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Politics Government

Data Mining the US Senate Votes 93

Posted by michael from the his-record-doesn't-match-his-record dept.
AJ writes "We used some old and new data mining techniques to see what was happening in the US Senate in 2003. Among other things, we identified the 'social' network of similarities between senators, how influential is each senator and each state, and a 3D VRML view of the Senate. You will be able to check whether Senator Kerry was a centrist or a liberal, and who is acting more cohesively, the Democrats or the Republicans. We provide our data and the source of all our analysis software (Orange and MPCA, both under GPL)."
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Data Mining the US Senate Votes More

Data Mining the US Senate Votes

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  • Well, that link didn't last long. Does anyone have some juicy sample results from before it tanked?
  • This has to be the coolest thing I've ever seen. Someone else said it's /.ed, but its a Coral Cache link, and it loaded fine for me. Maybe your local cache is down.

    Being able to see the data in a usable form rather than looking at bland figures and listening to spin on tv about how "Rob Republicans hates old people and wants to kill your children" and "Dennis Democrat want's to eat babies" and then back it up with some nonsequitur vote is a lot better.

    mmmm, pretty colors.
  • 5 out of 8 "not voting" for Kerry while all the others voted for every measure? And those include education, agriculture, and strengthening local government.

    Also a no vote for strengthening Social Security but a yes vote for preventing drilling in the arctic refuge.

    Is this meant to be biased or is this really his voting record? If it is accurate, I guarantee who I'm not voting for.

    • Re:Do I read this correctly? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Thursday October 28, 2004 @01:18PM (#10656046) Homepage Journal
      Notice that the period surveyed is exactly the period he's been running for President. Before the campaign began, Kerry's attendance record was somewhat better than average, IIRC.

      Also be very, very careful when reading the short descriptions of the bills and amendments voted on. The content often has very little to do with the name or the summary. "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism," anyone?

      • The data is for 2003 - not 2004.

        You're claiming he stopped attending the senate in 2003 while campaigning for the Democrat primary?

      • The content often has very little to do with the name or the summary
        Usualy seems to mean the opposite in my experience, then when you get to the admenments, it's like trying to read a patch file, insert comma here, change "and" to "and or" in sec 15 para 3 line 2 ect. . Maybe we should introduce a bill to force congress to use CVS!
    • That table is a small sample of both Senators and votes/issues. The text makes no mention of how this particular section of the whole table was chosen, and also doesn't tell you to draw conclusions from it. I don't think it's wise to extrapolate a person's entire record from it.
  • This presentation looks a little weird.
    Did you include NV as opposing vote, same vote, or just drop it completely. If dropped completely, it looks like you've got some weighting to balance out shading for senators with high % on NV.
    • they analyzed NV both as a vote as the final outcome, i.e. a nay if the bill failed, and as asssumed from previous record; personaly I favor the former as it usualy means "I don't have the balls to vote on this, and the outcome is certain anyways".
  • But trying to make sense of what they mean before I've had my first cup of coffee is making my head hurt...
  • I wonder if these models could be extended back to show how the senate has changed from session-to-session, and also to show how influential a Senator has been over their entire career?

    Good stuff. I hope this stuff is more widespread for 2006.

  • interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by St. Arbirix ( 218306 ) <matthew.townsend ... il.com minus cat> on Thursday October 28, 2004 @01:14PM (#10656002) Homepage Journal
    They have a similarity matrix [nyud.net] that pairs Senators and measures how close their votes were to other Senators. It's arranged in order of the clustered blocks [nyud.net] in the Senate and if you look at Kerry's data on the vertical you'll notice that he, Edwards, and Lieberman are the Democrats who most agreed with Republicans on matters. This is interesting because two are running for President and Vice President while many thought the third would be Kerry's running mate.

    Furthermore, there is a decent sized band of midwestern Republicans who are faintly in agreement with the Democrats. It's the midwest that's usually depicted as a big red blob of Bush voters.

    Also worth noting is the middle pack of Democrats and Republicans who nearly never agreed with any Democrats.

    It looks as though Kerry got on better with both parties of the house than anyone else, despite all the reports we hear of him being the most liberal voter. Very interesting.

    • Re:interesting... (Score:4, Informative)

      by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @01:56PM (#10656389) Homepage Journal
      You'll also note that they were among the four who had the highest non vote percentages, which is why they ended up clustered toward the majority. This is a side effect of running for president, not due to actual choices they would have otherwise made. Which means, they don't (necessarily) agree more with the Republicans at all; I think you'd want to look at a non-election season like 2001 or 2002, or else a longer stretch of the data to make that kind of determination.
    • if you look at Kerry's data on the vertical you'll notice that he, Edwards, and Lieberman are the Democrats who most agreed with Republicans on matters.

      I'm looking at looking and have you say we must have a difference in how we are interpreting these graphs.

  • and who is acting more cohesively, the Democrats or the Republicans

    In other words, you'll be able to check which party most consistently follows the party-line and the party leadership, and which is more open to a broad variety of ideas.

    Haven't looked much at the results, yet; I just wanted to point out that the word "cohesive" in that paragraph really stood out in my mind as an attempt to impose a value on the data that perhaps we shouldn't hold to.

    • The trend for the last 15 years or so has been for both parties to act in a more cohesive manner. There are few defections on either side anymore. I just finished reading a study that pointed this out, but I'm too lazy to get up and find it or I'd cite it. Its an interesting trend thought. I'd imagine that right now we're in the middle of a political re-alignment, and this cohesiveness solidifies, we'll see new candidates that challenge the status quo and break it back up for another 30-40 years or so.
  • Missing data is a pain for social network analis. Non of the models that are used can really deal with it. And most models need the data to be in binary form there is no good models that uses reals so you can not really see gradulaity.

