How the Utah scores work

The vote records

• Every roll call comes from the page the chamber's voting system prints for it on le.utah.gov, which each bill's page links from its history: the bill, the question, the date and time, the tally, and every member's vote by name. Utah's representatives serve two-year terms, so this term is the 66th Legislature, which took office on January 1, 2025: 3,856 floor roll calls (1,673 in the House, 2,183 in the Senate), Jan. 21, 2025 to March 6, 2026.
  • 2025 General Session: 838 House and 1,093 Senate roll calls, Jan. 21, 2025 to March 7, 2025.
  • 2025 First Special Session: 18 House and 18 Senate roll calls, Oct. 6, 2025.
  • 2025 Second Special Session: 5 House and 5 Senate roll calls, Dec. 9, 2025.
  • 2026 General Session: 812 House and 1,067 Senate roll calls, Jan. 20, 2026 to March 6, 2026.
• Each roll call is checked against its step in the bill's history, the Legislature's own record of the bill: the same bill, chamber and day, a time no more than five minutes apart (3,821 have the same minute, 31 differ by a minute; 4 are further apart, and for each the history step links that very page, the tallies agree and it's the chamber's only roll call on the bill that day), and the same tally of yeas, nays and members absent or not voting. Its lists must add up to that tally, and the page and the history must agree on whether it passed. They disagree once, and the page's own tally settles it: HB 596's House third reading on March 3, 2026, 34 yeas and 37 nays, which the page's heading calls passed and the history failed; it's shown as failed.
• Left out, because the page and the history disagree in a way neither settles: HB 212 (Utah Senate, March 7, 2026), the Senate's vote at midnight as the 2026 session ended: the page says it passed, 17 to 12; the bill's history says it failed, and the bill died; HB 279 (Utah House, Feb. 20, 2026), the House's vote to accept the Senate's amendments, 72 to 0: the bill's history dates it Friday, February 20, 2026; the page dates it Sunday, February 22.
• The Senate reads a bill a second and a third time, with a roll call each time, or both at once under suspension of the rules (520 roll calls); the House votes on third reading. The Senate's 731 second-reading roll calls are used like any other but aren't final passage, so they aren't among a legislator's key votes. A chamber that agrees to the other's amendments passes the bill again (“Concurred/Final Passage”).
• Committee votes aren't included. Neither are 2 roll-call pages on which no one voted (0 yeas and 0 nays: the House opening and closing the board on a motion to circle a bill). Neither are the 3,201 voice votes the histories record (on amendments, substitutes, circling a bill and the like), which don't record how each member voted. Neither are the Senate's votes confirming the Governor's appointees, which aren't part of any bill's history (they're recorded in the Senate Journal), including those of the Senate's extraordinary sessions called only to confirm appointees.
• Contested votes are roll calls where the losing side got at least 10% of the yeas and nays: 423 in the House and 500 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 pages name members by surname and initials (“Peterson, K.”, “Adams, J. Stuart”), and link each current member's name to their district. Each name goes to the one legislator holding a seat in that chamber that day with that surname (and initial, where two share it), the linked district must be that legislator's, and each roll call must name every member serving that day exactly once. Every name on every roll call used matched exactly one legislator.
• Names and terms come from Open States' data on Utah legislators. Where it differs from the official record, we follow the Legislature's list of its members (for the day each appointee's service began), the House's and the Governor's news releases and news reports (12 dates). In the House, Kera Birkeland (District 4) resigned on January 10, 2025, before the term's first session, and Tiara Auxier took the seat when it opened on January 21. Majority Leader Jefferson Moss (District 51) resigned on May 30, 2025; Leah Hansen took the seat on July 29, 2025. Gay Lynn Bennion (District 41) resigned on November 20, 2025, having been elected mayor of Cottonwood Heights; John Arthur took the seat on December 9, 2025. Matt Gwynn (District 6) and Tyler Clancy (District 60) resigned on March 9, 2026, after the 2026 General Session, and Jeff Burton (District 64) resigned after moving out of his district; Rob Bishop, Grant Pace and Jackie Larson took those seats on May 6, 2026. Trevor Lee (District 16) resigned on September 28, 2026; his seat stays vacant until the term ends. In the Senate, Daniel Thatcher (District 11) resigned on December 12, 2025, and Emily Buss took the seat on December 17, 2025. No roll call fell between any of these departures and the successor's first day.
• One senator changed parties during the term: Daniel Thatcher, elected a Republican, joined the Forward Party of Utah on March 7, 2025, the last day of the 2025 General Session. His votes are compared with the Republicans' through that day; afterward, like any member of neither major party, he's compared with the party he voted with more often on party-line votes, the Democrats. Emily Buss, his successor, a Forward Party member, is compared the same way, also with the Democrats.
• Each build checks our current members against the Legislature's list of its members of 2026-10-20, names, districts and parties.
• Photos are the official portraits the Legislature posts for each member, under the member's own identifier, so a former member's portrait is still their own. Rob Bishop's isn't posted yet; his page shows his initials.

