Data Collections: Top
Keith Poole's Voteview site is shown
separately below, under "Ideology."
Charles Stewart's congressional data page indexes several data sets.
See
Charles Stewart's
congressional data page #1 and
Charles Stewart's
congressional data page #2 for congressional committees. The first
does historical committees before the 80th Congress in 1947. The second
includes recent data on standing committees for the 103rd to 105th Congresses.
Charles
Stewart's congressional data page #3
has congressional roll call votes.
Record of American Democracy
(ROAD) Project is a Harvard project
with extensive disaggregated election data
for 1984-1990. Some is directly available, some in Acrobat files deposited with ICPSR.
Data Sets
from David Lublin at American University has several nice .ZIP files used in his
recent publications.
Congressional District Dataset
from Scott Adler at University of Colorado has "a wide range of economic, social and geographic information for every U.S. congressional district, from
1943-1998."
Tim Groseclose
at Stanford University has inflation-adjusted ADA scores covering 1947-1999, in
Excel files. His
DATA ARCHIVE
has these, and also the comparable ACU scores covering 1971-1999.
Eric
Reinhardt's Data Page has
Time Series Data on the US Congress, 1947-1994
in a zip file for Excel or Stata.
The Dirksen Center's CongressLink: Top
CongressLink from The Dirksen Center has "a comprehensive, daily-updated guide to Congress."
Elections of Congress: Top
Grace York's University of Michigan Documents Center has the 2000 congressional elections at Elections 2000 under subheadings of "Congressional Candidates" followed by "Congressional Districts." 1998 Election Results covers the last midterm. Political Science Resources - Top 1996 Election Sites covers 1996.
Newspapers: See washingtonpost.com Elections 2002 and Elections 2000 from the Washington Post.
Federal Elections 98: Table of Contents from Federal Election Commission has official House and Senate results from 1998, including some useful tables with adjacent primary and general election tallies to permit easy comparison of primary turnout to general election turnout (for example, see 1998 Votes Cast for the U.S. House).
Federal Elections 96: Table of Contents: The FEC shows official results for both general and primary elections in 1996 as well. Earlier years since 1982 are also available. The accuracy and precision is considerably above the many media archive sources; percentage vote division is taken down to hundredths (for ex., Dole 50.12% and Clinton 43.16% in Alabama in 1996). Also included are tables including the total vote cast respectively for Presidency, Senate office, and House office, at Federal Elections 96: General Election Votes Cast for PSH. These are entirely text files.
Election Statistics - Members and Committees - Office of the Clerk: The Clerk of the House has Acrobat files scanned from print records back to 1920. There are also hypertext files for 1992 through 1998. All files show the official numerical vote count for every candidate plus write-in vote and total tally, without percentages. Coverage includes each congressional district plus statewide Senate and Electoral College voting. Unfortunately, the 2000 election is still not up as of 23 March 2001.
Dubious Democracy from Fair Vote has contextual detail on low levels of electoral competition in modern U.S. House elections--hardly a secret to any student of Congress. But this is useful data in any case. US House 1954 to 1998 is downloadable data showing the percent of seats won by incumbents, the percent where the incumbent won a "landslide" over >60%, the percent of seats changing party, and the percent of seats held by each major national party.
StateVote2000: Dated 14 December 2000 from the National Conference of State Legislatures, this site has extensive information on state legislative seat division and election results, at Elections. Included is Democratic Share of Legislative Seats 1938-2000 with a graph demonstrating the once-robust Democratic Party dominance of southern and national state seats, replaced now with rough nationwide seat parity of each party. Party Control of State Legislatures 1938-2000 is another graph showing party division.
Fenno interviews: Top
Fenno Research Interviews from NARA's Center for Legislative Archives include all the subjects of Richard Fenno's magisterial study of the House Appropriations Committee. See also Fenno Research Interview Notes for context and method.
Floor Voting: Top
House Floor Votes: The official site, maintained by the Clerk of the House, has data from 1990 (101st Congress, 2d Session) through current activity. All is in data form rather than Acrobat or other non machine-readable formats.
Senate Floor Votes: This site also dates from 1989 but currently ends with the 105th Congress in 1998.
