How the Connecticut scores work

The vote records

• We use every House and Senate floor roll call of the 2025–2026 General Assembly, 1,292 roll calls (704 in the House, 588 in the Senate), Jan. 8, 2025 to May 6, 2026. The members elected in November 2024 took office on January 8, 2025, and serve until the next General Assembly convenes on January 6, 2027. The General Assembly has met in three sessions:
  • 2025 Regular Session: 381 House and 314 Senate roll calls, Jan. 8, 2025 to June 4, 2025.
  • November 2025 Special Session: 7 House and 15 Senate roll calls, Nov. 12, 2025 to Nov. 13, 2025.
  • 2026 Regular Session: 316 House and 259 Senate roll calls, Feb. 4, 2026 to May 6, 2026.
  The veto sessions of July 21, 2025 and June 15, 2026 met and adjourned without a vote.
• Every roll call comes from its chamber's Journal, the written record of its proceedings, one PDF per day on the General Assembly's site. A Journal prints each roll call where it was taken: the time, the counts (“Total Number Voting”, “Those voting Yea”, “Those voting Nay”, “Those absent and not voting”), the result in a sentence (“On a roll call vote House Bill No. 7181 as amended by House Amendment Schedule "A" was passed.”) and the roll: the House's every seat by surname, the Senate's every seat by district and name, each with its mark (Y, N, or absent and not voting); an empty seat is printed as such.
• A roll call is used only if its marks add up to the counts printed with it, it accounts for every seat once, and every name is one member serving in that chamber that day. All 1,292 did.
• A second record of the same votes: the House Clerk and the Senate Clerk post a tally of each roll call, numbered through the year (“Vote for SB-55 Roll Call Number 234”). Each of our roll calls is paired with its tally by the day, the time, the counts and the measure, and every member's mark must be the same: 1,280 roll calls agree with their tallies; 1 has no tally we could find (the Senate's roll call of Feb. 25, 2025 on HB 7066, read from the Journal alone), and none differs. The Senate Clerk files a consent calendar (below) as one tally per measure on it, each with the calendar's roll; the page addresses use the clerks' numbers. The tallies' list of addresses comes from Open States' bulk data; the files themselves are the clerks'.
• Where a Journal's sentence names one measure and the measure taken up, and its tally, are another, we follow the measure taken up: the House Journal of April 9, 2025, roll call 3 (page 8: “HB 7219”, which is HB 7129); the Senate Journal of May 7, 2025, roll call 10 (page 16: “SB 1348”, which is SB 1368); the Senate Journal of May 15, 2025, roll call 6 (page 34: “SB 7095”, which is HB 7095); the Senate Journal of May 15, 2025, roll call 11 (page 52: “SB 1179”, which is SB 3); the Senate Journal of May 22, 2025, roll call 9 (page 10: “HB 7049”, which is HB 7043); the Senate Journal of May 22, 2025, roll call 16 (page 17: “SB 7056”, which is HB 7056); the Senate Journal of June 3, 2025, roll call 11 (page 51: “SB 6995”, which is HB 6995); the Senate Journal of June 4, 2025, roll call 19 (page 25: “SB 7004”, which is HB 7004); the Senate Journal of Nov. 13, 2025, roll call 6 (page 14: “HB 8003”, which is HB 8004); the Senate Journal of April 14, 2026, roll call 2 (page 4: “SB 247”, which is SB 274); the Senate Journal of April 28, 2026, roll call 5 (page 12: “SB 355”, which is SB 335); the Senate Journal of May 4, 2026, roll call 15 (page 29: “SB 5374”, which is HB 5374); the Senate Journal of May 5, 2026, roll call 7 (page 11: “HJ 