Congressional town halls

Abstract

Members of the US Congress held over 25,000 town hall meetings over the last eight years, and yet we know very little about the role that these events play in American politics. In this article, we present new data on congressional town hall meetings held in the 114th to 117th Congresses (2015–2022) to explore why politicians hold such meetings. In short, we do not find consistent evidence that electoral vulnerability drives legislators to their districts. Nor do we find support for claims of a zero-sum tradeoff between lawmaking and district representation. However, members of the president's opposition party clearly and consistently host more town hall meetings, suggesting that party messaging may be at the heart of this often-overlooked congressional behavior.