Comments on: Left-right ideology of voters, congressmembers, and senators

By: Does America remain a center-right nation? | Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:33:58 +0000

[...] Does America remain a center-right nation? [...]

By: Andrew Ferguson dot NET » Why I Hate Politics in General: Reason #382

Andrew Ferguson dot NET » Why I Hate Politics in General: Reason #382 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:57:23 +0000

[...] Left-right ideology of voters, congressmembers, and senators via [...]

By: News » Stuck in the middle, politically

News » Stuck in the middle, politically — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:11:21 +0000

[...] A very interesting graph of the estimated ideological positions of US voters, senators, and represen… shows that members of Congress are much more liberal and conservative than are US voters, who fall somewhere in the middle. (via 3qd) [...]

By: 9379 - Wednesday « The Scotto Grotto

9379 - Wednesday « The Scotto Grotto — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:26:50 +0000

[...] need to get pye in the light like that, so he doesn’t look like the phantom blot ! A very interesting graph of the estimated ideological positions of US voters, senators, and represen… shows that members of Congress are much more liberal and conservative than are US voters, who fall [...]

By: J’s Notes » Left-Right Ideology

J’s Notes » Left-Right Ideology — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:16:45 +0000

[...] Red State, Blue State has some interesting graphs of the ideology of voters compared to Congressmen …: [...]

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:22:19 +0000

Bullfighter:

I agree with your first point (as noted in my subsequent blog entry). On your second point: it doesn’t take a big shift in votes to move the balance of power from one side of 50% to the other.

James:

You can read the Bafumi and Herron paper for more detail. Here’s a version of their paper from last year that discusses sample size etc.

By: James

James — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:35:00 +0000

You haven’t really shown anything here. Even if your sample size is adequate (which is impossible to say, since you gave no data on it), all that we know from this data is that (possibly correlated, or possibly not) bimodal distributions are similar to each other. That is vague and meaningless. A chihuahua and a doberman are both dogs (and hence similar).

By: bullfighter

bullfighter — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:56:17 +0000

These observations are interesting, but I am not sure what we can learn from them. I see some problems with comparing highly scrutinized and carefully thought out views of full-time politicians and on-the-fly views of private citizens. Also, the electorates in "battleground states" and "Democratic states" appear very similarly distributed, but they elect vastly different politicians. How would you explain that? Is something mismeasured here?

By: Boris Shor

Boris Shor — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:49:15 +0000

Testing…