5581”, which is HB 5581); the Senate Journal of May 5, 2026, roll call 22 (page 82: “SB 5222”, which is HB 5222); the Senate Journal of May 5, 2026, roll call 35 (page 100: “SB 5485”, which is HB 5485); the Senate Journal of May 6, 2026, roll call 30 (page 84: “SB 5521”, which is HB 5521); the Senate Journal of May 6, 2026, roll call 31 (page 85: “SB 5256”, which is HB 5256). The Senate Journal of May 6, 2026 names HB 5542 for roll call 22 (page 66), heading and sentence alike, but HB 5542 never passed the House; the Senate Clerk's tally (386) and the bill histories say HB 5442, which we follow. Senate Journals also misprint a few sentences' wording (“Senator Bill”, “was past”, a bill that “was adopted”), which are read as written, a bill always as passed, and checked the same way.
• 6 roll calls whose Journal sentence is missing or names no measure were read by hand from the Journal's account and checked against their tallies: three appeals of the chair's ruling on a point of order (on HB 7066, February 25, 2025; SB 298, February 25, 2026; HB 5350, April 30, 2026), each failing with the Senate's Republicans voting for the appeal; two passages printed without a sentence (SB 1234, May 8, 2025; SB 155, April 28, 2026); and one passage whose sentence names the amendment adopted by voice vote just before it (SB 1506, May 1, 2025: “Senate Amendment Schedule “A” (LCO 7695) was passed”, 35 to 0), as the bill's history and the Senate Clerk's tally confirm. One block of the Senate Journal of May 8, 2025 isn't a roll call of its own: a misprint: SB 1290's time and counts (5:50 p.m., 35 to 0, 1 absent; the Senate Clerk's tally 138) printed under SB 1234's sentence, with no roll; SB 1234's roll call is the next one. One block of the Senate Journal of May 30, 2025 isn't a roll call of its own: a repeat: SB 1274's passage block (1:57 p.m., 35 to 0; the Senate Clerk's tally 295, the only roll call numbered there) printed again under Senate Amendment Schedule “A”.
• Consent calendars. Each chamber can pass many uncontested measures by one roll call: the Senate places bills and resolutions on its Consent Calendar during a day and adopts it at the end, and the House adopts the resolutions (mostly confirmations of nominations) on its own. These 29 roll calls (7 in the House, 22 in the Senate) decided 352 measures; each has one page, listing them, read from the Journal's entries placing each measure on the calendar. For 2026 those lists match the General Assembly's bill histories, measure for measure, but for a few on the last two days of the session, where we follow the Journal.
• Included: passage of bills, in the first chamber and “in concurrence” in the second (or the first chamber's acceptance of the second's amendments, also “in concurrence”), adoption of resolutions, amendments (114 House and 179 Senate roll calls), consent calendars and appeals of the chair's rulings. Each vote page says which it was, and an amendment's page names it, its LCO number and who offered it.
• Left out: votes the Journals record only as taken by voice, committee votes, and the opening-day elections of the Speaker and the President Pro Tempore (both by voice and acclamation).
• Whether a question carried is the Journal's sentence (“was passed”, “was rejected”). 97 House and 166 Senate roll calls failed.
• Contested votes are roll calls where the losing side got at least 10% of the yeas and nays: 231 in the House and 279 in the Senate. Every roll call has its own page. Floor votes lists the contested and party-line ones, and every roll call on request.

