We compare how much federal money (contracts and grants) actually flows into this district against how much the district needs, based on poverty, income, and insurance data. Then we compare that gap only against other districts with similar population density — rural vs. rural, city vs. city — so a rural district never gets unfairly judged against a big city, or vice versa.
This is not a poll. Both sides of this come from real, recorded actions. The district's lean comes from how people there actually voted in the last two House elections. The member's ideology comes from their actual voting record in Congress, using a standard method that looks at which bills they tend to vote for together over their whole career. We score both on the same 0 to 100 scale and compare them. The closer they match, the higher the score. It does not matter if that match is liberal or conservative, both score the same either way. This is not a "good votes" or "bad votes" score. It only asks one thing: does this member vote the way their district actually votes, or more extreme than that?
We look at what share of a member's campaign money comes from small individual donors (giving $200 or less) and from individuals generally, versus PACs, corporations, and large-dollar donors. A higher score means more of their money comes from regular people rather than organized interests.
We rank every member nationally on each of the three scores above, then average those three rankings together for one composite score. Members are then graded on a curve: the top 10% get an A, the next 25% get a B, the middle 30% get a C, the next 25% get a D, and the bottom 10% get an F.
District Need (poverty rate, median income, uninsured rate) is shown for context only — it describes the district, not the member, so it never pushes the grade up or down.