Chapter 7 Exercises

These exercises ask you to do the analytic work the chapter modeled. Most use real, publicly available data sources: GovTrack (govtrack.us), Congress.gov, OpenSecrets (opensecrets.org), and the U.S. Census Bureau (census.gov). All are free.

For each exercise, your write-up should cite the specific source and the date of access. Treat this as practice in the discipline of evidence-based political analysis.

Exercise 1 — Read your representative's voting record

The skill being practiced: finding and interpreting roll-call data.

Go to govtrack.us and find your member of the U.S. House of Representatives. (If you do not know who your representative is, you can look it up at house.gov by entering your ZIP code, or at govtrack.us by entering your address.) On your representative's GovTrack page you will see a "voting record" tab.

  1. Identify three votes from the most recent twelve months that you find substantively interesting. They can be on any topic. Note the bill name and number, the date, the chamber's overall outcome (passed/failed), and how your representative voted (yea/nay/present/not voting).
  2. For each of your three votes, write a one-paragraph explanation of why your representative likely voted as they did. Your paragraph should reference at least one of the following: the position of their party on the bill; the position of major interest groups on the bill; the likely views of their district (you can use the district's partisan lean from the Cook Partisan Voter Index as a proxy); or a stated explanation from the member themselves (look at their official statements, press releases, or floor speeches).
  3. For one of the three votes, write a paragraph applying the trustee/delegate distinction from Section 7.6. Did your representative seem to be acting more as a trustee (using independent judgment, possibly against district preferences) or as a delegate (following the apparent district preference)? On what evidence?

Submission: ~600 words. Cite GovTrack URLs.

Exercise 2 — Find the apportionment

The skill being practiced: understanding how the House map is built.

  1. From the U.S. Census Bureau's "2020 Census Apportionment Results" page (search "2020 Census apportionment"), identify how many House seats your state has in the 119th Congress.
  2. Compare to the 116th Congress (2019–21, before the 2020 reapportionment). Did your state gain a seat, lose a seat, or stay the same? Cross-reference at census.gov/data/visualizations/2020/dec/2020-apportionment-map.html.
  3. List the states that gained seats after the 2020 Census and the states that lost seats. What pattern do you observe? (Hint: the Sun Belt vs. the Northeast/Midwest.)
  4. The House has been capped at 435 members since the 1929 Reapportionment Act. As of 2026, the average House district has roughly 760,000 residents. Suppose Congress lifted the cap and let the House grow to 600 members. Write one paragraph identifying one benefit and one cost of that expansion. (You may not use the cost or benefit the chapter mentioned.)

Submission: ~400 words. Cite Census Bureau URLs.

Exercise 3 — Compare a senator's voting record across their term

The skill being practiced: detecting electoral-cycle effects in voting behavior.

Pick a U.S. senator who is up for reelection in 2026 (Class 2 senators) or who was up for reelection in 2024 (Class 3 senators). The senator can be from your state or any state. Senate.gov lists which senators are in which class.

  1. On GovTrack or Voteview (voteview.com), look up the senator's roll-call voting record. Voteview gives an "ideology score" (DW-NOMINATE first dimension) for each Congress.
  2. Compare the senator's ideology score in two periods of their service: the two-year period closest to their last reelection (the cycle in which they ran) versus the two-year period furthest from any election (the middle of their six-year term). For example: if the senator was elected in November 2020, compare 2020 and 2017–18.
  3. Note any changes in either direction. Did the senator vote more with their party (more partisan) or less with their party (more crossover) in the cycle closest to election?
  4. Write a one-paragraph interpretation. The political-science literature is mixed on whether senators "drift to the median" near election or "harden the base" near election; both behaviors have been documented. Which pattern, if either, fits your senator? What other factors might explain the change (or non-change) you observed?

Submission: ~500 words. Cite Voteview/GovTrack URLs and report the specific ideology scores.

Exercise 4 — Steel-man Senate apportionment

The skill being practiced: charitable engagement with arguments you may not share.

The chapter laid out three pillars of the case for Senate equal-state apportionment (federalism, geographic diversity, deliberation) and three pillars of the case against it (departure from majoritarian democracy, partisan asymmetry, compounding with the filibuster). Both arguments are taken seriously by political scientists.

  1. Pick the side of the argument you tend to agree with less — that is, the side that isn't your default. (If you have not formed a view, pick whichever you find harder to argue.)
  2. Write a 400–500 word essay making that side's case. Your essay should: - Use the strongest version of the argument, not the easiest-to-rebut version. - Cite at least two empirical or constitutional facts in support. - Acknowledge — but rebut — the strongest objection from the other side.
  3. Then, in a final paragraph (~150 words), describe the strongest objection to the position you just argued for. Do not rebut it; just state it as fairly as you can.