Who cast each vote

• The House Journal names members by surname, with the initial of the member's first name where two serving that day share one (“JOHNSON, D.”, “SANCHEZ, E.” for Emmanuel “Manny” Sanchez, “SANCHEZ, R.” for Robert “Bobby” Sanchez) and both parts of a two-word surname (“KAVROS DEGRAW”, “LAMARK MUIR”). Each name is the one member serving that day who goes by it. The Senate Journal prints each seat by district and full name, so each name is the senator holding that district that day. Every name on every roll call matched exactly one member.
• Names and terms come from Open States' data on Connecticut legislators. Where its dates differ from the records, we follow the records: the members of the 2023–2024 term who weren't re-elected left on January 7, 2025, the day before the new term (the House's and Senate's opening-day rolls of members, which this site's tests check); House District 40 and Senate District 21 were vacant when the term began; Bobby Sanchez resigned on November 12, 2025 (the Governor's writ of special election; the House Journal of that day prints the seat vacant); Kevin Ryan died on November 23, 2025; and Jason Perillo held House District 113 until he took the Senate oath on February 28, 2025 (Senate Journal).
• Connecticut fills a vacant seat by special election. During the term Dan Gaiewski (House District 40, February 2025), Jason Perillo (Senate District 21, February 2025), Amy Romano (House District 113, April 2025), Iris Sánchez (House District 25, January 2026) and Larry Pemberton (House District 139, January 2026) won special elections; the Journals print the Secretary of the State's certificate of each, with the day the member took the oath. A seat empty for a while shows as a vacancy on the roll calls of those days.
• No legislator changed parties during the term, and every member is a Democrat or a Republican: the General Assembly lists each as one or the other. Open States records some members as “Democratic/Working Families”, the two lines they were elected on; the General Assembly lists them as Democrats, and so do these pages.
• Each build checks our current members against the General Assembly's own list of its members, names and parties (its legislator file; nothing else from that file, which also carries members' home addresses, is read).
• Photos are the General Assembly's official portraits, one per seat. Its site's robots.txt asks automated readers to stay off that folder, so the files were saved once through a browser (October 20, 2026). A seat's file shows whoever the site had for that seat when it was posted, so each is matched to a member by its date: 186 legislators have one. Iris Sánchez and Larry Pemberton, whose seats' files still show their predecessors, and Rob Sampson, whose seat's file predates his first Senate term, show initials.

Votes with the Speaker or Senate President Pro Tempore

• The House elects its Speaker from its members: Matt Ritter (District 1), elected unanimously on January 8, 2025 (House Journal). The Lieutenant Governor presides over the Senate but isn't a senator and votes only to break a tie, so the Senate is measured against its President Pro Tempore, the senator it elects to lead it: Martin Looney (District 11), elected by acclamation the same day (Senate Journal). Both have held their offices since, and both vote like any member.
• The score is the share of roll calls on which the member voted the same way, yea or nay, as their chamber's leader. A roll call counts only when both of them voted yea or nay. The Speaker voted on 704 of 704 House roll calls (nay on 97); the President Pro Tempore on 588 of 588 Senate roll calls (nay on 166).
• Both leaders are Democrats, the majority party in both chambers.
• The headline number uses contested votes. On unanimous votes nearly everyone agrees with the leader, so the share on all votes, shown alongside, is high for almost everyone.
• A score needs at least 20 votes. The leaders aren't scored against themselves.
• This works like “votes with the President” on the Congress pages, with one difference: the President's position on a bill comes from the White House's public statements, while the leader's position here is the leader's own recorded vote.

Votes with own party

• Counts party-line votes: roll calls where most Democrats voted one way and most Republicans the other (190 in the House, 256 in the Senate). The score is the share of those votes where the member voted with most of their own party. The Congress pages use the same definition.
• Partisan rank orders each chamber's current members by this score, whichever their party: 1 votes with their party most often, and the last votes with it least. Members shown with the same whole percent share a rank, and each legislator's page says how many share it and how many vote with their party more often.
• A score needs at least 20 party-line votes.
• The table of contested votes on each legislator's page marks every contested vote where they voted against most of their party, whether or not it was a party-line vote, so it can list more votes than the score counts.

Didn't vote at roll call

• The share of roll calls, while the member was in office, on which the record shows no vote for them. The Journals print everyone who didn't vote as “absent and not voting”, without a reason, so these pages say “didn't vote”, never “missed” or “excused”.
• Neither Journal records a “present” vote.
• “In office” means the roll call lists the member: each one accounts for every seat, whether or not its member voted.

The seat chart

• Each chamber's current members are seats, ordered from most liberal (left) to most conservative (right). There's no DW-NOMINATE score for state legislators, so the order comes from the General Assembly's own contested votes: for every pair of members, the share of contested roll calls on which they voted the same way, scaled to one left-right dimension (Poole's agreement-score method, the usual first step of roll-call scaling). Republicans are on the right. A member with fewer than 20 contested votes sits at their party's middle.
• Color uses the same rule as the Congress pages: how often a member crosses party lines toward the middle on party-line votes, siding with the other party alongside their own party's more moderate members. Solid blue or red means almost never; purple means at least 1 in 5 of those votes.
• Connecticut legislators break from their party on party-line votes more often than members of Congress: the median member does on 2.6% of them (1.7% in Congress), and one in ten does on at least 10.7% (7.4% in Congress). At Congress's levels, 25 of the 187 members would be purple. So, as on the New Jersey and Florida pages, each color step starts at twice Congress's level: purple at 20% rather than 10%, then 15, 10, 6 and 3%. That keeps purple for the few who cross most often (five members, all in the House).
• Gray seats: no party-line score.

