1127: Congress

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It'd be great if some news network started featuring partisan hack talking heads who were all Federalists and Jacksonians, just to see how long it took us to catch on.

Click the date above the comic to go to the xkcd page, and there is a link to the much larger version. Go find something interesting, don't worry, the wiki will still be here.


It appears that the upcoming 2012 election has put Randall into a political state of mind, as this is the second comic in a few weeks that has dealt with political history (1122: Electoral Precedent). As with that comic, this comic goes through the entire history of the U.S. Federal Government. Also notably, Randall makes a number of observations that are akin to the type of observations Randall denounces in 1122 (e.g. for 1928, Randall notes that no Republican has since won the presidency without a Nixon or a Bush on the ticket).

U.S. Federal Government

In the U.S. Federal Government, one of the checks and balances is a bicameral United States Congress, which consists of two "houses": the Senate, its "upper" house; and the House of Representatives ("the House"), its "lower house". The Senate consists of 2 senators elected from each state (thus 100 total), while the House consists of 435 voting representatives (a number decided upon in 1911 by law) whose apportionment is split between the states proportional to their population; although each state gets at least one (the House also has non-voting representatives from unincorporated territories like Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia). Every ten years, the House is reapportioned based on the latest census. The most populous state as of 2012 is California which has 53 seats in the House. Senators serve 6-year terms with elections held every 2 years for one-third of the seats. Members of the House (called Representatives or Congressmen/women) serve 2-year terms with all of the seats contested every 2 years.

In order for a bill to become a law, it must be passed by both the House and the Senate. In a way, this theoretically ensures that the bill is supported both by the majority of states (the Senate), and the majority of the population (the House). The President may then sign the bill into law, he may "veto" the bill, or he may do nothing, in which case it becomes a law if and only if Congress is in session after a waiting period of 10 days (not including Sundays).

Political ideologies

In politics, there is a scale that represents the political beliefs of a politician. The scale goes from "left" to "right" of "center" - which generally describes a balancing point of beliefs (sometimes called "left-wing" or "right-wing").

The "left" is a general belief in social justice, and is sometimes associated with socialism. Modern left-wingers generally mandate equality, and support policies like welfare and government-subsidized healthcare. This trends toward having a larger federal government. In the U.S., "liberal" is a term often used to denote left-leaning tendencies.

The "right" generally believe in conserving the social and economic status quo, which is often termed conservative. This trends towards having less regulation and thereby a smaller federal government. The goal is to keep the nation stable, and the wealth in the hands of those who make it. This ostensibly means lower taxes, because the government does not provide as much.

Politicians typically align themselves into groups of similar beliefs and positions called "parties". In the U.S., there have generally been two dominant parties (although there have been times where three or more parties have shared roughly equal influence and support. In today's politics (which is apparently known as the fifth era of political parties, or Fifth Party System, as noted on the outside edges of the comic) of the two current primary U.S. political parties, the Democrats are the left-leaning party, and the Republicans are the right-leaning party. The dominant parties are generally considerate "moderate" in their left- or right-wing leanings, which is by necessity, as either party requires the support of a majority (or a few percent under) of voters to win. Smaller parties often run candidates with more extreme views, but such candidates rarely win, due to a more limited number of possible supporters ensuring that even a relatively large minority would have zero chance of representation. (see Duverger's law).

The comic

The comic effectively consists of three separate charts: The left- and right-hand charts are the main charts; they represent the Senate and House respectively, and purport to show the left- and right-wing leanings of each legislature through U.S. history. There is a legend on the right that sets out fairly clearly how the charts work, but basically Randall has split each wing into three levels including the very moderate or "Center" right or left, and the more extreme or "Far" right or left, as well as the average left and right, without prefix. A dotted yellow line represented the balance of power in each legislature, and white lines represent the leanings of certain notable people including presidents.

Some presidents are not indicated, because they were never senators or congressmen (most of these were state Governors, such as Clinton, Bush and 2012 candidate Mitt Romney). As may be noted from the chart, Barack Obama is considered "left" while Paul Ryan is considered "far right". It's also notable that the "center right" ideology appears to be completely eradicated from the House and is waning in the Senate (although a similar trend is shown around 1900 with the centrists making a comeback thereafter.

On either side of these charts, there are descriptions or explanations for expansions and contractions of each ideological group.

The center chart appears to primarily act as a timeline. Each president is listed with their leanings indicated by a left or right arrow. Wars are shaded in grey. Other notable events are also indicated. On either side of the center chart (although somewhat mixed in with the aforementioned Senate/House explanations), there are also references to the primary parties of each era showing how they evolved (left-leaning parties on the left, and right-leaning parties on the right).

Finally, there's a little extra commentary on the right side, below the legend.


