Policy consultant Pavan Venkatakrishnan has a new morning routine. Wake up. Check his phone. Test his knowledge on old congressional votes. Brush his teeth. Go to work on the Hill.
He’s among the users of a new online game drawing in political junkies who can’t seem — or don’t want — to escape the throes of Congress, even in their personal time.
“Yea or Nay,” which launched Aug. 10, offers players the daily chance to recall how five senators voted on three actions such as landmark bills or presidential appointments.
How did New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan vote on a 1996 welfare reform bill? Nay. How did Arizona Republican John McCain vote on the confirmation of George W. Bush’s attorney general pick John Ashcroft? Yea.
Users earn up to 15 points and, depending on their scores, are grouped into factions such as “committee chair” or “master of the Senate.”
“It’s like catnip for the type of person who takes pride in remembering Byron Dorgan’s vote record from 2008,” Venkatakrishnan said, referencing the former lawmaker from North Dakota.
He said he has yet to score less than 13 out of 15 so far.
Alex Goddard, the game’s developer, said that unsurprisingly the program has found its most players in the nation’s capital. Goddard grew up surrounded by politics. His dad, Taegan Goddard, founded Political Wire, a prominent policy blog, in 1999.
Goddard has made a handful of other games before, but said this one found its own form of virality on X in recent days as journalists and policy workers posted their scores. Players can’t find Yea or Nay on the app store, just on the internet. Goddard said he has about 100 daily Yea or Nay puzzles prewritten.
Beyond being a fun way to test your wits, Goddard said the game is also a reflection of today’s political polarization and how bipartisanship has slowly gone by the wayside. On social media, some users shared their surprise at certain votes highlighted in the game, such as Rhode Island Republican Lincoln Chafee being the only GOP senator to cast a “nay” vote on war in Iraq in 2001.
“You can learn in some ways how much politics have changed,” Goddard said. “Republicans and Democrats didn’t only used to vote together, people voted across the aisle.”
Venkatakrishnan, 20, said he found the game from an X post shared by Political Wire and almost immediately became hooked, calling the format “very Gen Z.”
“This game was almost designed in a lab for me specifically, because I spend as much time as I do thinking about Congress as I do working with it,” he said.
Benjamin Burroughs, an associate professor of emerging media at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said Yea or Nay had a Wordle-esque “magic bullet” of going viral, connecting with a strong fan base and keeping players coming back daily with new puzzles.
Peter Sterne, an editor at a local magazine in New York, praised the game for its level of detail in descriptions of the bills and each senator’s bio. He called himself a political junkie, but admitted with a laugh that he made a faux pas on one puzzle when he guessed that Joe Manchin III voted nay on a bill which was his own namesake (of course he voted yea).
Still, Sterne powered through his momentary lapse and has continued to play and learn from the game he can’t put down.
“It’s Wordle for people who are fans of The West Wing,” he said.
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