Bridging Ideologies: Using Congressional Transfers to Compare State Legislators

Comparative ideal point estimation for state legislatures faces two major challenges: scarce longitudinal roll-call data, and inadequate scaling within individual states. These limitations prevent useful comparisons with congressional estimates or between different state assemblies. This paper provides a solution by creating a new comparative dataset of state legislative roll calls and employing an innovative method that uses bridge actors—legislators who transitioned to Congress—to align state legislative ideal points into the congressional common space for 11 states.

Data & Methods

• New Dataset: Created a comprehensive, multi-state dataset of legislative roll calls.
• Method: Leveraged legislators who moved from state positions to Congress as bridge actors. Their known voting records in both contexts provide a link between different institutional scales.
• Scope: Estimated ideal points for 11 specific states.

Key Findings

• State legislative ideal points can be reliably estimated and compared using this method.
• The results produce comparable scores across states within the congressional common space framework.

Relevance & Application

• Provides a tool to study ideological representation in state politics by comparing it directly with national representatives.
• Enables more nuanced analysis of political dynamics, such as how state legislators' ideologies translate or change at federal levels.