get_les: Get Legislative Effectiveness Scores data
In filibustr: Data Utilities for Congressional Research

get_les

R Documentation

Get Legislative Effectiveness Scores data

Description

get_les() returns Legislative Effectiveness Scores data from the Center for Effective Lawmaking.

Usage

get_les(chamber, les_2 = deprecated(), local_path = NULL)

Arguments

chamber

Which chamber to get data for. Options are:

"house", "h", "hr": House data only.
"senate", "s", "sen": Senate data only.

These options are case-insensitive. Any other argument results in an error.

Note: Unlike the Voteview functions, there is no "all" option. You must specify either House or Senate data, since there is no "default" option.

There are non-trivial differences between the House and Senate datasets, so take care when joining House and Senate data. Important differences include:

Legislator names are formatted differently. The Senate data has first and last name columns, while the House data has a single thomas_name column.
The year column refers to the first year of the Congress in the House data, but year refers to the preceding election year in the Senate data. Thus, the year for House members is one after that of senators in the same Congress.

les_2

This argument is now unnecessary, as the 2025 LES dataset includes both LES Classic and LES 2.0 scores in the same dataset. If provided, this argument will be ignored (with a deprecation warning). This argument will be removed in a future release. See the LES Classic and LES 2.0 section below for more information on the two methods.

local_path

(Optional) A file path for reading from a local file. If no local_path is specified, will read data from the Center for Effective Lawmaking website.

Details

See the Center for Effective Lawmaking website for more information on their data.

The Legislative Effectiveness Score methodology was introduced in:

Volden, C., & Wiseman, A. E. (2014). Legislative effectiveness in the United States Congress: The lawmakers. Cambridge University Press. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("doi:10.1017/CBO9781139032360")}

LES Classic and LES 2.0

The Center for Effective Lawmaking created a new version of LES starting in the 117th Congress. LES 2.0 credits lawmakers when language from their sponsored bills is included in other legislators' bills that advance through Congress and become law, not just their own sponsored bills. LES 2.0 is only available starting in the 117th Congress (2021-present). LES Classic goes back to the 93rd Congress (1973-present).

See the LES methodology page for more information on these methods.