This exercise is graded primarily on charitable engagement. A weak version of the argument you sympathize with will earn fewer points than a strong version of the argument you disagree with.

Submission: ~600 words.

Exercise 5 — Democracy Audit: your representative's committee assignments and recent legislation

The skill being practiced: understanding the work a member actually does.

This is your chapter contribution to the Democracy Audit project that runs through the book. Each chapter adds a section to your portfolio.

  1. Committee assignments. On your House member's official website (find via house.gov) or their Wikipedia page, locate their committee assignments for the current Congress. Most members serve on one or two committees and possibly several subcommittees. List them.
  2. Committee analysis. For each committee your member sits on, briefly describe what the committee does. (The committee's website, accessed from house.gov, will have a jurisdiction statement.) Why might these be useful committees for your member's district? (Examples: a member from a rural district often serves on Agriculture; a member from a Defense-heavy district often serves on Armed Services; a member from a major financial center often serves on Financial Services. The committee assignments often reflect district economics.)
  3. Recent legislation. On Congress.gov or GovTrack, find the bills your member has sponsored (introduced) and the bills they have cosponsored (signed onto as a supporter) in the current Congress. List the five most recent.
  4. Pattern analysis. Looking at the bills your member has sponsored or cosponsored, what are their apparent priorities? Are the priorities aligned with the committee assignments you found in step 1? With the district's interests?

Save your write-up to your Democracy Audit portfolio. You will return to it in Chapter 8 (legislative process), Chapter 16 (budget), Chapter 22 (campaigns), Chapter 33 (interest groups), Chapter 34 (campaign finance), and elsewhere.

Submission: ~600 words. Cite house.gov, Congress.gov, and committee URLs.

Exercise 6 — Fenno paradox in your district

The skill being practiced: evaluating an empirical claim against your own evidence.

The chapter described the Fenno paradox: voters dislike Congress in the abstract and approve of their own member. Test this in your immediate environment.

  1. Ask three people you know — friends, family, classmates, neighbors — two questions: - On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate Congress as an institution? - On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the U.S. House member who represents your district?
  2. Record their answers (anonymously is fine). Note the gap between the two answers for each person.
  3. Did the pattern match the Fenno paradox? Were "own representative" ratings systematically higher than "Congress" ratings? By how much, on average?
  4. For one respondent who showed a particularly large gap, ask a follow-up question: what specifically do you like about your member that you don't like about Congress overall? Record their answer in their own words.
  5. Write a one-paragraph reflection. What did you learn? Was the paradox real in your sample? What might explain the gap?

This is a small-N exercise — three responses are not statistically significant. The point is to make the abstract pattern concrete by testing it.

Submission: ~400 words.

Exercise 7 — Map the dysfunctions

The skill being practiced: distinguishing structural from partisan-coded grievances.

Section 7.8 of the chapter cataloged six institutional dysfunctions: gridlock, the fundraising treadmill, polarization, the decline of regular order, the budget mess, and the imperial-presidency / congressional retreat dynamic. The chapter argued that some are bipartisan-structural (both parties contribute and both bear responsibility) and some are partisan-coded (each side has its preferred narrative).

  1. Make a 6-row table. Column A: the dysfunction. Column B: a one-sentence description. Column C: classify as "bipartisan-structural," "partisan-coded," or "mixed." Column D: the strongest argument from the side that is more inclined to blame the other side.
  2. For one of your six rows, find a recent (within the last 12 months) news event that illustrates the dysfunction. Brief news source citation required.
  3. In a closing paragraph (~150 words), identify the dysfunction you think is most damaging — and the dysfunction you think gets more attention than it deserves. Make the case in both directions briefly.

Submission: ~500 words plus the table.

Exercise 8 — Steel-man your member's hardest vote

The skill being practiced: charitable engagement applied to a member you may agree or disagree with.

Find the most controversial vote your House member has cast in the past two years — the vote where their constituents (or you personally) were most divided. (Examples: a vote on the most recent debt-ceiling agreement; a vote on a major appropriations package; a vote on Israel-Hamas-related funding; a vote on immigration enforcement; a vote on energy policy.)

  1. Identify the bill, the vote, and your member's position.
  2. Make the strongest possible case for their vote. Your case should reference at least one of: the bill's actual text or the major amendments at issue; their public statement explaining the vote; the empirical or moral argument that the vote's defenders make. (You may have to look outside their statement for the strongest version.)
  3. Make the strongest possible case against their vote. Same standard.
  4. In a closing paragraph, state which case you find more persuasive — and what evidence would change your mind.

The goal is not for you to come out agreeing or disagreeing. The goal is to understand a hard vote in three dimensions: what the member did, the strongest case for them, and the strongest case against.

Submission: ~600 words. Cite Congress.gov, GovTrack, and at least one news article.

Total: ~4,200 words across all eight exercises. Choose three to five per your instructor's assignment.