    "title": "Sen",
    "chamber": "senate"
  }]
}

terms.start
The date this term began.

terms.end
The date this term ended, or will end.

terms.state
The two-letter state code this member was serving during this term.

terms.party
The party this member belonged to during this term.

terms.title
The title this member had during this term. “Rep”, “Sen”, “Del”, or “Com”.

terms.chamber
The chamber this member served in during this term. “house” or “senate”.

terms.class
The Senate class this member belonged to during this term, if they served in the Senate. Determines in which cycle they run for re-election. 1, 2, or 3.