Methodology
How promises are chosen, sourced, rated and scored on ActionOverWords Index.
What this tracks
ActionOverWords Index tracks specific promises made by U.S. officials, federal and state, and shows whether each one has been kept, broken, or something in between. Most political coverage tracks what officials say. This tracks what actually happened to what they said.
The same standard applies whether a promise came from a Democrat or a Republican, because accountability that only works for one side isn't accountability. Officials who were appointed rather than elected, such as Cabinet secretaries and senior agency heads, are included and are marked Appointed in the interactive tracker.
How each promise is sourced
Our standard is three kinds of sources for each promise: one official government source (a vote record, a signed bill, an agency filing, or similar primary record), one mainstream/left-leaning news source, and one right-leaning news source. A status is meant to hold up across all three, not just one outlet's version of events. The three-source standard exists so that a status doesn't rest on reporting from only one side of the aisle.
A promise to introduce, sponsor or pass a specific, named bill is checked against the congressional record, which shows exactly what happened to the bill. For other promises, such as a policy goal or a campaign commitment, the standard is all three kinds of sources.
This is a new dataset, and sourcing is still being completed for many entries. Many of those entries carry a Still finding sources tag in the interactive tracker instead of being presented as fully verified. A status is our good-faith reading of the sources linked on the entry, not an audited record, and every call is open to appeal (see Corrections and appeals below).
Every source is linked on the promise and labeled by type: campaign statement, interview, voting record, official record, the official's own office, or news report. A campaign statement and an independently reported outcome are not presented as equally strong evidence, and the reader weighs the sources rather than being told what to think.
A promise is listed on the pages of this site only when its sources come from at least three distinct publishers and at least one of them is a primary record: an official record, a voting record, or the official's own office. Promises that do not yet meet that standard stay in the interactive tracker, and an official's page says when some of their tracked promises are not listed yet.
The six statuses
Every promise gets one of six statuses, based on what has actually happened, not on intent.
- Not started
- Nothing has happened yet.
- In progress
- Active movement, not yet resolved.
- Stalled
- Attempted, but momentum has died.
- Compromise
- Something was delivered, narrower than promised.
- Completed
- Kept as stated.
- Broken
- Not kept.
A promise whose outcome has not been fully verified shows Undetermined in the interactive tracker. That is a placeholder, not a verdict. It is left out of the AOW Score until it is resolved, and it is not published on these pages.
The AOW Score
An official's score is the average of their tracked promises, weighted by status, on a scale of 0 to 100. It is rounded to the nearest whole number, with halves rounding up.
| Status | Weight |
|---|---|
| Completed | 100 |
| Compromise | 60 |
| In progress | 40 |
| Stalled | 15 |
| Not started | 0 |
| Broken | 0 |
Undetermined promises carry no weight: they are left out of the average rather than counted as 0. An official with no tracked promises shows a dash instead of a 0, because no data isn't the same as a bad record. The score badge uses the same colors as the statuses: 70 and above reads green, 40 to 69 amber, and below 40 red.
There is no minimum number of promises required to produce a score, so a single promise generates one. That is why the number of tracked promises is shown next to every score: a score built on one promise and a score built on twenty look the same if they land in the same range, and the count is what tells them apart.
The formula is fixed and published, not an editorial judgment made case by case, so anyone can recompute it from an official's promise list and get the same number. It runs identically for current officials, past administrations and the archive, with no softer standard for someone no longer in office or who never won. Worked examples:
| Promises tracked | Calculation | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Completed, 2 In progress, 1 Stalled | (100+100+40+40+15) ÷ 5 = 59.0 | 59 |
| 1 Completed, 1 In progress, 2 Not started | (100+40+0+0) ÷ 4 = 35.0 | 35 |
| 5 Completed, 3 In progress | (100+100+100+100+100+40+40+40) ÷ 8 = 77.5 | 78 |
Keeping it nonpartisan
Most political trackers eventually reveal a lean: in which promises get picked, which words describe a broken one versus a complicated one, whose excuses get more room. A few specific choices here are aimed directly at that.
- Party is a fact, not a verdict. A party badge is colored the way an election map colors it, and that is the only role color plays. Status colors are earned by outcome, not by party: the same six categories, checked against the same standard, for every official.
- Party isn't assumed from context. Serving under a Republican administration doesn't automatically get someone tagged Republican, and serving under a Democratic one doesn't make someone a Democrat.
- Sourcing is shown, not summarized into a conclusion. Each entry links to the sources found for it, so the evidence can be checked rather than taken on trust.
- The score is a fixed formula. Nobody adjusts it case by case.
- Lists on these pages are never ranked by party or score. The directory and the administration, Senate, House and state pages group officials by where they serve and list them alphabetically, except the administration, which follows the official order: the President, the Vice President, then the Cabinet departments in their legal order of succession.
No dataset is perfect, and this one is still growing. What these choices are meant to do is make any bias that does creep in visible and checkable, instead of buried behind a "trust the editors" black box.
Corrections and appeals
If you think a status is wrong, or want to suggest a promise to track, use the Contact form on the Index and choose Suggested correction or Appeal a status, or write to info@action-over-words.com. Appeals need a named source, the outlet and headline being cited, so they can be checked the same way every other entry is checked. Every submission is reviewed, which is how the record gets more accurate over time.
What is and is not covered
Covered: the President, the Vice President, Cabinet and senior White House officials, and a set of sub-Cabinet law-enforcement and agency heads; the U.S. Congress, including its non-voting members; and in every state the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor (or whichever office is first in succession) and the Attorney General, with some larger states going deeper into their other executive offices. Former officeholders, past administrations and candidates who ran and lost are kept too, under the same statuses and the same sourcing standard, because a promise doesn't stop being checkable just because someone left office or never won.
Not covered yet: county and city government, school boards, and special districts. State legislatures and judiciaries are not built out yet. Federal judges and independent regulatory boards such as the Federal Reserve are a different category: appointed, often deliberately apolitical, and with less to track in the same way.
Not every tracked official has promises published yet. The officials directory shows who does, and a page appears automatically once an official has promises that meet the sourcing standard.
See also: Officials directory · Interactive tracker · FAQ