New Polarization Metric Indicates a Congressional Brain Drain with more Collaborative "Bridgers" Leaving Congress than "Dividers"

• Bridge Pledge's newly released "Bridge Grades for Congress" measures members of Congress on collaboration, bipartisanship, and polarization
• A disproportionate share of bridgers (70%) departing Congress from both parties could make Congressional collaboration more difficult than ever

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Bridge Pledge, a citizen-led project of Boulder, Colorado's Mediators Foundation, reveals its inaugural "Bridge Grades for Congress" and reports that America's more collaborative politicians are departing Congress faster than their divisive counterparts.

Bridge Grades for Congress, a polarization report card like Rotten Tomatoes for politicians, measures members of Congress on collaboration, coalition building, consensus solutions, and commitment to bridging divides. 

Already hyper-polarized, both chambers of Congress look to face further divisiveness, disproportionately losing its most collaborative and consensus-solution oriented leaders to retirement and those running for other offices. These losses further reduce Congress's already limited skill in collaboration and building consensus solutions.

"Coalition-building in Congress is already uncommon enough, so it's alarming to lose our most collaborative and least polarizing politicians from both parties," lamented Brad Porteus, Bridge Pledge founder and executive director.

Of those stepping down, 30 of 45 departing House members and 7 of 8 departing Senators are graded as bridgers (earning A's and B's) in the Bridge Grade rubric - representing 70% of the total departing Congressional leaders compared to an expected 50%.

Nineteen bridgers running to regain their seats face tight re-election races in November, according to Cook Political Report race data.

Bridge Grade Methodology Explanation
Bridge Grades offer an objective, non-ideological, data-oriented, and transparent method of sorting bridgers from dividers based on actions and behaviors such as voting records, bill sponsorships, and public statements. Bridge Pledge's non-partisan scoring system blends 15 metrics from six 3rd party public sources to score Congress members on a bridging and dividing scale from 0 to 100. Using a forced grading curve, the top half of each legislative body receives A's and B's, while the bottom half receives C's and F's.

Why Bridge Grades
Toxic polarization is holding our nation back. Over the last 40 years, the ideological gap of members of Congress has measurably widened. Meanwhile, monthly Gallup polls on political affiliations repeatedly show that there are more American citizens who identify as independents (40%) than members of either major party. While neither party has a monopoly on extremism, hyper-partisan politicians from both parties attract the bulk of the money and media attention. Yet 88% of Americans believe leaders of different parties finding compromises together can help lower political division. But it has been objectively difficult to know who these effective political leaders are. Until now. 

Bridge Grades for the 118th Congress represent a starting point for an objective polarization metric which will be further refined with the upcoming 119th Congress and then on an ongoing basis indefinitely. The blended metric is designed to become a public utility that is open-source, crowd-sourced, and independently governed – buffered from party influence or other special interests. 

"Polls show that the majority of Americans are exhausted with the infighting and frustrated with the legislative logjam" said Mark Gerzon, President of Mediators Foundation. "As voters we need to think differently and reward bridgers over dividers in both parties. Over time, as we can change the incentives for our political leaders, we can shift our culture to a more united nation."

View all Bridge Grades for Congress, a full description of the methodology, access to all raw data, and links to all data sources on www.bridgepledge.org.

For more information, contact [email protected] 

SOURCE Bridge Pledge

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