Persuadability

Not every member of Congress is locked in. This analysis surfaces Representatives and Senators with mixed or shifting Israel/Palestine records: the swing votes most likely to move on future Gaza, ceasefire, and arms-sale bills, ranked by how persuadable their voting and sponsorship history suggests they are.

Published May 11, 2026 · Updated July 24, 2026

The data

466 currently pro-Israel-leaning members are eligible for a persuadability score.

25 most persuadable members

RankMemberPartyStatePersuadability score
1Gwen MooreDWisconsin0.523
2Brian SchatzDHawaii0.473
3Tammy BaldwinDWisconsin0.448
4Jahana HayesDConnecticut0.432
5Danny K. DavisDIllinois0.426
6Sylvia R. GarciaDTexas0.408
7Eleanor Holmes NortonDDistrict of Columbia0.408
8Stephen F. LynchDMassachusetts0.407
9Teresa Leger FernandezDNew Mexico0.406
10Gabe AmoDRhode Island0.402
11Robin L. KellyDIllinois0.395
12Val T. HoyleDOregon0.390
13Bennie G. ThompsonDMississippi0.389
14Deborah K. RossDNorth Carolina0.380
15Sean CastenDIllinois0.376
16Janice D. SchakowskyDIllinois0.368
17Judy ChuDCalifornia0.366
18Christopher MurphyDConnecticut0.364
19Tina SmithDMinnesota0.357
20Alma S. AdamsDNorth Carolina0.349
21Paul TonkoDNew York0.347
22Angela D. AlsobrooksDMaryland0.345
23Tim KaineDVirginia0.339
24Zoe LofgrenDCalifornia0.332
25Tammy DuckworthDIllinois0.324

Coverage-adjusted velocity: who’s actually persuadable?

Raw point totals are misleading without a denominator. A freshman with +13 in one year is a committed pro-Israel ideologue ramping fast. A 4-year veteran with the same +13 has had several opportunities to commit further and chose not to — functionally persuadable, even though both look identical on a points-only ranking. This page measures the difference and surfaces the names where pressure is most likely to move the needle.

Net score is the same signed lean used everywhere on the site: positive for pro-Israel records, negative for pro-Palestine records. We take the absolute value so velocity measures

Our dataset only becomes meaningful from 2023 onward — keyword-based bill search misses most older legislation (2022: 6 tracked bills, 2021: 15, ~zero before). So coverage years counts from the later of (a) 2023, or (b) the member’s first sworn-in year, through today. A 30-year veteran like Nancy Pelosi gets 4 coverage years, not 40. Otherwise her velocity would be diluted by decades of Israel/Palestine legislation we simply don’t have on file, making her look spuriously persuadable.

The velocity number on every member profile is bucketed into one of four tiers:

Long opportunity, low commitment. Actively winnable on individual bills.

Some commitment, but not so dense that an organized push can’t shift specific votes.

Consistent record. Unlikely to flip in aggregate, but still worth holding accountable on specific bills they’ve been quiet on.

The name and the side are functionally identical. Energy is better spent elsewhere.

The "most persuadable pro-Israel members" table below the chart is filtered to members with:

The mirror analysis on the pro-Palestine side is mostly noise — that side is small enough that almost every name is load-bearing.

Velocity for sub-4-coverage-year members is too sensitive to a single recent vote to be informative; we don’t want to mistake a freshman for a persuadable veteran. (Because the floor is 2023, in practice this means anyone sworn in by 2023 or earlier qualifies.)

Tie-broken by lower absolute net score so the most genuinely uncommitted members surface above the merely slow-accruing.

A long-serving member with +1 or +2 may have earned that score from a single ceremonial Yea on a unanimous resolution rather than from substantive support. Always click through to the member’s profile and review the actual record before treating the velocity as actionable.

A consistently silent member may genuinely support the side at heart but have no opportunity to say so on the floor. Velocity captures the public record, not the private position.

Anyone in office before 2023 gets the same denominator (today minus 2023). That means a 30-year veteran and a 4-year veteran with identical net scores get identical velocities — we treat them as having had the same amount of

One break and ten breaks both light the callout. The member profile shows which specific votes were the breaks so you can read severity yourself.