Persuadability

Published May 11, 2026 · Updated October 1, 2026

The data

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

How the persuadability score is computed

The score is the published VoteLog persuadability formula (see section 8 of the methodology). Five components each contribute a lean in [-1, +1] and a confidence in [0, 1], weighted as follows:

The composite math:

raw_lean        = Σ (wᵢ · leanᵢ · confᵢ)  /  Σ (wᵢ · confᵢ)
lean            = tanh(2 · raw_lean)              # squashes outliers, preserves rank
disagreement    = sqrt( Σ wᵢ·confᵢ·(leanᵢ − raw_lean)²  /  Σ wᵢ·confᵢ )
confidence      = log(1 + N) / log(1 + 30)  ·  (1 − 0.5 · disagreement)   # N capped at 30
lock_in         = (leadership × caucus × money_reliance) / 4.48   # structural, direction-independent
persuadability  = (1 − lock_in) · confidence · (1 − lean)   # for lean > 0; 0 otherwise

Members are scored only when confidence ≥ 0.4 and the member has a positive pro-Israel lean (lean > 0). Below the confidence floor, or with no pro-Israel lean, a member is not ranked. A weak positive lean is not excluded: a near-neutral member with low structural lock-in is the most movable and scores highest.

All 464 scored members, ranked by persuadability

Every member who clears the eligibility floors, from most to least persuadable. Each name links to the member's profile.

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 — counting only years the member was actually in office, so someone who left Congress and later returned is not credited for the gap. 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 tenure shown on member cards is different: it is the years actually served across both chambers, so a senator’s House years count.)

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.

Data last synced: 2026-10-25.