Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gvh9x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T05:58:40.415Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Estimating Constituency Preferences from Sparse Survey Data Using Auxiliary Geographic Information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Peter Selb  and
Simon Munzert
Peter Selb*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and Public Administration and Center for Quantitative Methods and Survey Research, University of Konstanz, PO Box D85, 78457 Konstanz, Germany
Simon Munzert
Affiliation:
Center for Quantitative Methods and Survey Research, University of Konstanz, PO Box D85, 78457 Konstanz, Germany, e-mail: [email protected]
*
e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Measures of constituency preferences are of vital importance for the study of political representation and other research areas. Yet, such measures are often difficult to obtain. Previous survey-based estimates frequently lack precision and coverage due to small samples, rely on questionable assumptions or require detailed auxiliary information about the constituencies' population characteristics. We propose an alternative Bayesian hierarchical approach that exploits minimal geographic information readily available from digitalized constituency maps. If at hand, social background data are easily integrated. To validate the method, we use national polls and district-level results from the 2009 German Bundestag election, an empirical case for which detailed structural information is missing.

Type
Articles
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , Autumn 2011 , pp. 455 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Authors' note: We are grateful to Michael Herrmann, Thomas Hinz, Winfried Pohlmeier, Susumu Shikano, Marco Steenbergen as well as the editors and reviewers of this journal for helpful comments and support. Supplementary materials for this article are available on the Political Analysis Web site. Appendix is available from the Political Analysis Dataverse at http://hdl.handle.net/1902.1/16363.

