Analysis · October 21, 2026

How each state's delegation scored

Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah have the highest-scoring congressional delegations; Kentucky, South Carolina and West Virginia the lowest. What separates the top states from the bottom.

Every state sends two senators and at least one representative to Congress. Congress Report Card grades each of them individually, but voters often think about their delegation as a group. This article ranks the 50 states by the average score of their whole delegation and looks at what separates the top from the bottom. The full table, updated every night, is on the states page.

How the ranking works

A delegation's score is the simple average of its members' overall scores, senators and representatives together. Each member counts equally, so in California the two senators make up only 2 of 54 members, while in Wyoming they make up 2 of 3. That has a big effect on how much one member can move a state's average: a single low score barely moves California, but it can move a three-member delegation by several points.

The national average across all members is 77, a C+. Most states are close to it. The gap between the 10th-ranked state and the 40th is about 7 points.

The top of the list

What the top states have in common is consistency. None of Nebraska's five members has a grade below B−, and Don Bacon has an A. Utah's six members all have grades between B− and A−. Wyoming's three members are led by Harriet M. Hageman, the state's only House member, with an A−.

The top of the list is not a partisan story. Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and Iowa have all-Republican delegations. Oregon's is mostly Democratic. Virginia's is split between the parties, and it includes three of the House's A-range members: Eugene Simon Vindman and Suhas Subramanyam, both Democrats, and Jennifer A. Kiggans, a Republican.

The bottom of the list

The low-ranked states mostly have one thing in common: members with poor attendance. Kentucky's average is pulled down by Mitch McConnell, who has the lowest score in the Senate, and it also includes three members with D grades. South Carolina has three members with an F, including Nancy Mace, who has missed 120 House votes, and Darline Graham, who joined the Senate in July. Florida has five members with an F, the most of any state, and two of them are among the House's five lowest in attendance. Massachusetts has two members with an F, Richard E. Neal and Seth Moulton, and no member above a B.

The bottom of the list is not a partisan story either. Kentucky, South Carolina, West Virginia and Arkansas have all- or mostly-Republican delegations; Massachusetts's delegation is all Democratic; Florida's is mixed.

The largest states

The biggest delegations land in the middle of the table, which is what you would expect: with dozens of members, extremes cancel out.

California, with the largest delegation, has more A-range members than any other state, eight in all, including Jimmy Panetta, Young Kim and Senator Adam B. Schiff. It also has four members with an F. New York has four A-range House members, among them Michael Lawler and Claudia Tenney, both Republicans, and Timothy M. Kennedy, a Democrat.

Texas and Florida, the second- and third-largest delegations, both rank in the bottom third. In both states the average is pulled down by a group of members who miss many votes: Texas has four House members with an F, and Florida has five members with an F. Both states also have strong performers: August Pfluger of Texas has an A−, and Rick Scott of Florida has the highest score in the Senate.

What a state ranking does and doesn't tell you

A delegation's average is a convenient summary, but it hides as much as it shows. In almost every state the spread between the highest and lowest member is much larger than the spread between states. Kentucky ranks last, but Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky has a B. Nebraska ranks first, but most of its members are in the B range, not the A range. If you live in a state, the grades of your own two senators and your own representative matter more than the state's rank.

Small delegations also move easily. A three-member state can rise or fall ten places with one member's change in attendance. Several states also have members who joined partway through the Congress, whose grades cover a short period and are marked as partial terms.

DC, Puerto Rico and the four other territories are left out of the ranking because each sends a single non-voting delegate. Their records are covered in Delegates and the territories.

To see where your state stands today, and every member's grade, attendance and bills, open the states page.

Figures are from the Congress Report Card data as of October 21, 2026. Grades change as Congress votes, so the numbers on member pages may have moved since. How grades are calculated.