Bills passed

• Every House and Senate bill of the term's sessions, the budget bills included: 2,875 House bills and 2,091 Senate bills. The 2026 session's come from the General Assembly's own bill files (bill_info and bill_history); the 2025 sessions' from Open States' copy of the same records. Resolutions aren't bills and aren't counted.
• A bill counts for the members who introduced it, as its first reading in the Journal names them (“Proposed H.B. No. 5012 REP. GRESKO, 121st DIST.”), each tied to the member holding that seat that day. Most bills are introduced by a joint committee (“RAISED”, or a committee bill, among them the bills introduced at the Governor's request) and count for no one: 1,631 of the term's bills, and most of those that pass. Members of the other chamber who introduced a bill with them (612 names) and co-sponsors added later aren't counted.
• Passed both chambers: signed by the Governor and given a public or special act number (389, three of them with items of appropriation line-item vetoed, which leaves the rest of the act law) or vetoed (3: HB 5002, SB 8 and HB 7004 of 2025). The General Assembly didn't override a veto: the veto sessions met and adjourned without a vote. Each outcome is checked against the Governor's own bill notifications, whose running totals (2025: 198 signed, 2 signed with items vetoed, 3 vetoed; 2026: 184 signed, 1 signed with items vetoed; the November 2025 Special Session's four bills, all signed) match the bills here.
• Whether a bill passed both chambers is the bill records' (the 2025 sessions' through Open States' copy), checked against the Journals' own roll calls: every one of the 392 bills counted as passed has a passage roll call, by itself or on a consent calendar, in each chamber's Journal. 4 bills both chambers voted to pass didn't pass both in the same version, and count as not passed: SB 1427 of 2025 (the House passed it with its own Amendment A on June 2, and the Senate disagreed); SB 1523 of 2025 (the House passed it with its own Amendment A on June 4, and the Senate disagreed); SB 7 of 2025 (the House passed it with its own Amendment A on May 29, and the Senate didn't take it up again); HB 5125 of 2026 (the Senate passed it on its consent calendar on May 5, then reconsidered the vote and set the bill aside).
• Connecticut doesn't mark local bills apart, so every bill counts the same way. The ranked number is bills that passed both chambers.
• Ranks are among current members of the chamber, and among current members of the chamber in the same party: 1 has the most, and members with the same number share a rank. Members who took office during the term had less time to pass bills.

Budget projects

• Connecticut's budget bills don't say which legislator asked for an item, so there's no budget figure for Connecticut legislators.

The November 3 ballot

• All 151 House seats and all 36 Senate seats are on the ballot: representatives and senators both serve two-year terms.
• The candidates are the ones the Secretary of the State's sample ballots print. There's no single candidate list: each town's sample ballot is posted as it's ready (134 of the 169 towns' when this page was built, the Secretary's list dated Oct. 19, 2026), one page per voting district, with the State Senator and State Representative races. Every district's candidates are read from each of its towns' ballots, which must agree name for name and line for line (towns print a name slightly differently, with or without an initial's period or an accent: each is shown as most ballots print it). House Districts 14, 16, 21, 31, 54, 56, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 113 lie wholly in towns whose ballots aren't posted yet, so their candidates aren't listed until they are.
• Connecticut lets several parties nominate the same candidate (cross-endorsement): a candidate is printed on each party's line, and is shown here with every line the ballot gives them, major parties first. Being on another party's line isn't a change of party. Write-in candidates aren't listed, and the ballots carry no addresses.
• Where towns' ballots disagree, the newer is followed: House District 51: Killingly's sample ballot (Sept. 25) also lists petitioning candidate Ryan Cournoyer; Putnam's (Oct. 13) doesn't.
• A seat's holder running for it again is marked as the incumbent.
• The address lookup and the district map use the House and Senate districts the Reapportionment Commission drew after the 2020 census, first used in 2022.

