SimCongress – a scale model simulation of all 535 congressional members

I built an end-to-end simulation of Congress with all 535 members "modeled".

I’ll share more detail soon, but here’s what surprised me.

In the first version, the agents were simple: voting records, public statements, committee assignments, donor data, and constituent polling. Then I let them vote.

Bills that have stalled for decades sailed through. Getting money out of elections passed with 95% approval. Banning insider trading for members of Congress hit 98%. Ending continuing resolutions cleared 95%.

Turns out, if you model lawmakers as mostly rational actors responding to inputs, they behave… rationally.

To make it realistic, I had to add self-preservation, incentives, and a strong sense of “the other side.”

Now those same bills die in committee. As expected.