The 8 Types Of Democrats And Republicans In The House

In a Congress largely defined by Republicans’ struggle to govern in harmony with their far-right flank, it’s no surprise that a cluster of hardline, obstructionist conservatives emerged as a cohesive voting cluster. The Far-Right Obstructionists cluster is made up of 39 members who are part of, or tend to be closely aligned with, the Freedom Caucus, including notable rabble-rousing Trump acolytes like Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who led the charge on ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s threatening the same fate for Speaker Mike Johnson.

Members of this cluster were both the most conservative and most anti-establishment of all the clusters, according to DW-NOMINATE scores.4Second dimension DW-NOMINATE scores are used in this analysis to quantify how establishment or insurgent a member is, with a positive number reflecting pro-establishment tendencies and negative number reflecting more anti-establishment leanings. Among them are Freedom Caucus co-founder Jim Jordan of Ohio, current chair Bob Good of Virginia, and other former Freedom Caucus leaders, reflecting that caucus’s embrace of not only ultra-conservative policies, but also obstructionist and attention-grabbing tactics. For example, members of this group proposed and forced votes on an amendment to defund the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and dozens of separate amendments that each would have reduced the salary of Biden administration officials to $1.

This cluster’s votes on foreign policy reflect the far right’s full embrace of “America First” isolationist rhetoric: A Gaetz resolution that would’ve removed U.S. troops from Somalia, for example, garnered support from 92 percent of this cluster, compared to just 8 percent of all other Republicans.

And of course, they were behind not one but two prolonged battles over the House speakership in 2023. In January, all 21 of the members who voted against McCarthy or voted “present” at any point in his bid for speaker aligned with this cluster.5Anna Paulina Luna is not assigned a cluster due to insufficient vote data, but the votes she has participated in align her most closely with this group, according to our analysis of agreement scores. And in October, all but one (South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace) of the eight who voted to oust McCarthy were from the same cluster.

The Far-Right Establishment cluster is the largest of the GOP clusters and is stacked with party leaders. That’s notable given that it’s the second-most conservative group in the House.

The 55 members in this cluster are deep-red conservatives who, along with the Far-Right Obstructionists cluster, often broke with the rest of their party in their opposition to government spending bills. Of those who voted, less than 30 percent of members in this cluster supported each of two short-term funding extensions last fall, and only 15 percent supported the final funding package last month. These two groups have also pushed the party posture to the right by largely voting in favor of messaging amendments offered by the Far-Right Obstructionists that put forth libertarian priorities, such as stripping funding from international aid programs and promoting school choice policies. In a notable recent example, 81 percent of the Far-Right Establishment cluster opposed this month’s Ukraine aid package, compared to around a quarter of members across all three of the more moderate clusters.

A look at this group’s impressive roster shows us just how far right the GOP’s power center currently sits: In addition to being the largest of the party’s clusters, the overwhelming majority of House GOP leaders are a part of this group, including the entire floor leadership team — Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler — and seven committee chairs. Speaker Mike Johnson’s voting record would also align him most closely with this cluster.2Mike Johnson was not assigned a cluster in our analysis due to insufficient vote data, because speakers do not typically vote on the floor. Our analysis of the votes he did take before becoming speaker shows that he voted most closely with members of this cluster, according to agreement scores. Also here are the heads of the major policy-setting arms of the party, House Republican Policy Committee Chair Gary Palmer and Rep. Kevin Hern, the head of the wide-ranging Republican Study Committee.

While most of the hardline Freedom Caucus landed in the Far-Right Obstructionists cluster, eight more landed here. This group includes a contingent of early Freedom Caucus members like Tennessee Rep. Scott DesJarlais, who, in 2022, called for the caucus to “​​push our ideas in a civil manner.” There are also a few former caucus members in this group, like Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado and Texas Reps. Brian Babin and Randy Weber, who left (or were kicked out) for the same reason: opposition to the group’s obstructionist tactics. Appropriately, this cluster diverged from its hardline colleagues in its willingness to take yes for an answer: Outside of critical spending bills, most members joined the rest of the party to support other bipartisan measures like the five-year Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill and a package to lower health care costs.

The Old Guard Republicans cluster is the second-largest GOP cluster and lies in the ideological center of the five. This group of 50 members, along with the 55 in the slightly more conservative Far-Right Establishment cluster, makes up the core base of the House GOP. While most of the party’s leadership is in the latter cluster, a number of key leaders landed in this slightly more moderate group, including House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and seven committee chairs.

Both groups are on solid footing when it comes to their conservative base, with members representing districts that Trump won in 2020 by an average of around 24 percentage points, but this group was less likely to support some more hardline proposals, including several that proposed significant spending cuts or limits on foreign aid to Ukraine and other countries. Accordingly, just under two-thirds supported this month’s Ukraine aid package, compared to 14 percent of the rightmost two clusters.