Recent key votes

Each legislator's page lists their five most recent key votes, and its voting record opens with their key votes (the newest 300) until the whole record loads. A key vote is a contested or party-line roll call (both as defined above) that gave the chamber's last word on a whole bill, budgets included: its passage, agreeing to the other chamber's changes, adopting a conference committee's report or accepting the Governor's amendments, or a vote to override a veto. We read that from the motion as the record names it. Amendments, procedural motions and the adoption of resolutions aren't key votes, and neither is a motion we haven't listed. This term, 106 of the Connecticut House's 704 roll calls and 87 of the Connecticut Senate's 588 are key votes.

Next to each key vote is the bill's plain-language explanation where one has been checked against the official text (below); where there isn't one yet, the page says so rather than describe the bill another way.

Bill explanations

Connecticut vote pages don't carry an explanation of the bill yet. Each page's title is the measure's official title, as the Journals or the General Assembly's bill records give it, and the page links to the measure's page on the General Assembly's site, where its text, analyses and votes are.

Data sources and downloads

Everything these pages show can be downloaded, free to reuse. Percent columns ending in “_shown” are the whole numbers the pages show; the counts behind each one are beside it. Terms of reuse

• members.csv: Every Connecticut legislator this term with each score, the counts behind it and the whole percent the pages show.
• votes.csv: Every Connecticut floor roll call with its totals, whether it was contested or party-line, how the leader and each party's majority voted, and the official record.
• member-votes.csv: How every Connecticut legislator voted on every floor roll call.
• bills.csv: Every Connecticut bill this term with its sponsors, its kind (statewide, local or claim) and how far it got.

Checks

• PASS: Connecticut House: current members match the chamber's own list — 151 members and 0 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Connecticut Senate: current members match the chamber's own list — 36 members and 0 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Connecticut: every bill's sponsors are legislators on these pages, and their counts add up — 5,583 sponsor credits on 3,335 bills
• PASS: Connecticut: every bill's outcome and sponsors read from the records — {"law": 389, "other_chamber_introducers": 612, "member_bills": 3335, "bills_2025": 3859, "vetoed": 3, "committee_bills": 1631, "bills_2026": 1107, "journals_agree": 392, "died_after_both": 4, "governor_2025 Regular Session": "{'signed': 198, 'line_item': 2, 'vetoed': 3} / {'signed': 198, 'line_item': 2, 'vetoed': 3}", "governor_2026 Regular Session": "{'signed': 184, 'line_item': 1, 'vetoed': 0} / {'signed': 184, 'line_item': 1, 'vetoed': 0}"}
• PASS: Connecticut: the vote-by-vote download's files match the state's settings — member-votes.csv
• PASS: Connecticut: the address lookup's file lists every seat's holder — 187 seats
• PASS: Connecticut: every vote on the records credited to the right legislator — all matched
• PASS: Connecticut: bill explanations are approved and match their official source — 0 vote pages show one
• PASS: Connecticut: every vote page's bill has its title — 1292 votes
• WARN: Connecticut: every current legislator has an official portrait — 3 without (initials shown): Iris Sánchez (House 25), Larry Pemberton (House 139), Rob Sampson (Senate 16)
• PASS: Connecticut: the current term hasn't ended — through 2027-01-05
• PASS: Connecticut: the district map has every seat, and only those — 151 House districts, 36 Senate districts
• PASS: Connecticut: every incumbent on the ballot links to their voting record — all linked
• PASS: Connecticut: every Journal roll call's marks add up to its printed counts, and its names fit one member serving that day each and name every seat once — all 1,292
• WARN: Connecticut: every roll call agrees with the clerk's tally of it (measure, time, counts and every member's vote) — 1,280 agree; 1 tallies not found; 0 differ
• PASS: Connecticut: Nov. 3 legislative candidates cover every seat on the ballot — 187 races