After delay, FiveThirtyEight plans to implement 'Biden Score' tracking Congress loyalty to president

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Nate Silver's data site FiveThirtyEight implemented a "Trump Score" for members of Congress almost immediately after President Donald Trump took office to track how often lawmakers voted with him, but it was dinged for not enacting a similar "Biden Score" for the new administration and Democratic Congress.

That is about to change, FiveThirtyEight said on Wednesday, saying the delay in a feature measuring lawmaker loyalty to President Biden was due to adding "new features."

"We’re planning to launch soon a similar tracker that updates how often every member of the House and Senate votes with or against the president, and we’re adding new features that take some time to build," a spokesman told Fox.

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FiveThirtyEight writer Aaron Bycoffe said it hoped to start publishing the tracker "in the next month or two."

The Washington Free Beacon flagged the omission in a piece criticizing FiveThirtyEight and other outlets for varying standards of coverage on the Trump and Biden administrations. Another example was the end of the Washington Post's special section tracking falsehoods uttered by the president after Biden replaced Trump.

FiveThirtyEight penned an explanation at the time of why it was introducing a "Trump Score" for Congress, specifically noting full Republican control in Washington. It was announced on Jan. 30, 2017, just 10 days after Trump took office. Biden similarly entered office with full party control of Congress.

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"Donald Trump has Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress — it’s the first time since Barack Obama’s first two years in office that the same party has controlled the U.S. Senate, the House and the White House. Trump’s ability to enact his policies, therefore, will largely come down to how often GOP senators and representatives buck the president’s agenda and, conversely, how often Democrats work with him," Bycoffe wrote then.

Headlined "Tracking Congress In The Age Of Trump," the site measured how often a member voted with Trump's position, Trump's margin of victory or defeat in that lawmaker's state in 2016, and how often a member was expected to support Trump based on his 2016 state result.

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Biden's most significant piece of legislation to date was a $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, which passed on party lines in both chambers. Republicans criticized the massive bill as wasteful, but they were powerless to stop Democrats from pushing it through.