Updating and Cleaning ICPSR's State Legislative Election Returns Data and a Study of State Legislative Redistricting

对美国立法机构选举的研究主要集中在国会，对州立法机构的关注要少得多。这是不幸的，因为州议会选举的数量很多，各州立法机构和选举规则的性质和州之间的差异，以及州和州立法机构在美国决策中的重要性日益增加，使得州立法机关选举特别适合于检验关于选举性质的理论。这类研究的最大障碍可能是缺乏关于50个州选举的容易获得的数据。ICPSR数据集的第一部分--《1968-1989年美国的州立法选举结果》克服了这一障碍，因为除其他外，它包含了在此期间参加每一次州立法选举的每一位候选人的一系列政治和选举结果措施。然而，学者们一直无法充分利用这些数据，因为对于有多次观察的候选人来说，记录的名字在不同的观察中经常不同(例如，有或没有中间首字母，有或没有昵称，印刷错误)。这些错误使得从一次选举到下一次选举不可能可靠地跟踪特定候选人，从而极大地限制了数据集的实用性。据估计，在参加大选的在职者中，这一数据集中有不止一种观察结果，其中35%的人至少有一次姓名记录不同--错误率为35%。在国家科学基金会最近的一项赠款下，私人投资机构开发并实施了一项程序，通过创建一个调整后的姓名变量来“清理”候选人姓名，该变量在同一候选人的多个实例中是一致的，错误率应在2%或更低。该程序包括一系列计算机算法，然后使用一套正式的决策规则对记录进行人工审查。目前的调查更新了通过2002年选举返回的州立法选举数据，并将名称清理过程应用于扩展的数据集。结果将是一个无缝的数据集，包括从1968年到2002年的每一位州立法机构大选候选人的信息，其中学者们可以准确地追踪每一位候选人的选举历史。公务员制度委员会已同意将这一经过更新和清理的数据集存档，其中将包括原始候选人姓名变量、调整后的姓名变量以及整个时间段原始数据集中包括的所有其余27个实质性变量。为了增强这一数据集的学术价值，将创建两个配套的数据集--一个包含1968-2002年的许多州级变量，另一个包含1992-2002年期间的地区人口特征测量。一些学者已经表示有兴趣使用增强的州立法选举结果数据集。完成后，该数据集将促进对各种主题的研究，包括：南方的党派重组、少数党候选人的行为和影响、在职者在其职业生涯中选举成功的决定因素，以及选举与政客公共政策选择之间的联系。重要的是，由于提案中讨论的各种原因，对任期限制的影响、各州选举和唱名表决之间的联系以及重新划分选区等专题进行系统的50个州分析是可行的，只有当数据集扩展到之后时才是可行的。事实上，这项研究计划让私人投资机构使用这些数据来研究战略候选人和立法机构的互动如何影响立法重新划分选区中存在的党派和在任选举压力。除了这项研究的基本研究价值之外，该项目还具有潜在的更广泛的影响，通过告知公众关于广泛问题的辩论，包括重新划分选区、任期限制、在任优势和美国各州代议制民主的运作。

Research on American legislative elections focuses predominantly on Congress, with far less attention given to state legislatures. This is unfortunate because the large number of state legislative elections, the variation across states in the character of legislative bodies and election rules, and the increased importance of states and state legislatures in policy making in the U.S. make state legislative elections especially well suited for testing theories about the nature of elections. Probably the greatest impediment to such research is the lack of readily accessible data about elections in the fifty states. Part I of the ICPSR data set, State Legislative Election Returns in the United States, 1968-1989 overcomes this obstacle, as it contains, among other things, a range of political and election outcome measures for each candidate running in every state legislative general election during the period. However, scholars have been unable to fully exploit these data because, for candidates for whom there are multiple observations, the name recorded frequently varies across observations (e.g. with and without a middle initial, with and without nickname, typographical errors). These errors make it impossible to reliably trace a particular candidate from one election to the next, thereby greatly limiting the utility of the data set. It has been estimated that among incumbents running in general elections for whom there were more than one observation included in this data set, 35% had at least one case in which their name was recorded differently - an error rate of 35%.The PIs, under a recent grant from NSF, have developed and implemented a procedure to "clean" the candidate names by creating an adjusted name variable that is consistent across multiple instances of the same candidate, and should have an error rate of 2% or less. The procedure includes a series of computer algorithms followed by the human review of records using a set of formal decision rules. This current investigation updates the State Legislative Elections Returns data through the 2002 elections and applies the name cleaning process to the extended data set. The result will be one seamless data set including information on every state legislative general election candidate from 1968 to2002 in which scholars can accurately trace the electoral history of each candidate. ICPSR has agreed to archive this updated and cleaned version of the data set which will include the original candidate name variable, the adjusted name variable, and all of the remaining twenty-seven substantive variables included in the original data set for the entire time period. To enhance the scholarly value of this data set, two companion data sets will be created - one containing numerous state-level variables for 1968-2002, andone including measures of district demographic characteristics for the 1992-2002 period.Several scholars have already expressed interest in using the enhanced State Legislative Election Returns data set. When completed, this data set will facilitate research on a diverse range of topics, including: partisan realignment in the South, the behavior and impact of minor party candidates, the determinants of electoral success of incumbents over the course of their careers, and the linkage between elections and the public policy choices of politicians. Importantly, for various reasons discussed in the proposal, systematic fifty-state analysis of such topics as the impact of term limits, the link betweenelections and roll call voting across states, and redistricting is feasible only if the data set is extended past 1989. Indeed, this research has a plan for the PIs to employ these data to study how the interaction of strategic candidates and legislative institutions affects the partisan and incumbency electoral pressures present in legislative redistricting.Beyond the basic research value of this research, the project has the potential for broader impacts by informing public debate on a broad range of issues, including redistricting, term limits, the incumbency advantage, and the operation of representative democracy in the American states.