Voter Information Services (VIS) runs an excellent nonpartisan site with a VIS Database of more than 1800 congressional votes from which are derived ratings by 35 advocacy groups (at Congressional Report Cards). The computer database of votes and the roll call material are described at Congressional Votes from VIS.
VoteWatch (Congressional Quarterly, Inc.): (BROKEN LINK, being fixed) A nice search-based source of information on floor voting by individual Members, but less useful than the counterpart Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report print pages for scanning overall patterns of voting by party, region, or other large-scale tendencies. Also, the archive covers only 18 months.
Congressional Votes Library -- C-SPAN: This is another searchable source, well organized. But like other website sources, it's limited to the past half-decade or shorter time as use of the web became widespread.
CongressTrack - Project Vote Smart: has all one could ask for finding a bill, seeing where it is now, learning what Members are doing about it, and back-checking that action against their prior issue positioning. See especially the PVS National Political Awareness Test for six years' worth of detailed data on issue positions of a great many Members of Congress as well as candidates for other high office; then try Major Votes - 106th Congress Members for comparable votes on important issues suited for inclusion in the Awareness Test (details are here on how major votes are selected). Or do this procedure in reverse.
Gerrymandering:
Top
Baffling Boundaries - the Politics of
Gerrymandering from UC San Diego displays the
fundamentals, has illustrations from San Diego, and provides a bibliography
including some of the seminal work by Bernard Grofman and others.
See also from this file: Congressional
Districts, Redistricting, and
Texas 2003-04 redistricting.
Historical Documents: Top
Historical Documents from the Thomas site includes searchable collections from the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia 1787, at Early Congressional Documents. See also A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation from the Library of Congress, with archives of early journals such as Farrand's Records.
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873 from The Library of Congress has detailed journal records, including Journals of the Continental Congress and Farrand's Records, from the pre-1789 period. Wonderful source of early primary documents.
The Center for Legislative Archives - This is the National Archives and Records Administration's official repository for historical information on the Congress. Some outstanding resources are already on-line, including interview materials from Richard Fenno (at www.nara.gov, entitled RESEARCH INTERVIEW NOTES OF RICHARD F. FENNO, JR.).
Home Page for the U.S. Congress: Top
Congressional Mega Sites Plus from Thomas (Legislative Information on the Internet) is the starting point.
Humor on, by or about Members of Congress: Top
The Senator Prank Joke Letters Sent To The U.S. Government from ZUG - The World's Only Comedy Site - Pranks, Jokes, Funny Video Clips, and Other Funny Stuff has a faked but authentic-looking 10-year-old's letter asking Senator for their favorite jokes (for public consumption). Replies are interesting.
Ideology: Top
Keith Poole has Recent
Papers including explanations of how ideology of Members of Congress
is measured from the evidence of their floor voting. I recommend
seeing NOMINATE:
A Short Intellectual History for background. Different types
of NOMINATE scores are explained at README.TXT
Page. Also, see Changing
Minds? Not In Congress! for the argument that Members do not change
their ideological positioning during their careers.
Voteview
at Princeton has some historical illustrations of "ideological maps"; and
Poole's Data Download - Front
Page has such mapping for the 1st through 108th Congresses.
Dr. Keith Poole
- analyses of recent american politics - front
page has recent key floor votes, including the Impeachment
Page on the 1998-99 Clinton impeachment votes in the 105th House and
Senate, and Ashcroft nomination of 1 February 2001 in the 107th Senate.
Analyses includes links to fit
statistics for Bush era congresses that show increased party division with respect to ideology, along with the alignment of most
floor votes on a single ideological dimension now that civil rights has become incorporated into standard party positions.
Tim Groseclose
at Stanford University has inflation-adjusted ADA scores covering 1947-1999, in
Excel files. His
DATA ARCHIVE
has these, and also ACU scores, 1971-1999.
Cross-reference within my file
topics is to: Floor
Voting by Members, and Tracking Floor Voting.
Interest Group Ratings of Members: Top
Voter Information Service Report Cards for Members of Congress are at Congressional Report Cards. Each one includes numerous interest group ratings, including ACA, ADA, AFL-CIO, Christian Coalition, and many lesser-known evaluations. Useful shorthand, but treat these with due caution. Women's Voting Guide by womenvote.org uses Voter Information Service votes in the 1990s to allow comparison of one's own preferences to Senators and Representatives.