    If want to see some good social network software and you can do the networks yourself. Just look at ucnet or ora [cmu.edu]
    Ora is making better work of missing data

  • The true liberal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Muda69 ( 718162 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @01:21PM (#10656082)
    My 11-year-old asked me the other day what the word "liberal" means. I explained that many people have tried to give "liberal" a negative connotation, but it really is the basis on which our country was founded -- freedom for all. Remember that "liberal" and "liberty" share the same roots. A liberal leaves room for people to have a different opinion and doesn't label that opinion wrong -- it's just different.

    I told her that "liberal" is not a dirty word and suggested that she look it up in the dictionary, which she did. It explained that liberals don't allow authoritarian, orthodox, traditional beliefs to dictate/restrict the rights of others. A liberal is considered tolerant of alternative views and free from bigotry (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=liberal) .

    Some people have been very effective at convincing everyone that "liberal" is a bad word based on a few extreme liberals, and they have used it for political advantage. Considering the history of our country, people who aren't "liberal" should give us cause for concern. If you care about freedom for all, be proud to call yourself a "liberal." Many of my friends are Republican, but I would call them "liberal" because they are open and tolerant. Being a liberal doesn't mean that you have to be an extreme, left-wing Democrat. It means you have to be broad-minded, and that, frankly, is something all of us should strive to be. I plan to vote for "liberal" candidates, regardless of party affiliation, because they will protect our freedom.

    • Re:The true liberal (Score:4, Insightful)

      by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @01:59PM (#10656414) Homepage Journal
      A liberal is considered tolerant of alternative views and free from bigotry

      Mention that you're a Republican at the meeting of some traditionally painted "liberal" group like, say, The Sierra Club, and see how "free from bigotry" they really are. (here's a hint: not very free from it at all).

      • Er, the Sierra Club gets trotted out a lot as a "liberal" organization. So does Peta. Neither have ever struck me as "liberal" in the sense that all which leans left is not all that is liberal. It's a special interest group that tries hard to attract those of a left-leaning persuasion. There are plenty of left-leaning authoritarians. That's antithetical to the real "liberal" mindset. Neither really compares to the ACLU, which I'd call a genuine "liberal" organization based on the organization's aspoused phi
        • Change your settings and read the story I posted in response to the A/C who ridiculed me. It will clear things up for you I think. The point is, a lot of self-described "liberals" are quite bigoted. And if you called them "left-leaning authoritarians" to their faces, they'd try to revoke your own liberal label from you.
    • Yes, the irony is that around the time of FDR, the main course in American politics got split into "conservative" and "liberal". These do not mean as such in a literal sense, they simply mark divergence from the prevailing opinions at the time. I think it would be easy to argue that both of the major parties in the US would technically be center or right of center on an absolute 7 point scale (with 1 being total socialism, 4 being center, and 7 being Total libertarianism). I'm not saying that there are n

    • Re:The true liberal (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Canthros ( 5769 )
      While that's all well and good, that's neither a strict historical definition of the word (see 5a) nor a particularly revealing definition of the word in current usage, where the meaning is more closely along the lines of progressive (3) [reference.com].

      I would surely like for the word to be reclaimed from the illiberal clutches of modern Liberalism. But it doesn't look likely any time soon. Better to call yourself libertarian, if that's your point of view.

    • Re:The true liberal (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Wylfing ( 144940 )
      My 11-year-old asked me the other day what the word "liberal" means...it really is the basis on which our country was founded

      Although you are right that ideological tolerance is one of the founding princicples of the U.S., "liberal" is also a founding principle in a way that you do not address, namely "freedom from governance." The classic liberal prior to the 70s held the view that government is inherently bad and its reach should be limited wherever possible. Ever since Roe v Wade, however, the conservat

  • Cost Effective? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @01:42PM (#10656275) Homepage Journal

    So, suppose you happened to be a lobbyist and wanted to get the most bang for your buck in terms of legislation?

    Who's your man and who should you avoid?

    (And conversely, if you're paying with votes instead of dollars.)

    • That's a good point, but just because one Congressperson is more effective than another, doesn't mean that they will be a good "access point" for whatever change you would like. Bill Frist is at the top of their list, but I doubt he's going to be very helpful getting a tax increase pushed through. The individual Senator's preferences (or constituency's depending on how you view things) will still be a better measure of who to talk to and not waste your time on.

  • IP Score (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Free_Trial_Thinking ( 818686 )
    My IP Score Idea:

    A simple thing that an organization like EFF or Downhill battle could do is to look over these voting records and create a simple "IP score" or "Electronic Freedom score" from the voting records.

    That way people could look up the issues they care about most and see how the candidates 'score' against each other.

    Scores are easy ways to summarize large amounts of information and would allow everyone to see how congress people are doing on important issues. Obviously almost no one is going

  • All it takes is a Flash animation of these visualizations, with some snappy music, and the Internet can destroy months of spin. For example, Kerry is obviously not the "most liberal Senator" (he's #7), and the most popular Republicans are the most "conservative". Their demonstration of the relative lack of influence of the "majority Democrat bloc" compared to the "minority Republican bloc" also gets across how control of the rules and committees gives Republicans control of the Senate, despite their bare ma
  • Can you add in the senator's net worth, and then note when his vote went against his normal 'views', and possibly an increase in net worth?
  • Zell Miller is a Democrat in name only.

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