Spatial voting theory, traditionally applied to national bodies like Congress and the Supreme Court, has yet to fully explore state legislatures.
Data Access Challenge: Obtaining comprehensive roll call data for all U.S. states proved difficult historically.
Methodological Innovation: We leverage a recurring survey of state legislative candidates to overcome this limitation.
Comparative Scope: This dataset enables cross-state and in-state chamber comparisons over time, including with the U.S. Congress.
The resulting ideological mapping reveals how spatial models can now address questions about state political dynamics while contributing insights into legislative politics more broadly.
| Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures was authored by Boris Shor and Nolan McCarty. It was published by Cambridge in APSR in 2011. |