Judicial Nominations: Top
Judicial Nominations and Vacancies: Partisan combat over cultural questions now reigns
supreme over this topic. Culturally conservative
interest groups feature the issue prominently; see, for example,
The American Center for Law and
Justice. The same goes for culturally liberal groups such as
People For the American Way. Off the web as on, both use the issue to
subscribe citizens and raise money.
During Clinton's second term
(1997-2001),
extended judicial vacancies became commonplace. The Constitution Project's
Courts Initiative -- Main Page defined the problem. This bipartisan group
is devoted to maintaining the traditional independence of the judiciary from
direct partisan combat. Its
Task Force Reports of the Constitution Project's Courts Initiative
makes that case.
A Clinton era legacy was a high number of
lower-court vacancies being unfilled. That has abated since 2001, but many
vacancies remain contentious. See Vacancy List by
Circuit and District Report Main Menu, part of
The Federal Judiciary
website. Corroboration is provided via
Judicial Emergencies (see also
their
Revised Definition for Judicial Emergencies).
The
Brennan Center for Justice - Resources has an October 1999 article on the
Senate's policy since 1995 of systematically delaying or denying hearings on
numerous Clinton judicial nominees. They claimed that shortages produced
"judicial emergencies" on six of the 13 federal Circuit Courts of Appeal. A
leading figure in the delay strategy was Senator John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), who
in 2001 became Attorney General in the Bush Administration.
The Senate Judiciary Committee tracks current-congress
nominations at
United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary, Article III Confirmed Query.
Partisan combat on federal judicial appointments during
the Clinton Administration continued into the Bush Administration
in 2001, with Senate Democrats instead of Republicans producing the
holdups. Roles were reversed after May 2001 when
Democrats assumed majority control of the Senate Judiciary Committee and used
the Committee to freeze some nominations. That
ended with the 2002 midterm elections, returning the Committee chair to Orren
Hatch in 2003-04. Senate Democrats then adopted filibuster tactics on
selected nominees, resulting in an escalated conflict.
JURIST -
Judicial Confirmations Symposium is an online symposium
of approximately a dozen scholars addressing these 2003 Senate conflicts over
Bush judicial nominations.
MDGJudiciaryTestimonyMay2003
illustrates some liberal
group testimony on the dynamics of this process.
Laws and
Bills: Top
First the Congress must produce a bill. See
America
Rock - "I'm Just a Bill" for Dave Frishberg's 1975 classic
School House Rock ditty.
Some of these actually will pass both houses in identical form, be signed
by the President (if not vetoed), and become laws. But
most will not. See
HOW OUR LAWS ARE MADE,
rev. by Charles W. Johnson, Parliamentarian US House of Representatives, at the
Thomas site.
Those that do can be surveyed through U.S.
Legislative Information links, including U.S.
Legislative Information - Laws. The Law Librarians' Society maintains
a very useful LLSDC Legislative
Sourcebook Home Page -- Index to Available Documents and Resources.
The problem here is data wealth and difficulty in
finding what you want. Search via THOMAS
-- U.S. Congress on the Internet. How-to files are available;
so are explanatory frameworks such as Bill
and Amendment Types. See also the Congressional Reference Division's
1996 guide How to Follow
Current Federal Legislation and Regulations (PDF file). C-SPAN
helps out with a searchable key-bill site at Congressional
Bill Status - -- C-SPAN. For another source of bills, GPO Access
has Congressional
Bills.
Legislative Branch Support Agencies: Top
Congressional Internet Services includes links to the Government Printing Office, the General Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget Office, the Architect of the Capitol, and the Office of Technology Assessment.
Legislative Studies Section: Top
APSA Legislative Studies Section Newsletter
Library of Congress, The: Top
The Library of Congress is a majestic site with an array of links, including entree to THOMAS -- U.S. Congress on the Internet.
Maps: Top
See above in this file, under Congressional Districts and States.
Membership Directories: Top
See Member Information - Office of the Clerk for the U.S. House of Representatives, and for the U.S. Senate. Welcome to CapitolWatch.org uses a five-digit and nine-digit ZIP Code Search for U.S. Congresspersons and Senators. With nine-digit, all urban residents can locate their congressional district and its Member. At the state levels, Legislative Hotline Directory has telephone numbers to call for legislative bill status in the 50 states.
