How progressive are Washington State’s members of Congress?

Govtrack.us has a useful chart that purports to show where each member of Congress stands on a continuum from liberal to conservative.

The chart is based on co-sponsorship relationships between members of Congress: how often they cosponsored each other’s bills. Lawmakers who cosponsored another lawmaker’s legislation are placed close together. The X axis measures ideology (from progressive on the left to conservative on the right). The Y axis measures leadership: how often the lawmaker sponsored bills.

Click this link to explore the data interactively. I have copied the image here and marked Democrats with arrows and names:

A surprising thing about their analysis is that it puts Adam Smith to the left of Primila Jayapal. This seems wrong. I will redo their analyses using my own data science skills.

The govtrack pages for each candidate show scores from the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, League of Conservation Voters, Human Rights Campaign, NORML, and various right wing advocacy groups, such as Freedom Works, the Chamber of Commerce and Club for Growth.  See

• • Suzan DelBene: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/suzan_delbene/412505
  • Denny Heck: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/denny_heck/412584

• Pramila Jayapal: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/pramila_jayapal/412730
• Derek Kilmer:  https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/derek_kilmer/412583
• Rick Larsen: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/rick_larsen/400232
• Adam Smith: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/adam_smith/400379

Another scorecard they should probably have shown is the Social-Economic Justice Scorecard from the AFL-CIO: https://aflcio.org/what-unions-do/social-economic-justice/advocacy/scorecard/us-house-scorecard . According to that scorecard, all Democratic Washington State Reps score pretty high. Again, Smith scores higher than Jayapal or anyone else.

	District	Name	Party	2015 (%)	2016 (%)	2017 (%)	Lifetime (%)

WA	1	DelBene	D	92	100	92	94
WA	2	Larsen	D	88	100	95	91
WA	3	Herrera Beutler	R	14	50	18	17
WA	4	Newhouse	R	17	13	24	20
WA	5	McMorris Rodgers	R	13	13	11	10
WA	6	Kilmer	D	92	100	95	94
WA	7	Jayapal	D	—	—	97	97
WA	8	Reichert	R	42	63	37	41
WA	9	Smith	D	100	100	95	90
WA	10	Heck	D	96	100	95	95

I am curious about their votes on taxation and military issues. Are there scorecards covering those fields?

Here’s govtrack’s image for all Senators (Click to see bigger version):

And for all House members (Click to see bigger version):