Which Party Files Late? STOCK Act Compliance by Party
When we published the member-by-member late-filer ranking, we left one obvious question unanswered on purpose: does one party miss the STOCK Act deadline more than the other? At the time our roster was missing party affiliation for several of the heaviest late filers, and a partisan split with those rows blank would have been wrong in whichever direction it leaned. The roster is now complete for every member with a meaningful record, so here is the answer, with the part that usually gets left out: it depends on how you count.
Count every disclosed trade once, and Republicans filed 16.4% of theirs past the 45-day deadline against 1.4% for Democrats (1,731 of 10,560 versus 256 of 17,717). That is a gap of 11.7x and it is the number a headline would use. Count every member once instead, and the typical Republican with at least 10 dated disclosures is late on 8.0% of them, the typical Democrat on 0.9%. Same direction, much smaller, and a more honest description of how an average member of either party behaves.
Two ways to count the same filings
The transaction-weighted frame is dominated by whoever trades the most. The member-weighted frame gives a senator with 12 trades the same vote as a representative with 12,000. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions. The first asks what share of the disclosures that reach the public are late. The second asks what a member of each party typically does. The table shows both.
| Measure | Democrats | Republicans |
|---|---|---|
| Members with 3+ dated disclosures | 73 | 94 |
| Dated disclosures | 17,717 | 10,560 |
| Filed past 45 days | 256 | 1,731 |
| Filed past 90 days | 216 | 1,512 |
| Share late, every trade counted once | 1.4% | 16.4% |
| Median lag, days | 24 | 27 |
| Members with 10+ dated disclosures | 52 | 70 |
| Typical member’s share late (median) | 0.9% | 8.0% |
| Average member’s share late (mean) | 12.1% | 21.5% |
| Members with at least one late filing | 31 of 52 | 48 of 70 |
| Members never late | 21 of 52 | 22 of 70 |
| Members late on half or more of their trades | 4 of 52 | 11 of 70 |
Read the bottom rows together. Most members of both parties have missed the deadline at least once (31 of 52 Democrats, 48 of 70 Republicans), and a similar number in each party have never missed it. The parties separate at the tail: 11 Republicans are late on half or more of everything they file, against 4 Democrats. The mean is pulled toward that tail in both parties, which is why the mean sits well above the median on both sides.
Where the gap lives
Split by chamber and the picture sharpens. In the House the two parties are closer than the headline suggests. In the Senate, Republican disclosures are late 62.1% of the time by transaction count, a figure that belongs almost entirely to two senators rather than to the caucus.
| Party · chamber | Disclosures | Late | % late (trades) | Median lag | Members (10+) | Typical member % late | Never late |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democrats · House | 17,140 | 249 | 1.5% | 24d | 47 | 0.9% | 18 of 47 |
| Democrats · Senate | 577 | 7 | 1.2% | 24d | 5 | 0.0% | 3 of 5 |
| Republicans · House | 9,028 | 779 | 8.6% | 26d | 61 | 7.1% | 18 of 61 |
| Republicans · Senate | 1,532 | 952 | 62.1% | 113d | 9 | 19.3% | 4 of 9 |
The concentration problem
Both parties’ headline numbers are hostage to a handful of members, in opposite directions. On the Republican side, the two latest filers account for 878 of the party’s 1,731 late disclosures, 51% of them. On the Democratic side the two latest filers hold 70 of 256, 27%, but the Democratic denominator is itself dominated by a single very active House member whose filings are almost always on time, which pushes the party’s transaction-weighted rate toward zero.
| Latest filers by party | Disclosures | Filed late | % late |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alan Armstrong R · senate · OK | 703 | 701 | 99.7% |
| Thomas H Tuberville R · senate · AL | 193 | 177 | 91.7% |
| Michael T. McCaul R · house · TX | 4,047 | 172 | 4.3% |
| Jonathan Jackson D · house · IL | 195 | 37 | 19.0% |
| Rick Larsen D · house · WA | 90 | 33 | 36.7% |
| David Trone D · house · MD | 35 | 28 | 80.0% |
Remove each party’s two latest filers and recount every trade once: Republicans are late on 8.8% (853 of 9,664) and Democrats on 1.1% (186 of 17,432). The gap survives the trim. It is smaller than the headline, larger than the median-member comparison, and probably the fairest single number on this page.
What this does and does not say
The direction is consistent across every frame we tried: transaction-weighted, member-weighted, by chamber, with and without the outliers. Republicans miss the 45-day window more often. The magnitude is not consistent, and any single figure quoted without its frame overstates or understates the difference. A late filing is a compliance fact about disclosure timing, not evidence about the trade itself or about the member beyond the filing. For what the market does during the window between trade and disclosure, see What Stocks Do Before Congress Discloses.
Methodology and honest caveats
Lag is disclosure date minus transaction date, both verbatim from the filings, with the same 0-to-1000-day sanity window as the late-filer ranking to exclude source-document date typos. Party comes from the unitedstates/congress-legislators roster, applied to every filer we track. Member-weighted rows require at least 10 dated disclosures; the party totals use every member with 3 or more. Only Democrats and Republicans are compared: 5 filers who are independents or still lack a party in our roster (28 dated disclosures between them, 0 late) are excluded from both columns. Filers are a subset of Congress: a member who never traded has no compliance record and does not appear. Figures are computed live and update as new filings arrive, so the numbers above may differ from the ones quoted the day this was published.
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Coldpine is a publisher of intelligence on public Congressional disclosures. Filing lags are computed from dates in the public filings and describe disclosure timing only; they are not evidence of wrongdoing by any member or party. This is informational only, not investment advice, and not a suggestion to buy, sell, or copy anyone’s trades.