Missouri General Assembly: Top
The official site is Missouri
General Assembly, which includes Missouri
General Assembly Debates,
Joint Bill Tracking Page,
Missouri Revised
Statutes,
Missouri Senate -
Legislator Lookup and other access.
The Missouri
Legislature from Missourinet's GovWatch service (from home site at
Missourinet.com,
click on Legislature.com) provides a host of services based on 25 years
coverage in Jefferson City. A recent online service is streamed live
audio of all debate in the Missouri House and Senate. Also included
is an archive of floor debate indexed by bill number and title. Nice--but
unfortunately it costs $750 per year. I cite this commercial service
here because it could be an interested party's only means of getting full
access to details.
For local newspaper information on state legislators, see NewsLink:
Missouri newspapers or eLibrary's listing at www.newsdirectory.com/news/press/na/us/mo/.
See below in this file: State
legislatures.
Money for Campaigns: Top
Federal Election Commission: It's the official and authoritative source for 'hard money' contributions to presidential and congressional candidates--and quite user-friendly, to boot.
Welcome to Open Secrets.org: This Center for Responsive Politics site is reform-oriented and comprehensive. It includes Election 2000 Congressional Races and 1998 Candidate Profiles. There are plentiful links to the Federal Election Commission (see above) for campaign money details. Links are also in place for All Presidential Candidates Total Raised and Spent in 2000.
FECInfo Home Page: Maintained by the public interest group Public Disclosure, Inc. with a strongly reformist view of congressional campaign money, this is a highly usable and well organized alternative way to troll through the wealth of FEC data on hard money in congressional and presidential election campaigns.
NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON MONEY IN STATE POLITICS: This site follows money in state legislative settings. Success at this is varied according to diverse state laws and regulations.
News Sources on Capitol Hill: Top
Congressional Quarterly: The leading publisher on the U.S. Congress, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report has recent Index information at Congressional Quarterly Index Page.
C-SPAN: As the official television channel of Congress, the site also has general applications, including roll call monitoring.
The Hill - Begun in 1994, this non-partisan weekly is one of the leading in-house news sources read by people in Capitol Hill.
Roll Call Online - It's read widely on the Hill, and is especially useful for insightful "scoop" articles on leadership maneuvers, staff changes, insider's reactions to an issue--all great stuff for practitioners, political junkies, and serious students of Congress. But as of January 2003, it went private for subscribers only; understandable but unfortunate, as this will significantly reduce their exposure to students.
Washington Post's Congress page -
Parliaments: Top
See Websites of Parliaments from Wilfred Derksen for links to all national parliamentary bodies. This is part of his extensive "Elections around the World"; see Electionworld.org's site map for a full guide. The Weidenbaum Center, National Parliaments Websites run by Steven S. Smith of Washington University has alphabetically listed links to each parliament.
Party Leadership: Top
United States House of Representatives - Leadership Offices Website Links and
Also, The Congressional Institute - Congressional Leadership
Revolving Speakership: Few have risen so high or fallen so fast as the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (1995-98). For synopses of the post-election 1998 downfall of Gingrich, his replacement by Livingston, followed by Livingston's mea culpa and resignation, leading to the unlikely leadership of Dennis Hastert (R-IL) in the 106th Congress, see NBCi- Republican Party Shake-Up. The current Speaker Dennis Hastert's official site is The Official Home Page of Speaker Denny Hastert. Naturally, cartoonists had some fun at Gingrich's expense, per Newt is OUT --by all of the top Cartoonists!. And of course Mother Jones has made a specialty of investigative coverage of the former Speaker's fascinating career, per Special on Newt Gingrich you saw it here first!
Public Opinion Polls: Top
Polling Sources on the Web. Shown here are a couple of the leading ones with pertinent information on legislatures. For a compendium of polls see also Washingt onpost.com Data Directory.
The New York Times/CBS News Poll: Their archives at The New York TimesCBS News Poll include one on approval of Congress, at Congress Approval, with frequent polling dated back to April 1974. Three other standard running records on important subjects are: Most Important Problem Facing the Country (two polls, from 1997), Clinton Approval (dating from February 1993), and The Economy (dating from 1986). (ALL links require NYT password)
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: The Pew Center includes Polls and Surveys with an itemized Table of Contents dating from August 1995. A high proportion of these address congressional behavior and policy.
