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4 November 2005

Aldrich on Party and Constituency in the House

Today, the Political Psychology and Behavior Workshop co-sponsored a talk by Prof. John Aldrich of Duke University. Prof. Aldrich discussed "Party and Constituency in the House" - a project that seeks to reconcile the research traditions focusing on parties in government and parties in the electorate by examining these two dimensions of party politics together. Aldrich and his co-authors have put together an impressive data set - running from 1983 to 2002 - that includes 86 variables measuring a variety of socio-demographic characteristics for each of the 435 congressional districts. In his broad overview of the data, Prof. Aldrich discussed how such district characteristics might help explain voter preferences, predict winners and losers in House races, and in turn illuminate the behavior of elected representatives.

Posted by Federico Ferrara at November 4, 2005 3:55 PM