References

Agnew, John. 2002. The making of political geography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Agresti, Alan, and Coull, Brent A. 1998. Approximate is better than “exact” for interval estimation of binomial proportions. American Statistician 52: 119–26.Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, Snyder, James M. Jr., and III, Charles Stewart. 2001. Candidate positioning in U.S. House elections. American Journal of Political Science 45: 136–59.Google Scholar
Ardoin, Phillip J., and Garand, James C. 2003. Measuring constituency ideology in U.S. house districts: A top-down simulation approach. Journal of Politics 65: 1165–89.Google Scholar
Bafumi, Joseph, and Herron, Michael C. 2006. Leapfrog representation and extremism: A study of American voters and their members in congress. American Political Science Review 104: 519–42.Google Scholar
Berkman, Michael B., and Plutzer, Eric. 2005. Ten thousand democracies: Politics and public opinion in America's school districts. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Berry, William D., Fording, Richard C., Ringquist, Evan J., Hanson, Russell L., and Klarner, Carl. 2010. Measuring citizen and government ideology in the American states: A re-appraisal. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 10: 117–35.Google Scholar
Besag, Julian, York, Jeremy, and Molli, Annie. 1991. Bayesian image restoration, with two applications in spatial statistics. Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics 43: 1–20.Google Scholar
Brace, Paul, Sims-Butler, Kellie, Arceneaux, Kevin, and Johnson, Martin. 2002. Public opinion in the American states: New perspectives using national survey data. American Journal of Political Science 46: 173–89.Google Scholar
Canes-Wrone, Brandice, Brady, David W., and Cogan, John F. 2002. Out of step, out of office: Electoral accountability and house members' voting. American Political Science Review 96: 127–40.Google Scholar
Carlin, Bradley P., and Louis, Thomas A. 1996. Bayes and empirical Bayes methods for data analysis. London: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Christensen, William F., and Florence, Lindsay. 2008. Predicting presidential and other multistage election outcomes using state-level pre-election polls. American Statistician 62: 1–10.Google Scholar
Clinton, Joshua D. 2006. Representation in congress: Constituents and roll calls in the 106th house. Journal of Politics 68: 397–409.Google Scholar
Cressie, Noel A. C. 1993. Statistics for spatial data. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
de Sola Pool, Ithiel, Abelson, Robert P., and Popkin, Samuel L. 1965. Candidates, issues, and strategies. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Elazar, Daniel. 1994. The American mosaic: The impact of space, time, and culture on American politics. Washington, DC: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S. 1978. Constituency opinion and congressional behavior: A reexamination of the Miller-Stokes representation data. American Journal of Political Science 22: 511–35.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., and Wright, Gerald C. 1980. Policy representation of constituency interests. Political Behavior 2: 91–06.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., Wright, Gerald D., and McIver, John P. 1993. Statehouse democracy: Public opinion and policy in the American states. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew. 2007. Struggles with survey weighting and regression modeling. Statistical Science 22: 153–64.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew. 2008. Red state, blue state, rich state, poor state: Why Americans vote the way they do. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and Little, Thomas C. 1997. Poststratification into many categories using hierarchical logistic regression. Survey Methodology 23: 127–35.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L. 1992. The political consequences of intolerance: Cultural conformity and political freedom. American Political Science Review 86: 338–56.Google Scholar
Heppen, John. 2003. Racial and social diversity and U.S. Presidential election regions. Professional Geographer 55: 191–205.Google Scholar
Hero, Rodney E. 1998. Faces of inequality: Social diversity in American politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Seth J., Herron, Michael C., and Lewis, Jeffrey B. 2010. Economic crisis, Iraq, and race: A study of the 2008 Presidential election. Election Law Journal 9: 41–62.Google Scholar
Huefken, Volker. 2010. Supplementary questionnaire and nonresponse-results from the German ISSP survey. Quality & Quantity 44: 607–22.Google Scholar
Hurley, Patricia A., and Hill, Kim Quaile. 2003. Beyond the demand-input model: A theory of representational linkages. Journal of Politics 65: 304–26.Google Scholar
Jackson, John E. 1989. An error-in-variables approach to estimating models with small area data. Political Analysis 1: 157–80.Google Scholar
Jackson, John E., and King, David C. 1989. Public goods, private interests, and representation. American Political Science Review 83: 1143–64.Google Scholar
Johnston, Ron, and Pattie, Charles. 2006. Putting voters in their place: Geography and elections in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kalt, Joseph P., and Zupan, Mark A. 1984. Capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics. American Economic Review 74: 279–300.Google Scholar
Kastellec, Jonathan P., Lax, Jeffrey R., and Phillips, Justin H. 2010. Public opinion and Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominees. Journal of Politics 72: 767–84.Google Scholar
Katz, Jonathan N., and King, Gary. 1999. A statistical model for multiparty electoral data. American Political Science Review 93: 15–32.Google Scholar
Klingemann, H.-D., and Wessels, B. 2001. The political consequences of Germany's mixed-member system: Personalization at the grass roots? In Mixed-member electoral systems: The best of both worlds?, ed. Shugart, M. S. and Wattenberg, M., 279–96. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith. 1993. Constituency characteristics and legislative preferences. Public Choice 76: 21–37.Google Scholar
Kuklinski, James H. 1978. Representativeness and elections: A policy analysis. American Political Science Review 72: 165–77.Google Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R., and Phillips, Justin H. 2009a. Gay rights in the states: Public opinion and policy responsiveness. American Political Science Review 103: 367–86.Google Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R., and Phillips, Justin H. 2009b. How should we estimate public opinion in the states? American Journal of Political Science 53: 107–21.Google Scholar
Levitt, Steven D. 1996. How do senators vote? Disentangling the role of voter preferences, party affiliation, and senator ideology. American Economic Review 86: 425–41.Google Scholar
Luebke, David Martin, and Milton, Sybil. 1994. Locating the victim: An overview of census-taking, tabulation technology, and persecution in Nazi Germany. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 16: 25–39.Google Scholar
Lunn, David J., Thomas, Andrew, Best, Nicky, and Spiegelhalter, David. 2000. WinBUGS—A Bayesian modelling framework: Concepts, structure, and extensibility. Statistics and Computing 10: 325–37.Google Scholar
McCrone, Donald J., and Kuklinski, James H. 1979. The delegate theory of representation. American Journal of Political Science 23: 278–300.Google Scholar
McCrone, Donald J., and Stone, Walter J. 1986. The structure of constituency representation: On theory and method. Journal of Politics 48: 956–75.Google Scholar
McDonagh, Eileen Lorenzi. 1993. Constituency influence on house roll-call votes in the progressive era, 1913-1915. Legislative Studies Quarterly 18: 185–210.Google Scholar
Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E. 1963. Constituency influence in congress. American Political Science Review 57: 45–56.Google Scholar
Openshaw, S., and Taylor, P. 1979. A million or so correlation coefficients: Three experiments on the modifiable areal unit problem. In Statistical applications in the spatial sciences, ed. Wrigley, N., 127–44. London: Pion.Google Scholar
Park, David K., Gelman, Andrew, and Bafumi, Joseph. 2004. Bayesian multilevel estimation with poststratification: State-level estimates from national polls. Political Analysis 12: 375–85.Google Scholar
Percival, Garrick L., Johnson, Martin, and Neiman, Max. 2009. Representation and local policy: Relating county-level public opinion to policy outputs. Political Research Quarterly 62: 164–77.Google Scholar
Pfefferman, Danny. 2002. Small area estimation. New developments and directions. International Statistical Review 70: 125–43.Google Scholar
Pratesi, Monica, and Salvati, Nicola. 2008. Small area estimation: The EBLUP estimator based on spatially correlated random area effects. Statistical Methods and Applications 17: 113–41.Google Scholar
Rao, J. N. K. 2005. Small area estimation. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Rodden, Jonathan. 2010. The geographic distribution of political preferences. Annual Review of Political Science 13: 321–40.Google Scholar
Saalfeld, Thomas. 2008. Germany: Stability and strategy in a mixed-member proportional system. In The politics of electoral systems, ed. Gallagher, Michael and Mitchell, Paul, 209–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Seidman, David. 1975. Simulation of public opinion: A caveat. Public Opinion Quarterly 39: 331–42.Google Scholar
Sullivan, John L., and Minns, Daniel Richard. 1976. Ideological distance between candidates: An empirical examination. American Journal of Political Science 20: 439–68.Google Scholar
Thomas, Andrew, Best, Nicky, Lunn, Dave, Arnold, Richard, and Spiegelhalter, David. 2004. GeoBUGS user manual, version 1.2.Google Scholar
Weber, Ronald E., Hopkins, Anne H., Mezey, Michael L., and Munger, Frank J. 1972. Computer simulation of state electorates. Public Opinion Quarterly 36: 549–65.Google Scholar
Wright, Gerald C., Erikson, Robert S., and McIver, John P. 1985. Measuring state partisanship and ideology with survey data. Journal of Politics 47: 469–89.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Selb and Munzert supplementary material

Supplementary Material 2

Download Selb and Munzert supplementary material(File)
File 342.7 KB
Supplementary material: File

Selb and Munzert supplementary material

Supplementary Material 1

Download Selb and Munzert supplementary material(File)
File 79.7 KB