Dartmouth Events

Measuring the Ideology of State and Congressional Districts

Jamie Monogan, Associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Georgia

Thursday, April 25, 2019
12:15pm – 1:30pm
Class of 1930 Room, Rockefeller Center
Intended Audience(s): Public
Categories: Free Food, Lectures & Seminars

Measuring the Ideology of State and Congressional Districts Using Universal Kriging

Abstract:  In this paper, we develop and make available measures of public ideology in 2010 for the 50 American states, 435 congressional districts, and state legislative districts. We do this using the geospatial statistical technique of Bayesian kriging, which uses the locations of survey respondents, as well as population covariate values, to predict ideology for simulated citizens in districts across the country. In doing this, we improve on past research that uses the kriging technique for forecasting public opinion by incorporating Alaska and Hawaii, making the important distinction between ZIP codes and ZIP code tabulation areas, and introducing more precise data from the 2010 Census. We show that our estimates of ideology at the state, congressional district, and state legislative district levels appropriately predict the ideology of legislators elected from these districts, serving as an external validity check.

For more information, contact:
Laura Mitchell

Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.