pyvoteview 0.3.0

PyVoteview package to process VoteView site data.

PyVoteview

PyVoteview is a Python package for programmatically accessing and analyzing U.S. Congressional voting records from Voteview. It provides a simple interface to retrieve, filter, and process roll call data for both the House and Senate across sessions and years.

Features

• Fetch voting records by Congress number or year
• Retrieve data for a range of sessions or years
• Fast, parallelized data loading using Polars and ThreadPoolExecutor

Installation

PyVoteview requires Python 3.11+ and Polars:

pip install pyvoteview

Quick Start

from pyvoteview.core import get_records_by_congress, get_records_by_year

# Get House voting records for the 117th Congress
df = get_records_by_congress(117, "House")

# Get Senate voting records for the year 2020
df = get_records_by_year(2020, "Senate")

# Get records for a range of sessions
df_range = get_records_by_congress_range(115, 117, "House")

All functions return a Polars DataFrame.

API Reference

Fetching Voting Records

Function	Description	Returns
get_records_by_congress(number: int, chamber: Literal["House", "Senate"])	Fetch roll call records for a specific Congress and chamber.	Polars DataFrame
get_records_by_congress_range(start_congress_number: int, end_congress_number: int, chamber: Literal["House", "Senate"])	Fetch records for a range of Congress sessions.	Polars DataFrame
get_records_by_year(year: int, chamber: Literal["House", "Senate"])	Fetch records for a specific year.	Polars DataFrame
get_records_by_year_range(start_year: int, end_year: int, chamber: Literal["House", "Senate"])	Fetch records across multiple years.	Polars DataFrame

Data Processing

Function	Description	Parameters
rename_columns(record: DataFrame, overwrite_cast_code: bool = True, overwrite_party_code: bool = True)	Replace numeric codes with descriptive labels for cast and party codes.	overwrite_cast_code: overwrite cast_code column if True. overwrite_party_code: overwrite party_code column if True.

Mappings

• CAST_CODES_MAP: Maps integer roll call codes to human-readable descriptions (see Voteview enumeration).
• PARTY_CODES_MAP: Maps integer party codes to party names (see Voteview enumeration).

License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.