Friday, November 2, 2012

Stark choices in NH Congressional races

I haven't been following NH Congressional races very closely. And, even if I wanted more information, I'm not sure where I could get it. At least in NH2, both campaigns are full of utterly useless information: "[Ann Kuster says] 'Eff him!'" and "Charlie Bass voted for Congressional pay raises 3 times." (Oh, the horror!)

So I was happy to see that Boris Schor at the University of Chicago has put together a measure-- similar to NOMINATE-- of U.S. Congressional candidates' ideologies.

Unlike the scores I usually work with, these range from -3 (very liberal) to +3 (very conservative).


With the exception of Charlie Bass, all NH candidates are more extreme than the average of their parties. Bass scores a surprising (to me) +0.2, putting him near the center. Here are the scores:

Candidate Scores
NH1 D Carol Shea-Porter −1.33
NH1 R Frank Guinta 1.64
NH2 D Ann Kuster −1.73
NH2 R Charles Bass 0.2


Now this is information we can actually use!

Visit Boris' blogs here, here, and here for more details.

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