Bernard Sanders
Independent · VT · U.S. Senate
Bio
Bernard Sanders is an American politician and activist serving as the senior United States senator from Vermont, a seat he has held since 2007. He is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history, but maintains a close relationship with the Democratic Party, having caucused with House and Senate Democrats for most of his congressional career and sought the party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders is regarded as one of the main leaders of the 21st-century American progressive movement.
Full bio on Wikipedia →Record of service
- In office
- 35.6 years
- Chambers
- House 16y, Senate 19.6y
- First took office
- 1991 (12 terms)
- Seniority
- 7 of 100 by time served
- Age
- 84
- Senate class
- 1 · senior senator
- Senate Democratic Outreach Chair · 2023–present
- Burlington, VT · 802-862-0697
Service history, offices and identifiers from unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain). Years served sum each term rather than subtracting the first start date, so a break in service is not counted as time in office.
Reported net worth
- Assets
- $662k – $1.8M
- Liabilities
- $200k – $500k
- Net worth
- $162k – $1.6M
- Since 2018
- +$383k
From annual financial disclosures, which report every asset and debt as a bracket — so these are ranges, and the figure shown is their midpoint. A primary residence is not a reportable asset while its mortgage is a reportable debt, which pushes some members negative. How this is calculated →
Overall lean (DW-NOMINATE)
Issue profile
Each issue runs left ↔ right, scored from how the member voted on bills tagged to that issue (−1…+1). Issues with too few votes are blank. Overall lean uses DW-NOMINATE.
How they score against the parties
Bernard Sanders's voting record compared with each party's national platform, issue by issue — the same similarity score used across the site.
On the political map
Bernard Sanders (the large ringed dot) among every current member of Congress and the party platforms.
Each small dot is a current member (Dem · Rep); the larger dots are party platforms — click one for its closest members. Economic axis: taxes, healthcare, labor, energy. Social axis: abortion, guns, immigration, civil rights, crime.
Do you vote like Sanders?
Answer a few questions on the issues and see which members of Congress — and which party — actually line up with you.
Caucuses & committees
Where Sanderssits in Congress's own organization — each group's lean is computed from its members' voting records. Explore them all on the caucuses and committees pages.
Caucuses
- Congressional Progressive Caucusstrongly left · 93 members
Committees
- Senate Committee on the Budgetcenter · 21 members
- Senate Committee on Environment and Public Workscenter · 19 members
- Senate Committee on Financecenter · 27 members
- Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairscenter · 19 members
Most and least aligned members
Treating Sanders's 14 issue scores as a vector, cosine similarity measures whether two voting records point the same way (+100%) or in opposite directions (−100%) — the colleagues whose records align most and least with theirs.
Recent notable votes
Latest news
‘Mentally unstable’ Trump losing grip on power as major reckoning approaches: US senatorA “mentally unstable” President Donald Trump is growing “increasingly out of control” as he stares down a major reckoning in November, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) claimed on Thursday, a reckoning that could ultimately see the president finally lose his grip on…
Raw Story · Yesterday
Transcript: The Mistake That Progressive Candidates Keep MakingThis is a lightly edited transcript of the August 26 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.Michael Podhorzer: We’re going to kick off, and folks will join. Hopefully you all know o…
The New Republic · August 27, 2026
Senate Resolution Will Demand Answers on Extremist Israeli Settler Violence Against US CitizensA group of Senate Democrats on Thursday announced plans to introduce a privileged resolution requiring the Trump administration to give Congress more information about violence carried out by extremist settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Led by Sens. C…
Common Dreams · August 27, 2026
There’s Nothing Wrong With Being a “Subaru Socialist”The sweeping success of progressive candidates this election season and the rapid growth of the group with which many of them are aligned—the Democratic Socialists of America—has triggered a spate of recent articles that range from sympathetic handwringing ov…
The New Republic · August 27, 2026
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