Idealpoints

Legislator Characteristics, Constituency Characteristics, and Roll Call Voting

1 April 2011

Which matters more when legislators make decisions, their own characteristics or those of the people they represent? This paper uses comprehensive data on the personal attributes of both members of Congress and their constituents to com- pare the relative influence of eight legislator and constituency …

Latent Versus Self-Reported Ideology

1 July 2007

Spatial voting axes are seldom directly measurable. In general, political scientists employ latent variable models that aim to infer the presence and characteristics of axes from their impact on measurable quantities such as voting behavior. Ideology in the electorate is a rare case where researchers regularly attempt …