Politics, Promises, and Partisanship? An Analysis of President Obama’s Economic Stimulus Plan at the Congressional District Level

More than a trillion dollars of public money is spent annually on health care in the United States. In order to inform policymakers, health advocacy groups, tax-paying constituents, and beneficiaries, it would be useful to present and analyze health outcome and health-related data at the U.S. congressional district level. Presently, health event data are not reported at this political unit; however, recent interest and advances in areal interpolation techniques are beginning to transcend the inherent limitations imposed by legacy data collection and analyses systems. In this paper, the authors use the dasymetric approach to illustrate how this areal interpolation technique can be used to transfer county-level mortality rate data from several causes of death to the U.S. congressional district level. The study’s primary goal is to promote areal interpolation techniques in the absence of a systematic and comprehensive national program for geocoding health events.

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The Geography of Racially Polarized Voting: Calibrating Surveys at the District Level

10.31219/osf.io/mk9e6 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Shiro Kuriwaki ◽

Stephen Ansolabehere ◽

Angelo Dagonel ◽

Soichiro Yamauchi

Keyword(s):

Survey Data ◽

Total Variation ◽

The United States ◽

District Level ◽

Congressional District ◽

Congressional Districts ◽

Individual Level ◽

National Differences ◽

Racial Polarization ◽

Hispanic Voters

Voting in the United States has long been known to divide sharply along racial lines, and the degree of racially polarized voting evidently varies across regions, and even within a state. Researchers have further studied variation in racially polarized voting using aggregate data techniques, but these methods assume that variation in individual preferences is not related to geography. This paper presents estimates based on individual level data of the extent and variation in racially polarized voting across US Congressional Districts. Leveraging large, geocoded sample surveys, we develop an improved method for measuring racial voting patterns at the Congressional District-level. The method overcomes challenges in previous attempts of survey modeling by allowing survey data to inform the synthetic population model. This method has sufficient power to provide precise estimates of racial polarization even when survey data are sparse. We find that variation across districts but within states explains roughly 20 percent of the total variation; states explain a further 20 percent of the total variation, and 55 percent of the variation is simply national differences between races. The Deep South still has the highest racial polarization between White and Black voters, but some Midwestern congressional districts exhibit comparably high polarization. The polarization between White and Hispanic voters is far more variable than between Black and White voters.

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Do Congressional Candidates Have Reverse Coattails? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design

Political Analysis ◽

10.1093/pan/mpp013 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 17 (4) ◽

pp. 418-434 ◽

Cited By ~ 47

Author(s):

David E. Broockman

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Presidential Elections ◽

Regression Discontinuity ◽

The United States ◽

District Level ◽

Regression Discontinuity Design ◽

Congressional District ◽

Presidential Candidates ◽

Level Data ◽

Null Finding

Although the presidential coattail effect has been an object of frequent study, the question of whether popular congressional candidates boost vote shares in return for their parties' presidential candidates remains unexplored. This article investigates whether so-called “reverse coattails” exist using a regression discontinuity design with congressional district-level data from presidential elections between 1952 and 2004. Taking incumbency to be near-randomly distributed in cases where congressional candidates have just won or lost their previous elections, I find that the numerous substantial advantages of congressional incumbency have no effect on presidential returns for these incumbents' parties. This null finding underscores my claim that the existing coattail literature deserves greater scrutiny. My results also prompt a rethinking of the nature of the advantages that incumbents bring to their campaigns and may help deepen our understanding of partisanship in the United States.

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Incidence of Firearm Suicide in US Congressional Districts Estimated from County-Level Underlying Cause of Death Reports

10.21203/rs.3.rs-98077/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Kathryn Schnippel ◽

Sarah Burd-Sharps

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Population Group ◽

District Level ◽

Congressional District ◽

Health Crisis ◽

Congressional Districts ◽

Rural And Urban ◽

Control And Prevention ◽

Firearm Suicide ◽

The Difference

Abstract Background: Suicide is the most common form of violent death in the US and firearms are the most common means of suicide, contributing to half of all suicide deaths. The focus of this research is calculating suicide and firearm suicide counts and rates for each congressional district in order to highlight the types of legislation and local programs that can address this public health crisis in each district.Methods: Counts of suicides and firearm suicides for the congressional districts were calculated by weighting county counts as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the five-year period 2014 to 2018 by the proportion of the county population allocated to the congressional district for that population group as available from the Census Bureau’s Summary File for the 116th Congress. The weighted counts were then summed over the counties in the congressional district. Results: There are 52 firearm suicides on average per congressional district each year, yet there is tremendous district-level variation across the country and even within states. Seventeen districts—in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington, DC—have 10 or fewer firearm suicides each year. On the other hand, 11 districts—in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Tennessee—have over 100 gun suicides each year. 88 percent of the difference in congressional district-level suicide rates is explained by differences in firearm suicide. The proportion of suicides by firearm out of all suicides ranges from 6% to 73% across districts. Rates of suicide by other means were similar across rural and urban districts, while rates of firearm suicide were on average 5 times higher in rural districts (1.77 in urban compared to 10.60 per 100,000 population in rural). Conclusions: Understanding the incidence of firearm suicide in US congressional districts can provide tools for holding elected officials accountable for taking steps-- including research funding, key policies, storage practices, public education initiatives -- to protect the lives of their constituents by preventing firearm suicide.

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Disease, Death, and the Body Politic

International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research ◽

10.4018/jagr.2010070104 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

pp. 49-68 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

James L. Wilson ◽

Christopher J. Mansfield

Keyword(s):

Body Politic ◽

The United States ◽

The Body ◽

District Level ◽

Congressional District ◽

Areal Interpolation ◽

Related Data ◽

Health Related ◽

Interpolation Techniques ◽

The U.S

More than a trillion dollars of public money is spent annually on health care in the United States. In order to inform policymakers, health advocacy groups, tax-paying constituents, and beneficiaries, it would be useful to present and analyze health outcome and health-related data at the U.S. congressional district level. Presently, health event data are not reported at this political unit; however, recent interest and advances in areal interpolation techniques are beginning to transcend the inherent limitations imposed by legacy data collection and analyses systems. In this paper, the authors use the dasymetric approach to illustrate how this areal interpolation technique can be used to transfer county-level mortality rate data from several causes of death to the U.S. congressional district level. The study’s primary goal is to promote areal interpolation techniques in the absence of a systematic and comprehensive national program for geocoding health events.

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Silence of the Land: On the Historical Irrelevance of Territory to Congressional Districting and Political Representation in the United States

Studies in American Political Development ◽

10.1017/s0898588x01010045 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 15 (01) ◽

pp. 53-87 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Andrew Rehfeld

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

House Of Representatives ◽

Political Representation ◽

The United States ◽

Representative Government ◽

Congressional District ◽

Congressional Districts ◽

Communities Of Interest

Every ten years, the United States “constructs” itself politically. On a decennial basis, U.S. Congressional districts are quite literally drawn, physically constructing political representation in the House of Representatives on the basis of where one lives. Why does the United States do it this way? What justifies domicile as the sole criteria of constituency construction? These are the questions raised in this article. Contrary to many contemporary understandings of representation at the founding, I argue that there were no principled reasons for using domicile as the method of organizing for political representation. Even in 1787, the Congressional district was expected to be far too large to map onto existing communities of interest. Instead, territory should be understood as forming a habit of mind for the founders, even while it was necessary to achieve other democratic aims of representative government.

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