The Gallup Organization: Gallup has gone private now with most of its extensive archive, but some scraps are left for web users. Gallup includes specific information on how its polling is done (How Polls Are Conducted; see also the separate website by Ken Blake at UNC-Chapel Hill entitled The Ten Commandments of Polling). Gallup has many contemporary issues including impeachment-related information dated from January 1998. Their archive dates back to early 1996 and includes numerous judgments by the public toward the Congress, its leadership figures, and its collective actions. Approval ratings of Congress dating back to 1974 are at Gallup Poll Trends - Congress Job Approval, with intensive multi-year polling since February 1993.
Questions about Congress: Top
C-SPAN's Capitol Questions answered by Ilona Nickels, C-SPAN Resident Congressional Scholar, is an excellent place to go. Just click on the pertinent question. Nice imagery is included with some replies. And of course you can email Nickels your own question. Complete Listing of Glossary Terms is also extremely useful for answering your own questions or doing basic research on Congress. But it isn't perfect; the King of the Hill glossary entry is incorrect. This definition ("King-of-the-Hill refers to a special rule for sequencing, debating and voting on competing amendments. If more than one version receives a majority of votes, the one with the largest margin prevails.") is incorrect. The definition applies instead to "Queen of the Hill," which isn't included in the Glossary. King-of-the-Hill should say: "If more than one version receives a majority of votes, the last one to win a majority prevails." King-of-the-Hill prevailed in the House through the Democrat-run 103rd Congress (1993-94) but was since replaced with Queen-of-the-Hill by the Republicans.
Really Dumb Laws: Top
Dumb Laws from Bueno Technologies has a vast array of stupidities committed to parchment in the name of legislative sponsors. Thanks to my colleague Michael Levy for alerting me to this collection of pearls.
Redistricting: Top
Redistricting, from Purdue University Libraries, has a thorough listing of "Government Redistricting Web Sites." The U.S. Census Redistricting Data Program - Main Page has links to each of the 50 states, setups for the 2010 redistricting, and background on Public Law 94-171 (P.L. Requirements).
NCSLnet
Redistricting Task Force from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) has
Redistricting Law,
Redistricting Process,
Census
and Population,
Redistricting Technology,
Redistricting Research and Presentations, and
Links.
Redistricting
Law 2000 by the Redistricting Task Force has:
- Chapter 2 - The Census for excellent coverage on its history and the current dispute over sampling v. direct head counting
- Chapter 3 - Equal Population on the equality or one-person, one-vote strict equality standard dating from Baker v. Carr 369 U.S. 186 (1962)
- Chapter 4 - Racial and Ethnic Discrimination - part 1 on the lengthy and complex racial side of redistricting since the 1980s
- Chapter 5 - Multimember Districts for students of state multimember districts
- Chapter 6 - Partisan Gerrymandering with emphasis on Davis v. Bandemer 478 U.S. 109 (1986)
- Chapter 7 - Federalism in Redistricting on the role of state courts in redistricting; Appendices, Tables and Figures (see bottom of index at Redistricting Law 2000 to follow specific items)
- Glossary
- Bibliography
Its orientation is largely legal rather than expressly political, but the entangled
political elements of this "political thicket" are always quite evident
in the text.
U.S.
Census Bureau - Congressional Affairs Office - Apportionment describes the "equal proportions method" to allocate U.S. House seats by state after
each census; and see Census
2000 for applications.
The Center for
Voting and Democracy is an advocate of proportional representation
and therefore has an extensive critique of single member districting at
Introduction
to Redistricting via links to numerous Center publications.
Texas 2003-04 partisan redistricting: Top
Redistricting Services from the Texas Legislative Council
is the official site for the Tom DeLay-led redistricting between the 2002
Republican takeover of the 78th Legislature and the subsequent redrawn U.S.
House map of 2004. Enactment was on 12 October 2003.
See Texas Redistricting
Data from the Office of the State Demographer to find downloadable maps of
the resulting districts.
