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Measuring Constituency Ideology Using Bayesian Universal Kriging

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2021

Jeff Gill
Jeff Gill*
Affiliation:
American University, Washington, DC, USA
*
Jeff Gill, Department of Government, American University, Washington, DC 20016, USA. Email: jgill@american.edu
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Abstract

In this article, we develop and make available measures of public ideology in 2010 for the 50 American states, 435 congressional districts, and state legislative districts. We do this using the geospatial statistical technique of Bayesian universal kriging, which uses the locations of survey respondents, as well as population covariate values, to predict ideology for simulated citizens in districts across the country. In doing this, we improve on past research that uses the kriging technique for forecasting public opinion by incorporating Alaska and Hawaii, making the important distinction between ZIP codes and ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, and introducing more precise data from the 2010 Census. We show that our estimates of ideology at the state, congressional district, and state legislative district levels appropriately predict the ideology of legislators elected from these districts, serving as an external validity check.

Keywords

ideologypublic opinionrepresentationBayesian statisticsGIS/spatial analysisquantitative methodsmethodologypolitical geography
Type
Original Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 80 - 107
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020

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