Perhaps most strikingly, Old Guard Republicans broke from their spending-skeptical right flank on votes to keep the government funded: Eighty-eight percent supported Speaker Mike Johnson’s controversial November plan to stave off a shutdown, and 66 percent supported this year’s final spending package — compared to only 27 percent and 15 percent of Far-Right Establishment members, respectively.

Though members of the Republican Main Street Partnership were fairly dispersed across clusters, South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson, who chairs the organization’s affiliated House caucus, is in this cluster; its pro-governance bent aligns well with Johnson’s vision for the recently revamped caucus: “Our caucus hates cliffs, we hate dumpster fires, we hate chaos. We aim to be the grown-ups in the room,” he told Roll Call last year.

And by tenure, this cluster does have the most adults in the room. Its members have served an average tenure of 5.5 terms and median tenure of 5 terms, meaning more than half (27 members) have been in Congress for at least 10 years — the most of any GOP cluster.

The Compromise Conservatives cluster is the smallest of the GOP groups (32 members) and the second-most moderate on average, though there were some notable exceptions. Like the Moderate Republicans, they broke with more conservative clusters pretty frequently on hard-right messaging votes, supporting only 63 percent of partisan amendments from their own party.

However, this group exhibited slightly more conservative leanings on spending legislation and other traditionally libertarian priorities. Breaking with what we’d expect from a relatively moderate group, members in this cluster were actually less likely to vote for bipartisan spending bills like the annual defense policy bill and September Ukraine aid package than the Old Guard Republicans, who more often fell in line with conservative messaging votes but strongly supported funding bills.

In another example, the Compromise Conservatives were more likely to break with their party by voting to kill an initial resolution censuring progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan for her comments on the Israel-Hamas war, which actually aligned them with the most conservative cluster of the bunch, the Far-Right Obstructionists cluster. Some of these members, like California Rep. John Duarte, expressed concerns that the censure would set a dangerous precedent for free speech, despite condemning Tlaib's comments.

One member stands out as an example of the group’s dual nature: Rep. Max Miller of Ohio, the only member of this cluster who was endorsed by the campaign arm of the Freedom Caucus, though he’s publicly criticized their obstructionist bent and isn’t officially part of the group. Also a member of the pragmatic Republican Main Street Partnership, Miller was the floor manager for several bipartisan bills that passed with widespread support from Democrats and moderate Republicans, but opposition from conservatives — like one that he authored related to weather and climate prediction research.

The Moderate Republicans cluster is a group of 39 members who break more often than others from the majority of their party on both substantive policy and partisan messaging, with the goal of finding consensus across the aisle. For example, 89 percent of the cluster voted in favor of a September 2023 bill to provide security assistance to Ukraine, compared to 38 percent of all other Republicans.

Unsurprisingly, Problem Solvers Caucus Co-chair Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania is in this group, along with 17 others from the caucus — two-thirds of the group’s GOP members. More than half (22 members) of the similarly pragmatic-minded caucus called the Republican Governance Group also aligns with this cluster, including the caucus’s chair, David Joyce of Ohio, who described the group in 2022 as “hellbent on breaking through Washington’s dysfunction” to “carve out a viable path forward for effective lawmaking.”

In modern times, Congress certainly does a lot of the opposite. Take the annual appropriations process, which has become something of an exercise in partisan posturing and brinksmanship. In September, as GOP leaders struggled to find consensus on spending legislation, House Republicans brought to the floor a proposed agriculture and FDA spending bill that included steep spending cuts advocated by the far right and a controversial rider limiting access to the abortion pill, which made it a clear non-starter for Democrats and parts of this moderate GOP cluster. Forty-five percent of the Moderate Republicans cluster broke ranks with the party to tank this bill’s passage. The House also considered hundreds of partisan “messaging” amendments, which had no real shot at becoming law, but gave members a chance to make their voices heard on policy priorities, or partisan talking points. Moderate Republicans, on average, supported fewer than half (42 percent) of the partisan amendments offered by their own party.

These moderates are ultimately a key voting bloc, and while their aisle-crossing tendencies have been decried by right-wingers in their party, their votes have helped pass critical legislation, such as this year’s government funding bill and the most recent Ukraine aid bill, both of which passed with a minority of GOP votes.

The Moderate Democrats cluster is the smallest Democratic cluster. Seventy-five percent of its members won their seats during either the 2018 or 2022 cycles, making it also the newest Democratic cluster by average term length. The biggest exception to this is Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who is the longest-serving woman in congressional history, having been elected to 21 terms.