The intention and effect was to pack Democratic votes into black and
Hispanic regions to deprive white Democrats of sufficient base vote to survive
challenges by primary challengers (in minority districts) or by Republicans in
districts made more conservative by redrawing. A federal three-judge panel
from the Eastern District of Texas district court declined to
overturn the DeLay product (Judges
uphold new map, Austin American-Statesman, January 7, 2004) in Session, et al. v Rick Perry, et al.
(sessvperry010604opn).
Plaintiffs alleged violation of the Voting Rights Act due to
dilutions of minority vote, but defendants successfully claimed partisan rather
than racial intent. The U.S. Supreme Court on 16 January 2004 declined to
hear an emergency appeal from the Texas Democrats, thus permitting the redrawn
districts to apply to the 2004 election. Any eventual hearing of the case
is delayed to 2005 or later.
Special Report Driving the Districts from the Austin American-Statesman is a six-part series
with background on the
year-long controversy culminating in the redrawn map. A chronicle of
events is
Public Interest Guide to Redistricting from
The Center for
Voting and Democracy - CVD.
The core question is whether expressly partisan (not
racial) redistricting can
violate the Constitution. See
The Reform
Institute For Campaign and Election Issues
coverage. The Supreme Court on 28 April 2004 decided the State of
Pennsylvania partisan redistricting case of Veith v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S.
___ (2004); see Court Affirms Pa. Congressional Boundaries, but Leaves Open
Future Challenges to Redistricting Plans. This case invited the Texas case
Henderson v. Perry, 03-9644 to reach the Court in the 2004-05 session; but in October 2004 the Court told a Texas federal district court to rehear the case there--thus avoiding
its own direct hearing of this case when Veith revealed a lack of Court
consensus on how to rule. Meanwhile the Texas redistricting resulted in a
six-seat Republican gain in the U.S. House.
Representation: Top
For the U.S. Congress, partisan division from the
34th Congress in 1855 to the present in House and Senate is shown at History
of Congressional Elections - Historical Information Office of the
Clerk.
Data is downloadable to Excel or SPSS using Internet Explorer.
For state legislatures, CSLNet
Legislatures Partisan Composition includes NCSLnet
Search Results - Partisan Composition of State Legislatures with current
state legislative partisan divisions for the 99 state chambers divided
among the 50 states; House
and Senate
are also listed separately. Another current site covering state partisan
division is The Fifty
States Governors State Legislature Party Splits Session Dates Next Elections
from Stateside Associates.
See CongressTrack
- Project Vote Smart:, all one could ask for finding a bill, seeing
where it is now, learning what Members are doing about it, and back-checking
that action against their prior issue positioning. See especially
the PVS National
Political Awareness Test for six years' worth of detailed data on issue
positions of a great many Members of Congress as well as candidates for
other high office; then try Major
Votes - 106th Congress Members for comparable votes on important issues
suited for inclusion in the Awareness Test (details are here
on how major votes are selected). Or do this procedure in reverse.
See also in this file: Floor Voting.
State Legislatures: Top
National Conference
of State Legislatures (NCSL): Excellent for many aspects of the
50 state legislatures. Itemized state-by-state information is shown at
NCSLnet Internet Sites
Database Search Results. Warning: quality
will vary. As usual for websites, national sites are more comprehensive
and accessible than state ones, which in turn are superior to most local
ones--exactly the opposite of what my highly esteemed state Senator says
is true of all aspects of the American federal system. See immediately
above (under Representation) for further state legislative information
from NCSL and others.
Stateline.org -
your source for state news is excellent for issue-based surveying of
political activity among the 50 states and their 99 legislative houses.
A larger site is the Council of State Governments' States
News - Your Source for Daily State and CSG News; jump off to Other
Resources - State and Local Government Links for specific searches.
The most comprehensive background information on states is linked via the
U.S. Census Bureau's Federal
State and Local Governments - Main Page.
Governing Magazine
- Online state and local government has valuable articles, and exceptionally
thorough Governing-
State government links.
The Gallup Organization:
The oldest and among the most authoritative sources of polling data, Gallup
includes specific information on how polling is properly done (at How
Polls Are Conducted; see also the separate website by Ken Blake at
UNC-Chapel Hill entitled The
Ten Commandments of Polling). Gallup has many contemporary issues
including impeachment-related information dated from January 1998.
