
Show HN: Voting Relationships in the US Senate - DavidChouinard
http://static.davidchouinard.com/congress/
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pfraze
There's probably some cool insights in here, but I'll need some help
understanding it. For instance, what does an edge in the graph represent? What
can I tell from the boldness of the line?

@DavidChoinard can you give us a key?

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DavidChouinard
The thickness of edges represents the number of times the pair of senators
voted the same in the Senate (only edges above a threshold are shown).

The two tightly coiled clusters shows just how weak the relationships are
between the two parties.

The closer the nodes are to the center, the more bipartisan those Senators
are. In the current Congress, Sens. Murkowski and Collins really stand out as
by far the most bipartisan senators and important linchpins in bridging the
gap between both parties. (this bar graph of partisanship shows that:
[http://i.imgur.com/gYCMaxo.png](http://i.imgur.com/gYCMaxo.png))

Also, it’s clear that in the current Senate, partisanship is a lot more
pronounced among Democrats, likely because they hold the majority in the
Senate. (ie. they have a lot less incentive to compromise)

While there were ups and downs, it’s clear that there’s a general trend of the
Senate becoming a lot more divided over the last 25 years. Comparing 1989 to
today is striking — opinions were a lot more intertwined back then (this
static image really emphasize it:
[http://i.imgur.com/4kDokyz.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4kDokyz.jpg)).

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cinquemb
The last url looks like some kind of political mitosis. There's probably a
joke here related to the genome of government being split into two identical
halves…

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dnautics
1) How are abstentions counted? Does a senator that abstains more get pushed
out towards the edge for having less connections in general?

2) Is this correct: If a party member votes 100% along the party line, then
they will be towards the center of the blob. If a party member is less
partisan in the fashion of voting WITH bipartisan consensus (e.g. voting for
hugely consensus PATRIOT act) then that person is gets put in the center. If a
party member is less partisan in the fashion of voting AGAINST bipartisan
consensus (e.g. voting against hugely consensus PATRIOT act) then they would
be on the edge far from the center.

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vikp
Interesting analysis, David. I actually got strikingly similar results looking
at voting matrices and using SVD to turn them into two dimensions:
[http://vikparuchuri.com/blog/how-divided-is-the-
senate/](http://vikparuchuri.com/blog/how-divided-is-the-senate/) and
[http://vikparuchuri.com/blog/the-danger-and-power-of-
visuali...](http://vikparuchuri.com/blog/the-danger-and-power-of-
visualizations/) . I assume you did something similar.

Either way, it's surprisingly easy to get access to this data, and fun to
analyze. I have the scraping code on github (described in my blog) for anyone
who is interested.

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reagan83
Nice work David. For anyone interested in this type of analysis, Harvard has a
new Data Science course this semester that had this node relationship analysis
as a HW using the same data sources. You can check out the course site at:
cs109.org

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DavidChouinard
I'm actually a student in the course and my interest in this was spun out of
the last homework.

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thehme
Ok, so while I wish I had the time to create a cool web app to analyze
political data, I def think it would required not to overload the user's CPU.
I launched the site and immediately my MAC slowed down to crawl. I checked top
and it at at 100%+

I do not recommend you clicking on any of the dots.

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smokeyj
Can someone make a glass app that covers a politicians face with the logos of
their largest interests? That would make politics bearable for me.

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sciguy77
Their suits could have logos on them, sort of like boxers' robes.

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Wingman4l7
People have made the "NASCAR jumpsuit covered with logos from donators"
suggestion/joke for _years_. There was even a White House Petition for it:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/white-house-
petitio...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/white-house-petition-
logos_n_2912087.html)

~~~
anigbrowl
Yes, it's getting kind of old and is unworthy of this discussion.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Just because it's an old idea doesn't mean it's not a good one.

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caf
If you like this, you may also be interested in Simon Jackman's ideal-point
estimates for both the Senate and House:

[http://jackman.stanford.edu/ideal/currentSenate/x1.pdf](http://jackman.stanford.edu/ideal/currentSenate/x1.pdf)
[http://jackman.stanford.edu/ideal/currentHouse/x2.pdf](http://jackman.stanford.edu/ideal/currentHouse/x2.pdf)

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SapphireSun
Really cool! In addition to the comments others are making, I would recommend
making the intensity of the base blue and red colors match. The democrats look
more intense than the republicans just because of the color choice when given
how interlocked they are, I assume the average blues are probably about the
same as the average red. (Also a legend would help.)

Awesome work!

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ebilgenius
I think it's fascinating watching how the parties have split up more over the
years.

~~~
tdfx
It looks like the Democrats are coming together on their votes, and
Republicans differences are widening. It does make sense, as the fiscal
conservatives and social conservatives really are different breeds.

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cinquemb
This would be even cooler if it was somehow combined with the data from
opensecrets.

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friggeri
If you're into that kind of things, here is a similar project I did last year:
[http://friggeri.net/research/senate/](http://friggeri.net/research/senate/)

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jluan
For those interested, I believe the underlying data is from DW-NOMINATE
([http://voteview.com/dwnomin.htm](http://voteview.com/dwnomin.htm)).

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DavidChouinard
The data is actually from GovTrack.us, which I suspect is also where DW-
NOMINATE gets it. My script for querying GovTrack is on Github:
[https://github.com/DavidChouinard/congressviz](https://github.com/DavidChouinard/congressviz)

~~~
jluan
Very cool!

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martindale
It would be helpful to see an animation to clarify this, but it's interesting
to quantify how increasingly polarized this has become, starting in the early
'90s.

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x0054
+1 If the author could get data from 1980-2013, and make it into a 60 second
animation, it would be really interesting to see.

~~~
DavidChouinard
I've definitely considered that, but it's computationally difficult to make it
in the browser. This animated gif is as close as it comes:
[http://i.minus.com/ibi7p66VbETpnU.gif](http://i.minus.com/ibi7p66VbETpnU.gif)

~~~
001sky
This is illuminating, also would be if you could add _years_ to each slide
that would be even more fascinating. Great work and thanks for sharing!

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rbmoshe
This algoritm pragmatically computes how far left/right a senater's polical
views are by placing them in the corresponding place on the page

~~~
dnautics
I am not sure this is correct.

1) How are abstentions counted? Does a senator that abstains more get pushed
out towards the edge for having less connections in general?

2) If a party member votes 100% along the party line, then they will be
towards the center of the blob. If a party member is less partisan in the
fashion of voting WITH bipartisan consensus then that person is gets put in
the center. If a party member is less partisan in the fashion of voting
AGAINST bipartisan consensus then they would be on the edge far from the
center.

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x0054
Is data for pre-90s years available? I am really curious to see the 60-70-80s
progression.

~~~
DavidChouinard
My data source (GovTrack) only has vote count, but not roll calls, before the
101th Congress. It might be possible to get data before that, but I suspect
it's quite hard.

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mattpavelle
A legend/key would be nice.

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x0054
I am assuming that the more clustered the circles are, the more like minded
the party is? Each line represents a vote. So, a thick line between 2
congressman represents more general agreement, and thinner line means they
agree only on a few things. Also, the position of the circles to the left or
the right represents the extent of their political leaning, based on their
votes.

Above are just informed guesses. A key really would be nice.

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kposehn
This is absolutely fascinating.

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vdhus
what's the story on Miller (D-GA) 2003-2004?

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maxerickson
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zell_Miller#Senate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zell_Miller#Senate)

