a basic exploration into voteview congressional data
Bipolarization is a phenomena that has been predicted through the usage of NOMINATE scores. The NOMINATE score being of two dimensions in which all Congress members fall, with -1 being more progressive, and 1 being more conservative, to give a cursory explanation. More information and the original paper written about the NOMINATE score here: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/81716/1/sswp487.pdf
Since, VoteView has captured the NOMINATE score of every Congressperson and compiled these individuals into a database. This project seeks to explore this data, attempt to discover some possible trends within the data, among other things.
Citation:
Lewis, Jeffrey B., Keith Poole, Howard Rosenthal, Adam Boche, Aaron Rudkin, and Luke Sonnet (2023). Voteview: Congressional Roll-Call Votes Database. https://voteview.com/