A history of
The United States Congress
Partisan and ideological makeup



Being a stupidly over political (please don't ask me here, this is an xkcd wiki not reddit) kinda guy, this one really interests me. Another one of those amazing visualizations of real-world facts xkcd is so great at. I have no idea what one might write for an explanation that would be useful. Everything is explained in pretty thorough fashion right on the panel... -- Renegade4dio (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Well, there's always the transcript for us to waste time work on. Davidy22 (talk) 12:36, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

The first thing that is missing is the explanation why there are two houses. Why never three or four? I get why monarchy only had advisors but opposition varied with whichever branch of the family had most to lose. So there was a never ending and closely focussed stream of opposition, albeit short-lived if unsuccessful. I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 18:29, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Congress as check

Perhaps a pedantic point, but I couldn't leave the description describing Congress as simply a check on the president. That would imply that the president has free reign (literally) and that Congress only acts (or, more often, doesn't act) to veto the president. That is a much more accurate description of the president's role in legislation (or of a pre-modern English Parliament). -- (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)


There's a typo on the right-hand side of the comic around 1952 - "Other than these few years after the war; the House [was] under control Democratic control for the entire period ...". The "was" is missing. TheHYPO (talk) 15:27, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

definition of conservative is pejorative

Conservatives are not interested in preserving wealth amongst those who have it - they are interested in creating as many opportunities to create wealth as possible by reducing unwanted government regulation and returning to constitutional limitations (aka 10th ammendment) on Federal power. A different view of liberty and rights than what liberals maintain, but highly supported - I find your definition to be highly pejorative. Ghaller825 (talk) 18:59, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

That went completely over my head, but you're entirely welcome to change it if the definition in the article bothers you. Davidy22(talk) 09:16, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps the segment could be changed to say "conservatives believe the government should not interfere with a person's wealth", or something very similar. The resistence to government involvement seems to be more consistent across the various degrees of the modern conservative movement. I'll admit that my suggested statement is also false, because almost everyone believes there should be some amount of taxes, and taxes affect wealth. However, it should be more palatable to the political ideology.
I understand your offense, Ghaller. On the other hand, the current phrasing using "making wealth" is also a loaded term, as many factory workers would feel that they are "the ones who make it" more than the CEOs, but are certainly not getting more money. I'm not saying I agree with that perspective, just that it's a suggestive statement, and this is not the forum to have an endless debate over it. The unsigned comment above me has the best compromise in my opinion, so I will implement it. - jerodast (talk) 18:12, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I notice the following: (1) George H.W. Bush is shown as serving in the Senate. He never made it to the Senate, just the House. (2) Abraham Lincoln appears to be shown as serving in the House for about seven years. He only was there for one term (two years). -- 02:18, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

It also lists John A. Garfield in the House from 1862 until his election -- it is James A Garfield, not John.

It lists Abraham Lincoln (and the Republican Party of Lincoln's time in general) as right-leaning, even though it's widely accepted that the Republicans of that era (whose base was made up mostly of Northern abolitionists) were the more liberal party, and the Democrats (whose base was comprised in large part by Southern slave-owners) the more conservative. -- (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Definition of Liberal

While in the US, liberal might mean left-wing, in the UK it's pretty central and in Australia it's right-wing. Go figure.--Joe Green (talk) 04:23, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Classical liberalism [1] is very different from American liberalism; Americans would recognize it more as Libertarianism. --Prooffreader (talk) 09:12, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

The socialists are well-known for hijacking the good-sounding misleading names. Such as "liberal" in America or "bolshevik" (a made-up word meaning literally "majoritan", a member of majority) in Russia. 00:10, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

That comment makes it sound like there's some conspiracy behind the left thinking up good names for their movements. The words themselves don't really mean anything. You don't have to go back too far in US history to find 'liberals' and 'socialists' being demonized as spies and traitors, and even today the right is happy to call the left 'liberal' with strong undertones of 'weak'. Leftist are generally better at naming things I'll grant you, but then almost all leftist movements (barring the Khmer Rouge and cultural revolution era china) have had strong ties to both universities and the entertainment industry, people who are used to being persuasive with words so it's not surprising that they came up with nice friendly sounding terms for their movements.LostAlone (talk) 12:17, 6 April 2015 (UTC)


In the "How Ideology Is Calculated" section, I note "acccounting".--Joe Green (talk) 04:23, 30 October 2012 (UTC)


He didn't exactly say that Conservatives are interested in preserving wealth amongst those who have it; I think the implication is that "if you made it, you should get to keep it" (or as much of it as possible, hence lower taxes). One consequence of this is that the distribution of wealth tends to remain static, in that the rich stay rich and the poor stay (relatively) poorer. Whether or not that consequence is an intentional one is perhaps in the eye of the pejoratively-inclined beholder :-)--Joe Green (talk) 04:30, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I made an edit to that effect, but it appears to have been wiped out by another editor calling it "right-wing trolling". If you would like to try re-wording it, please do. lcarsos (talk) 05:05, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
By changing just a little bit I think I removed most of the negative connotation.Bugefun (talk) 05:11, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Kind of unrelated but the diagram to me looks sort of like arteries and veins, with the red and blue. And the branches look like how they branch off the heart and stuff. Bugefun (talk) 05:10, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Red inside blue and vice versa