Votes with the Speaker or Senate President

• Each chamber elects its own presiding officer, who votes like any member: Speaker Mike Schultz (District 12), Speaker since November 2023, and Senate President J. Stuart Adams (District 7), President since 2019. Utah's Lieutenant Governor has no role in the Senate.
• 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 1,321 of 1,673 House roll calls (nay on 60); the Senate President on 1,582 of 2,183 Senate roll calls (nay on 44).
• 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 (259 in the House, 314 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. A member of neither major party (the Forward Party's) is compared with the party they vote with more often on party-line votes, as an independent in Congress is with the party they caucus with, and placed with it on the seat chart.
• 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 records list every member who didn't vote as “Absent or not voting” and don't say why, so these pages don't say “missed” or “excused”.
• “In office” means the roll call lists the member: each one lists every seated member, whether or not they 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 Legislature'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 3 in 10 of those votes.
• Utah legislators break from their party on party-line votes far more often than members of Congress: one in ten breaks on at least 23.6% of them, against 7.4% in Congress, and the median legislator on 8.2%, against 1.7%. So the Utah pages use color steps three times Congress's: purple at 30% rather than 10%, then 22.5, 15, 9 and 4.5%. That keeps purple for those who cross most often: 3 of the 100 current members.
• Gray seats: no party-line score.

Bills passed

• Every bill introduced in the term's sessions, from each bill's record on le.utah.gov: 1,187 House bills and 684 Senate bills, appropriation bills and the joint resolutions proposing amendments to the Utah Constitution included. Other joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions and resolutions aren't laws and aren't counted.
• A bill counts for its sponsor, the member le.utah.gov lists as its sponsor in the chamber where it was introduced. The floor sponsor who carries it in the other chamber isn't counted.
• Passed both chambers: the second chamber's presiding officer signed it and it was sent for enrolling (638 House bills, 429 Senate bills). It became law when the Governor signed it, signed it with line items vetoed (3, budget bills), or let it become law without his signature (1,057 laws). 8 were vetoed and stood. 2 proposed constitutional amendments went to the voters.
• 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

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

The November 3 ballot

• All 75 House seats are up, for two-year terms, and 15 of the 29 Senate seats (Districts 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 and 28), for four-year terms, as the Lieutenant Governor's Notice of Election lists them. The members elected take office on January 1, 2027.
• The candidates are the ones the Lieutenant Governor's 2026 Candidate Filings list as election candidates, as of its update of October 5, 2026, with the party each filed with; those out in their party's convention or primary, withdrawn or disqualified aren't on the ballot. Declared write-in candidates are counted for their race, not named. Only names, parties and offices were kept from the list. A race with one candidate still appears on the ballot.
• The address lookup and the district map use the districts the Legislature drew in 2021, the ones the members elected in 2022 and 2024 represent.

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, 417 of the Utah House's 1,673 roll calls and 345 of the Utah Senate's 2,183 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

Utah vote pages don't carry an explanation of the bill yet. Each page's title is the bill's short title as le.utah.gov lists it, and the page links to the bill's page there, where its text, history 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 Utah legislator this term with each score, the counts behind it and the whole percent the pages show.
• votes.csv: Every Utah 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 Utah legislator voted on every floor roll call.
• bills.csv: Every Utah bill this term with its sponsors, its kind (statewide, local or claim) and how far it got.

Checks

• PASS: Utah House: current members match the chamber's own list — 74 members and 1 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Utah Senate: current members match the chamber's own list — 29 members and 0 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Utah: every bill's sponsors are legislators on these pages, and their counts add up — 1,871 sponsor credits on 1,871 bills
• PASS: Utah: every bill's sponsor tied to one legislator of its chamber; every bill that passed both chambers law, vetoed or sent to the voters — all of them
• PASS: Utah: the vote-by-vote download's files match the state's settings — member-votes.csv
• PASS: Utah: the address lookup's file lists every seat's holder — 104 seats
• PASS: Utah: every vote on the records credited to the right legislator — all matched
• PASS: Utah: bill explanations are approved and match their official source — 0 vote pages show one
• PASS: Utah: every vote page's bill has its title — 3856 votes
• WARN: Utah: every current legislator has an official portrait — 1 without (initials shown): Rob Bishop (House 6)
• PASS: Utah: the current term hasn't ended — through 2026-12-31
• PASS: Utah: the district map has every seat, and only those — 75 House districts, 29 Senate districts
• PASS: Utah: every incumbent on the ballot links to their voting record — all linked
• PASS: Utah: every roll call is the one its bill's history links, with the same bill, day, time and tally; its lists add up to that tally and name every member serving that day once, each tied to the one member holding a seat — 3,856 of 3,860 roll calls
• PASS: Utah: Nov. 3 legislative candidates cover every seat on the ballot — 90 races