tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3412583847145043520.post2830397233858094537..comments2024-03-27T19:01:21.504-06:00Comments on Enik Rising: Polarization among state politiciansSeth Maskethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178036016555722068noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3412583847145043520.post-51736719904946197992009-10-23T08:20:59.257-06:002009-10-23T08:20:59.257-06:00Apparently 15 years of roll call votes from each s...<i>Apparently 15 years of roll call votes from each state legislature. (I really need to know how they pulled that off.)</i><br /><br />They've set up tools so that as soon as they get an electronic copy of the journal, they can have a student input some appropriate parameters into a perl or python program that, once set, scans through the entire set of journals for roll-calls. It helps that the way journals display roll-call votes fall into a few relatively easily coded categories.<br /><br />Then they combine that with OCR to turn paper journals they've ILL'ed into electronic journals.<br /><br />Even apart from having the roll-call data too, nonresponse bias doesn't seem to be much of a problem. If you predict NPAT participation with vote-based nominate scores by party in Wright's data, they're only significant for a few chambers, so NPAT participants vote pretty much like their nonparticipant copartisans. Now that I think about it, they may even be jointly insignificant across chambers.<br /><br />(Jim Battista, who's far too lazy to sign up for a proper userid)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3412583847145043520.post-66241410208963502942009-10-22T19:36:12.491-06:002009-10-22T19:36:12.491-06:00Seth, thanks for the kind words. So actually the n...Seth, thanks for the kind words. So actually the nonresponse rate isn't really a problem, because I use <b>both</b> roll call data and Votesmart survey data. The former is to get 100% coverage of all state legislators for the past decade and a half or so, the latter is to put every state into common space with each other and Congress. As long as respondents are consistent in their issue preferences between roll call voting and survey response, I'm ok...<br /><br />About California -- yeah, that pretty much jumps out at you, doesn't it?bshorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08382365536021941653noreply@blogger.com