Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-g96k6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-10T06:00:36.984Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Simulating Counterfactual Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Andrew C. Eggers  and
Benjamin E. Lauderdale
Andrew C. Eggers
Affiliation:
Politics and International Relations, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, 1 New Rd, Oxford OX1 1NF, UK
Benjamin E. Lauderdale*
Affiliation:
Department of Methodology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
*
e-mail: aeggers@gmail.com
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

We show how to use multilevel modeling and post-stratification to estimate legislative outcomes under counterfactual representation schemes that, for example, boost the representation of women or translate votes into seats differently. We apply this technique to two research questions: (1) Would the U.S. Congress be less polarized if state delegations were formed according to the principle of party proportional representation? (2) Would there have been stronger support for legalizing same-sex marriage in the U.K. House of Commons if Parliament more closely reflected the population in gender and age?

Information

Type
Letters
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Spring 2016 , pp. 281 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

Footnotes

Authors' note: The authors thank the associate editor (Justin Grimmer) and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments; Jennifer vanVeerde-Hudson and Rosie Campbell for sharing data; and participants at the 2015 Midwest Political Science Association annual meetings for useful feedback. Replication materials are available online on the Political Analysis Dataverse at http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/54JC6M.

References

Bump, Philip. 2015. What would change if Congress were as lopsidedly female as it is male? Not much. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/03/06/what-would-change-if-congress-were-as-lopsidedly-female-as-it-is-male-not-much/.Google Scholar
Cameron, Charles, Epstein, David, and O’Halloran, Sharyn. 1996. Do majority-minority districts maximize substantive black representation in Congress? American Political Science Review 90(04): 794–812.Google Scholar
Carnes, Nicholas. 2012. Does the numerical underrepresentation of the working class in Congress matter? Evidence from roll call voting in the House of Representatives. Legislative Studies Quarterly 37(1): 5–34.Google Scholar
Carnes, Nicholas, and Lupu, Noam. 2015. Rethinking the comparative perspective on class and representation: Evidence from Latin America. American Journal of Political Science 59(1): 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duverger, Maurice. 1954. Political parties: Their organization and activity in the modern state. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc:.Google Scholar
Eggers, Andrew C., and Lauderdale, Benjamin. 2015. Replication data for: Simulating counterfactual representation. Harvard Dataverse, V1. doi:10.7910/DVN/54JC6M. http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/54JC6M.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and King, Gary. 1994. A unified method of evaluating electoral systems and redistricting plans. American Journal of Political Science 38(2): 514–54.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and Little, T. C. 1997. Postratification into many categories using hierarchical logistic regression. Survey Methodology 23:127–35.Google Scholar
Hudson, Jennifer vanHeerde, and Campbell, Rosie. 2015. Parliamentary candidates UK dataset (v. 1). http://www.parliamentarycandidates.org.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Tomz, Michael, and Wittenberg, Jason. 2000. Making the most of statistical analyses: Improving interpretation and presentation. American Journal of Political Science 44:341–55.Google Scholar
McCarty, Nolan, Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 2006. Polarized America: The dance of ideology and unequal riches, Vol. 5. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.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(4): 375–85.Google Scholar
Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 1997. Congress: A political-economic history of roll call voting. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
13Another explanation is one that arises in all assessments of congruence between public opinion and legislative voting: voting in Parliament is different from responding to a survey. It may be that our exercise has brought support in Parliament closer to what would have happened if a random sample of the population were actually asked to vote on the issue in Parliament.Google Scholar
Särndal, Carl-Erik, and Lundström, Sixten. 2005. Estimation in surveys with nonresponse. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Shor, Boris, and McCarty, Nolan. 2011. The ideological mapping of American legislatures. American Political Science Review 105(3): 530–51.Google Scholar
Sides, John. 2015. What would change if there were more women in Congress? More than you think. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/07/what-would-change-if-there-were-more-women-in-congress-more-than-you-think/.Google Scholar
Simon, Dennis M., and Palmer, Barbara. 2010. The roll call behavior of men and women in the US House of Representatives, 1937–2008. Politics & Gender 6(02): 225–46.Google Scholar