What do the red strands inside the blue section and the blue strands inside the red section represent? It doesn't seem to be explained anywhere. 14:15, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Red on the blue side represents "Conservative Democrats" and Blue on the red side represents "Liberal Republicans". Confusing a bit, but so are both those political terms (lol). It is stated (in small text) on the top right diagram of the comic--Dangerkeith3000 (talk) 14:53, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Left vs right - or why this comic is stupid

The traditional definition of left vs right (people attribute all sorts of things to it these days) is the support of change (hence the names progressives vs conservatives, or radicals vs reactionaries). The terminology comes from France where those that advocated reforms to government sat on the left of the chamber and those that wanted to do such things as restore the monarchy sat on the right. Your traditional Burkian conservative (smidgen to the right of the centre) would accept change is inevitable, but must be controlled. To the right of that people that want to maintain the status quo, further right people that want to go back to some "better time". To the left you get the, let change happen as it comes, further left lets make change a "good thing", to the furthest left "lets force change". A large part of the Marxist philosophy is that not only is communism desirable, but inevitable as according to Marx that is the final destination of all societies. Now to my point. Over time the parties have switched sides and often will be left on one issue and right on another. Often the parties themselves were divided (look at the civil rights act's passage) To simply say Democratic Party has always been left and the Republicans have always been is such a gross simplification that is renders the whole image a farce. 01:07, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

What can we learn from this?

I've learned that our congress (and law in general) is too complex. We are tying to keep outdated laws relevant by using an endless series of exceptions (legally called amendments). I hope someday we will be able to scrap the whole thing and simplify our laws so that our children do not have to spend up to a quarter of their lives learning our mistakes. XKCD, please help us simplify something like law so you don't have to waste your time visualizing something as broken as our understanding of it. - e-inspired 18:36, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

This is something someone needs to contact Randall about. (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Mesage of the day
Today's incomplete explanation of the day is 1127: Congress. Help us fix it!

Yes. We desperately need to fix the Congress... -- Wesha (talk) 19:39, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

It might help to have a corollary chart that tracks gerrymandering, that is the practice of selecting and isolating minority and majority populations in districts so that there is virtually no contest at the time of election. A city can be carved up to include just enough suburban voters to overwhelm what would otherwise have been their political choice. Districts now often resemble convoluted, sinuous serpent creatures rather than geography divided along natural boudaries. If someone could write code that would redraw districts with the following parameters: number of voters, and walking distance to polling places - without regard to income, race, party designation, etc. It would change the map drastically. At any rate, many districts have been redrawn to control election results. Such a chart would parallel the divisions in congress.Bralbovsky (talk) 00:25, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Someone could (and probably has) come up with code to do what you suggest, but the courts won't let them use it.

When districts are drawn without regard to race, some racial groups wind up underrepresented, because they are a substantial percentage of the total population, but are not a majority in a proportional number of districts (for example, if there are 4 districts and they are 25% of the total populations, then they should be able to elect someone from that group in 1 district, but if they are 25% of each district, then members of the other racial group, which is 75% of each district, may get elected in all 4 districts, when it should be just 3). This is considered unfair and a violation of their right to "equal protection", so districts must be drawn along racial lines to comply with court orders to give these groups fairer representation. 16:50, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Not intending to worry anyone, but isn't it annoying that the colours are the wrong way around? In the UK we represent the Tories/Conservatives/Republicans with blue and the Labs/labour/democrats with red. This is why it fits that the social democratic reforms promoted by social communism a flown on a red flag and the working capitalists and imperial monarchists are represented by a blue flag. Why the other way round? Raydleemsc (talk) 08:05, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

If this chart was about British politics, the colours would be wrong, but in US those are the standard colors for the parties. Blame mass media if you want [[2]] S42ky (talk) 18:51, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

This is actually a pretty recent thing--and a silly one. Traditionally, each news outlet picked colors independently, and they were pretty evenly split among red for Republican or red for Democrat most years. In 2000, when the election was hung waiting on the Florida recount, everyone on TV was pointing at electoral maps on every broadcast. After two days, NBC switched colors. Other outlets began to follow suit, and once most outlets were using the same color scheme, after which pundits started talking about "red states" and "blue states" as shorthand for states where republicans or democrats won, and we've been stuck with that ever since. So, what made NBC change? Either their news director was annoyed that NBC and the Washington Post (the first paper he read in the morning) used opposite colors, or one of their pundits couldn't remember which colors they used and suggested that the alliterative red=Republican would help him stop screwing it up. Whichever of those is true is the ultimate reason red means Republican. 12:24, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
It's a shame this chart doesn't get updated. It's going to need some infrared ink over the next 4 years! SteveBaker (talk) 14:27, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
Our country is now led by a GOP monopoly... :( If only Sanders had won the Democratic nomination, we might not be in this mess. 03:19, 31 January 2017 (UTC)