Their archive dates back to early 1996 and includes numerous judgments
by the public toward the Congress, its leadership figures, and its collective
actions. Approval ratings of Congress dating back to 1974 are at
Gallup
Poll Trends - Congress Job Approval, with intensive multi-year polling
since February 1993.
Statistical Abstract of the United States: Top
Statistical Abstract of the United States for 2001-2002 is available in PDF.
Term Limitations: Top
Since the action has been at state legislatures, see Term
Limits from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Included here is Term
Limited States By Year Enacted and Year of Impact showing what states are
subject, when the limits were enacted, how long the permissible tenure of
members is, and how large the percentage public vote was at time of enactment.
Numerous comprehensive links with search functions are available for other
facets of the subject as well. Their
Joint Project
on Term Limits is underway currently; see the
Executive
Summary for interim information.
Washingtonpost.com Term Limits Resources & Links is dated
from late 1998 but still is a good starting
place for links to term limitations organizations. Included are proponent
groups including U.S. Term Limits;
Americans
Back in Charge Foundation (see also its Term
Limits) (BROKEN LINKS); and the Cato Institute (see Real
term limits now more than ever from Doug Bandow, and The
End of Representation: How Congress Stifles Electoral Competition
by Eric O'Keefe and Aaron Steelman. Opposition is from other public
interest groups including Common
Cause -- Washington Watchdog, The
American Prospect - Peter Schrag, The Populist Road to Hell: Term
Limits in California, Winter 1996, and Americans
for Democratic Action: Legislative Term Limitations 229.
The Washington Post site also lists state adoptions of term
limitations on state legislatures, at
Washingtonpost.com
Term Limits Special Report. Cross-check this against
the NCSL site in first paragraph above. See also
Washingtonpost.com
Term Limits Key Stories dated from 1999.
The key federal Supreme Court case is U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton
(1995) at FindLaw
United States Case Law Supreme Court or at Cornell's
U.S. Term
Limits Inc. v. Thornton 514 U.S. 779 (1995). Other rulings are listed
at NCSLNET
- Legislatures Elections Redistricting Term Limits.
A bibliography of the extensive literature
is at Legislative
Term Limits: A Bibliography from Marc A. Levin and Bruce E. Cain, October
1998 at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California.
Academic papers are numerous. One good recent one
available on the web is at
http://www.emory.edu/POLS/zorn/Papers/ehzpaper.pdf.
The National Association of Counties has a 1996 file on term
limitations in local government, at
NACo -
Publications - References & Brie.
The American Congress, Smith, Roberts, and Vander Wielen is a recently issued textbook. Excellent accessory links exist for the chapters, at The American Congress: Sources.
The National Archives "Treasures of Congress"
Site Map has historical documents dating from the 1780s
with excellent photographs and brief textual explanations. The cartoon of
onetime Speaker Joseph Cannon is a highlight.
Voters in Congressional
Elections:
Top
National Election Studies Homepage from National Election Studies (NES) includes The NES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior, the indispensable standard public opinion data for both congressional and presidential elections dating from 1952. Note in particular its Index to the NES Guide with Section 8 on congressional candidates and part of Section 9 on congressional voting.
CENSUS - Voting and Registration Data: Here one finds detailed information on voters in recent elections back to 1964 and up th rough year 2000, all derived from the Current Population Survey maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. Drawback is that it is slow to go online; the 1998 data wasn't posted until year 2000, 2000 data wasn't available during 2001, and 2002 isn't available in January 2003. Historical Voting Tables - Congressional Elections covers voter turnout for midterms from 1966 through 1994.
Women in the Congress:
Top
The Eagleton Institute of Politics
Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers is the place for finding
both women candidates and women in office in the U.S. Congress, statewide
offices, and even state legislatures--for recent elections, of course.
Sampling of their syllabi on women in politics may also yield additional sites
and data sets. Women
and Politics - Fact Sheets and Publications is searchable.
Congresswomen's Biographies from the Office of the Clerk
of the U.S. House, has brief biographies of the 62 women (compared to 463 men)
in the current 108th Congress.
GenderGap - Women in Government,
Politics and the Military has
GenderGap - Elections
with extensive evidence on numbers of women in public office.
Women and Politics
from womenvote.org has extensive links, but some are dated for lack of the most
recent election data.
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Monday, August 25, 2008 09:32:07 AM
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