This cluster is by far the most centrist of the Democratic wing. Last year, the Moderate Democrats voted yes on bipartisan amendments 92 percent of the time, 20 percent more frequently than their progressive colleagues, and they voted for Democratic amendments 11 percent less frequently than the rest of their party. They also voted yes more often on all types of passage, a signal that they were more willing than other Democrats to side with the Republican majority.

Three of the five Democrats who represent districts that Trump won in 2020 are in this cluster: Kaptur, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state. This cluster also contains almost every member of the Blue Dog Coalition, the most moderate Democratic caucus in the House.

The Moderate Democrats are also the most establishment-oriented cluster in the House, with an average score of 0.40 on DW-NOMINATE’s second dimension.1Second dimension DW-NOMINATE scores are used in this analysis to quantify how establishment or insurgent a member is, with a positive number reflecting pro-establishment tendencies and negative number reflecting more anti-establishment leanings. While the cluster doesn’t contain any members of House Democratic leadership, its members are usually the least willing to buck the status quo on party doctrine or tradition. And almost every member of this cluster is part of the New Democrat Coalition, the mainstream Democratic House caucus.

However, they’re still willing to vote against their party to burnish their moderate credentials in their swingy districts, which went for Biden by an average of 11 points in 2020, the smallest margin among the Democratic clusters. Many of these votes surrounded issues relating to crime and policing, such as a vote on an amendment that would have created a “Bill of Rights” for local law enforcement officers. Every member of this cluster voted in favor of the amendment, while every member of the Progressive Democrats voted against it, alongside a majority of the Core Democrats.

The Core Democrats cluster includes almost half of all Democrats in the House and all but one member of House Democratic leadership, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (Minority Whip Katherine Clark is in the Progressive Democrats cluster). This cluster is the largest with 100 members and — as you might suspect from the name — is characterized primarily by being squarely in the middle of all the different factions of the Democratic Party, both ideologically and during fights between the party’s insurgent and establishment wings. It contains members from every Democratic caucus that we tracked, including a majority of the New Democrat Coalition.

It’s also the longest-serving cluster in Congress, having been elected to an average of 6.7 terms. That’s partly because much of the aging Democratic establishment can be found here: Seven of the 10 longest-serving Democrats currently in the House are part of this cluster. This older guard contains lots of workhorses, who often stay out of the high-profile clashes between the progressive and moderate wings of their party.

Appropriately, the Core Democrats have an average score of 0.01 on DW-NOMINATE’s second dimension,3Second dimension DW-NOMINATE scores are used in this analysis to quantify how establishment or insurgent a member is, with a positive number reflecting pro-establishment tendencies and negative number reflecting more anti-establishment leanings. indicating an almost perfectly neutral establishment/anti-establishment position. Also fittingly, the cluster voted, on average, in between the moderates and progressives for each vote type we analyzed.

But that doesn’t mean they always agreed with the rest of their party. The Core Democrats broke occasionally with their moderate counterparts on some votes, opposing increases to police funding and protections, for example. They also differed from their progressive colleagues on bills relating to foreign policy and the Middle East; for example, most of the cluster voted to prohibit funds to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel back out of Jerusalem, where it was relocated under the Trump administration despite fierce opposition from progressives..

The Progressive Democrats cluster includes, naturally, 68 of the most progressive members in Congress, including every member of The Squad. Fittingly, almost every member of this cluster is part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, but there were still some surprises to be found. One was that Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan, a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, was in this cluster. This was unexpected considering the Progressive Democrats were about 20 percent less likely to vote yes on bipartisan amendments than the other two Democratic clusters, and were also the most anti-establishment of the Democratic clusters, with an average score of -0.31 on the second dimension of DW-NOMINATE.6Second dimension DW-NOMINATE scores are used in this analysis to quantify how establishment or insurgent a member is, with a positive number reflecting pro-establishment tendencies and negative number reflecting more anti-establishment leanings. And it’s true that Dingell broke with her cluster on a couple of votes where it otherwise had strong consensus. But she still ended up agreeing with the Progressive Democrats more than the average member of the cluster, voting with them over 98 percent of the time,7According to our analysis of agreement scores. including on high-priority issues like criminal justice reform and environmental protection.

Another surprise: while many members of this cluster have made headlines for unseating long-serving representatives in primaries over the last several years, this cluster is actually one of the longest-tenured in the House, having been elected to an average of 6.3 terms. That’s due to the presence of progressive stalwarts like Rep. Maxine Waters of California, the longest-serving member of this cluster, who has been elected to 17 terms.

This cluster broke with the Core Democrats particularly on votes related to foreign policy and the Middle East, voting against prohibiting funds to move the U.S. Embassy out of Jerusalem, in opposition to most of their party. When compared with the Moderate Democrats, this cluster often broke on votes related to crime and policing, voting against legislation attempting to create a police “Bill of Rights” and a resolution condemning efforts to defund the police, which was a particularly major wedge issue during the 2020 cycle.