Archive of State Roll Call Collection

对美国立法行为和政策制定的研究主要集中在国会，而很少关注州立法机构的政治。这是一个错失的机会，因为各州立法机构在许多关键因素上表现出差异，立法理论预测这些因素应该影响这些机构的运作以及它们对选民的反应程度。进行这种比较分析的最大障碍就是缺乏数据。点名记录经常被用来衡量立法者的政策立场以及立法机构内立法政党的凝聚力和实力。但是，与国会不同的是，各州的唱名投票记录并没有以任何容易获得的形式进行科学分析。这一数据短缺问题的解决办法是开发一种计算机辅助从各州各种来源和格式的点名数据中提取点名数据的方法。与手工编码和手工数据输入的传统方法相比，这种数据生成方法显着提高了效率，并且不易出错。该方法已经发展得很好，以便为1999-2000年的立法区会议以及随后的2003-2004年重新划分选区后的立法区会议编制一套完整的竞争性唱名和匹配的总统投票总数。此外，调查员还收集了州立法机构网站上所有的州立法机构唱名表决。这包括74个分庭的唱名，期间从6年到22年不等。纵向数据对于评估政党控制变化的影响、两极分化的大政党制度的特点以及立法规则和程序的变化特别重要。1999-2000年的数据已经过充分处理，可供一般使用。该基金支持对剩余数据集的处理，包括提取关键信息和格式化数据，使其适合统计分析和分发给研究界。这种新的数据资源的可用性将为在更大范围的案例上检验现有的立法理论和发展从比较角度得出的新的研究问题提供原材料。这些数据集将有助于研究人员开发有关美国立法机构运作的新知识。除了这些数据的基本研究价值之外，该项目还可能产生更广泛的影响，使公众了解美国所有立法机构的运作，包括任期限制、选举变更、分权政府和重新划分选区等改革的影响，以及选举变化的影响，如政党控制立法机构和州长。

Research on American legislative behavior and policy making has focused primarily on Congress with much less attention to the politics of the state legislatures. This is a missed opportunity because the states legislatures display variation in many of the key factors that legislative theories predict should influence the operations of these bodies and how responsive they are to their electorates. The greatest obstacle to this comparative analysis has been a simple lack of data. Roll call records are frequently used to measure legislators' policy positions as well as the cohesion and strength of legislative parties within legislatures. But, unlike Congress, the records of roll call votes in the states have not been in any easily available format for scientific analyses. This data shortage is addressed with the development of a methodology of computer-assisted extraction of roll call data from the variety of sources and formats in which this information is found in the states. This approach to data generation is dramatically more efficient and less error-prone than traditional methods of hand coding and manual data entry. The methodology has been well-developed so that a complete set of competitive roll calls and matching presidential vote totals for legislative districts were compiled for the 1999-2000 sessions, and subsequently, for the post-redistricting legislative sessions of 2003-2004. In addition the investigator has collected all of the state legislative roll call votes available from state legislative web sites. This includes roll calls for 74 of the chambers covering periods from six to 22 years. The longitudinal data are particularly important for assessing the effects of changes in party control, the character of the larger party systems which has been polarizing, and changes in legislative rules and procedures.The data from 1999-2000 have been fully processed are and available for general use. This grant supports the processing of the remaining data sets, including extraction of the key information and the formatting the data so that it is suitable for statistical analyses and distribution to the research community. The availability of this new data resource will provide the raw materials for testing existing legislative theory on a much larger set of cases and for developing new research questions that derive from a comparative perspective. The data sets will facilitate researchers' efforts to develop new knowledge about the workings of America's legislatures. Beyond the basic research value of these data, the project has the potential for broader impacts by informing public understanding of the operations of the full set of American legislatures including the impacts of reforms such as term limits, electoral change, divided government, and redistricting as well as the effects of electoral change such as party control of the legislatures and governorships.