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New Measures of Partisanship, Ideology, and Policy Mood in the American States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Thomas M. Carsey  and
Jeffrey J. Harden
Thomas M. Carsey
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Jeffrey J. Harden
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Abstract

We construct measures of U.S. state partisan identification, self-reported ideology, and policy mood using data from the 2000 and 2004 National Annenberg Election Surveys (NAES) and the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). These measures improve on existing methods for estimating state-level preferences because the surveys provide larger state samples without pooling across years. After detailing our methods for constructing the measures, we assess their validity through comparisons with measures already in use by scholars of state politics. We find that our measures correlate strongly with those created by Erikson, Wright, and McIver (1993) and Berry et al. (1998) and with measures from state-level polls. We conclude that our measures can be useful to research in state politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Summer 2010 , pp. 136 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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