Study Shows 80% of Passed Laws Supported by Majority of Americans. But Congress Overall Aligns with Public Opinion Just 55% of the Time

Rick Harrison
U.S. Capitol Building as seen from the side

When debating some of the most significant issues over the last 20 years, the U.S. Congress eventually acted in accordance with public opinion 55% of the time, according to a new study partially supported by Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

ISPS faculty fellow Shiro Kuriwaki and Stephen Ansolabehere, Frank G. Thompson Professor at Harvard University’s Department of Government, examined two decades of major issues that animated the congressional agenda. Topics included bills on taxes, health care, gun control, infrastructure spending, abortion, and more.

The researchers found that Congress either passed popular bills or rejected bills with a majority of public support 55% of the time. Congress failed to reflect public sentiment 45% of the time, including popular bills that failed and unpopular bills that passed.

“As an academic who studies Congress and its many veto points, this looks higher than one might think,” said Kuriwaki, an assistant professor of political science whose research studies U.S. elections and the legislative branch. “From the general public’s perspective, this might be a disappointing number. But we also show that there is a lot more to representation than a single number.”

The study, published this month in Perspectives on Politics, digs into over 100 key bills to examine Congress in a way that is less common than much political science research. Kuriwaki said that recent existing research, by focusing more on how individual legislators vote, may sometimes miss the forest for the trees. Kuriwaki and Ansolabehere look at how Congress as a whole reflects the will of the national majority.

They found that the U.S. House of Representatives passed 87% of bills supported by a majority of the public and rejected 50% of unpopular bills. In addition, they found that the Senate served as the primary obstacle to collective representation, passing only 54% of popular bills and rejecting 65% of unpopular bills. Nearly half of the studied issues failed due to inaction, particularly in the Senate, where many bills that passed the House did not even receive a final vote.

Kuriwaki said the procedural rules of the Senate, including the filibuster and the ability of a single senator to hold up legislation, can serve as a major obstacle for majority rule.

Shiro Kuriwaki seated in the ISPS common room

Shiro Kuriwaki

“The framers of the Constitution were wary of temporary majorities making or ramming through decisions,” he said. “So they gave senators longer terms, and the Senate went on to develop the filibuster, which had the effect of letting only bipartisan and overwhelmingly popular bills pass easily. That means that a lot of things will not pass because they don’t have that overwhelming approval.”

The researchers studied data up until 2022, ending before the second half of Joe Biden’s term and before the current Congress.

They found that popular and divisive issues (such as tax reform and repealing the Affordable Care Act) often failed unless the majority party had the ability to overcome a Senate filibuster or the ability to use an exception provided in the budgeting process known as reconciliation to bypass a filibuster. Bills involving popular and non-divisive issues, they found, had about the same rate of collective representation, with many failing under divided government. And they found foreign policy issues had the lowest success in matching public opinion (30% of the time), while economic issues had the highest alignment (61%).

On the other hand, the researchers found that 80% of laws that did pass both chambers were supported by the majority of the public, suggesting that the legislative process effectively filters out unpopular proposals.

Kuriwaki’s research at ISPS covers elections, legislative politics, census statistics, and various other parts of the democratic process in U.S. politics. The research often develops applied quantitative methods to improve the understanding of policies and politics.   

Kuriwaki and Ansolabehere are building on their paper for a book project that further explores Congress as a legislative institution as well as how individual voters choose to vote and their knowledge of how their legislative representatives vote.

“Public opinion can behave like ocean tides,” Kuriwaki said. “When support grows large enough, it can be a very powerful pressure on the institution. Though maybe not as fast as a lot of voters might want.”