I've seen the future of state legislative apps

Greg Combs, a recent PhD from UT Dallas (and fellow Sleestak fan), has assembled one of the coolest political iPhone apps I've ever seen.  It's called TexLege.  Basically, it's just a really sophisticated directory of the Texas state legislature.  It's far better than any app I've seen for the national government, and I don't know if any other serious apps exist for state legislatures.

The upper screenshot at left shows the main alphabetical listing of legislators.  Note how each line shows you the name, the photo, the party, the district, and the number of years of service.  Plus, you see that red-blue bar with the star?  That's an estimated ideal point derived from legislative roll call votes.  How cool is that?  That's a lot of of information displayed in a very economical way.

The lower screenshot shows the entry for one particular member.  Here we get to see a comparison of the member's ideal point with those of the two major parties over time.  Scroll down further and you can see which committees he serves on, contact information, an interactive district map, the Votesmart profile, and other things.

The version of TexLege up on the App Store right now is a bit outdated -- Greg has been letting me demo the new version.  Unfortunately, I believe he plans to ask $10 for the new one.  Still, I'd imagine that a number of lobbyists would be okay paying for that -- this could be a very valuable resource for them.

I wonder if Greg would be willing to partner up with some other state legislatures or the NCSL to export this technology beyond Texas.

Turning the Republican into a Third Party Candidate

There's a great story going on in the Colorado governor's race with regards to third parties.  When Tom Tancredo jumped into the race as the nominee of the American Constitution Party, he was polling around even with Dan Maes, the Republican nominee.  That's certainly impressive, and attributable to Tancredo's own widespread name recognition throughout Colorado (and Maes' relative lack thereof).  Given what usually happens with third party candidates, one would generally expect that Tancredo's support would wane and Maes' would increase as the campaign brought Republican voters back to their own party's nominee.

That hasn't happened.  Indeed, recent polling suggests that Tancredo's share of the polls is increasing at Maes' expense.  Tancredo's also massively outpacing Maes in fundraising.  During the first two weeks of September, Maes raised less than $15,000, most of which went to pay off a campaign finance violation penalty.

Why is this happening?  This strikes me as an endorsement story.  There's a good reason Tom Tancredo has never won an election outside of Colorado's 6th congressional district.  He's extremely conservative and bombastic.  That's normally toxic to mainstream party elites, who have generally avoided backing him in statewide (or presidential) runs.

But now GOP party elites are trying to get Dan Maes, whom they view as a colossal mistake, to drop out of the race, and they're doing so by backing Tancredo.  The list of Tancredo endorsers includes relatively mainstream party folks like Bob Beauprez (the GOP's nominee for governor in '06), Josh Penry (who dropped out of the governor's race last year), and former state Rep. Rob Witwer.  Their backing is an indicator to other Republicans that it's safe to like Tancredo this year.

(h/t ColoradoPols)

sweaty guitar rock, bro-on-bro comedies, things with engines, and dystopias

The OkCupid dating service decided to do a study of the profiles of half a million of its subscribers, looking at which terms and phrases subscribers use to describe their interests and breaking down the results by race and gender.  They provide some wonderful word-cloud analyses.  The results are amusing, if not terribly shocking.  White guys, the study summarizes, are into "sweaty guitar rock, bro-on-bro comedies, things with engines, and dystopias," while white women seem to be into "bonfires, boating, horseback riding, thunderstorms."  They further summarize these two categories as "frat house" and "escapism."  Pretty interesting interactions of race and religion in there, as well.

Unions

I've never figured labor unions for angels, but it is a sacred principle in our family that one does not cross a picket line.  Picketers are risking their own livelihoods for a chance at a better work environment using the one advantage they have over corporations -- collectivity.  Whether we agree with the union's goals or not, I teach my children, we must respect the risks they are taking and honor their struggle.

Or so I thought.  I have to say that this Daily Show segment, in which we learn that a UFCW local is hiring temporary picketers at non-union wages, was an eye-opener for me.  Kudos to Comedy Central for providing actual investigative journalism.

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Gentrifying the farm

France apparently has a program by which urbanites are paid (modestly) to go to the countryside and convert rundown farm houses into rural inns.  Sounds like a win-win: the Parisians get to experience country life and get their hands a bit dirty while the beauty of rural life is preserved even as people leave the farm.  Clever.

And let me take this opportunity to salute the article's author, Enik Rising regular reader Marc Herman, who managed to finance a bike ride through France by selling the story to the Atlantic.  Even more clever.

Me on NPR

You can listen to my 17 seconds of taxpayer-subsidized fame here.

How much did the health care vote hurt?

There was much speculation at the time of the passage of the Affordable Health Care for America Act that a yes vote might put Democratic House members from moderate districts in greater danger of electoral defeat.  Voters are known to punish members for being ideologically out of step, but would one particular roll call vote matter?  (Steven Greene suggested this idea to me -- blame him for this particular act of inception.)

To see how House members were doing, I used 538.com's brilliant election forecasting site.*  I decided to look at the members from the 50 most conservative congressional districts (as measured by the 2008 vote for McCain) that are represented by Democrats.  These range from Florida's 22nd (represented by Ron Klein), where McCain got 48 percent of the vote, to Mississippi's 4th (represented by Gene Taylor), where McCain pulled 68 percent.

Out of the original 50 districts, only 41 had members who cast a vote on health care reform and are running for reelection.  If we just divide these members based on their health care votes, those who voted for health reform are running 2.7 percentage points behind those who voted against it.  But, of course, we should control for other things, especially district conservatism, since those from the more conservative districts voted almost uniformly against reform.  I also included the members' DW-NOMINATE scores to distinguish the health care vote from the members' overall voting records.

What I found was that Democratic supporters of health care reform are running 3.2 percentage points behind Democratic opponents.  (This is statistically significant at the p≤.05 level.) That's a three percentage-point penalty resulting from a single roll call vote.  I would describe that number as large.  Most members of Congress win by much greater margins than that, of course, but for Democratic incumbents from conservative districts in a distinctly anti-Democratic year, three points is serious business.  Indeed, of the 41 Democrats I examined, only six are currently forecast to win by more than three points (and none of those voted for health care reform).


*The 538 forecasting site is far from perfect, and I question some of their results.  For example, they suggest that Rep. John Salazar in Colorado's 3rd will only get 48 percent of the vote, which I think understates his support significantly.  But they're depending on polling, which is pretty scant in most congressional races.  Regardless, 538's site is far and away the best thing going on out there in terms of House election forecasting.  Thanks to Wesley Hussey for the tip.

Update: The data are available here.