Kasz216 said:
GameOver22 said:
Roll-call votes are complicated. The problem is, roll-call votes are unrepresentative of the bills that are discussed in Congress. Many bills just get a voice vote and go unrecorded, so unanimous votes and near unanimous votes often do not get picked up by these votes. This results in an overestimation of polarization within Congress because only highly contentious, paty-line votes get roll calls. Roll-call votes are also often times on incredibly marginal issues, so there might be a vote for passing a bill, but there are also 10 more votes on amendments to that bill. The overall conclusion is that roll-call are probably not the best measure of ideology.
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If anything. The reasons you gave make it sound like rollcalls are the best measures of ideology.
Interstingly... you can see EXACTLY what roll call votes he used too... and get yourself a score.
http://www.timgroseclose.com/calculate-your-pq/
I ended up at 57.2 Which is about exactly where i was expecting.
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Why would it be the best measure of ideology? I'm kind of confused about that. If extreme votes are disproportionately represented on roll-calls, you are going to get biased estimates of true ideology because you won't pick up more moderate issues.
