Data Mining the US Senate Votes

AJ writes "We used some old and new data mining techniques to see what was happening in the US Senate in 2003. Among other things, we identified the 'social' network of similarities between senators, how influential is each senator and each state, and a 3D VRML view of the Senate. You will be able to check whether Senator Kerry was a centrist or a liberal, and who is acting more cohesively, the Democrats or the Republicans. We provide our data and the source of all our analysis software (Orange and MPCA, both under GPL)."

Comments

What is Kerry?

[N3WBI3]

You will be able to check whether Senator Kerry was a centrist or a liberal

Dont you actually have to show up and vote for this to work??

The Real Kerry

[Khomar]

Now I am certain to upset many of the Bush-bashers out there, but I believe this site brings up some interesting things to consider about Kerry.

However, one should interpret "Not Voting" as letting the majority vote for you. Since the majority is Republican, the fact that Kerry often did not vote means that he is effectively the most central of all Democrats, based on all the votes cast in 2003.(emphasis added)

While another poster claimed this was showing bias toward Kerry, really this is more condemning than anything. Kerry's record clearly shows that he has liberal leanings.

Poole claims that Kerry is liberal but not extreme, Clinton, Jackman & Rivers say that it's hard to say due to his absenteeism but also that Kerry is not extreme.(emphasis added)

The point here is not that Kerry is liberal or moderate, but that his inaction makes him effectively the most central democrat as well as the least influential senator. If I were a resident of Massachusetts, I would be very upset that my representative didn't even bother to even try to represent me before congress. If he was working at a "real job", he certainly wouldn't be up for a promotion.

Now Bush may have made some serious mistakes, and I won't even claim that I agree with him on every issue. However, Kerry's record does not exactly lend himself to being a "desirable" candidate. He had far too many missed votes last year, and he was a no-show to many of his committee meetings. He claims that he can get congress and other nations to work together, but he has no record of being able to accomplish this during his tenure in the Senate. In any job, you must first prove yourself where you are at before you can expect to be promoted and given increased responsibility. Given his record, I would question whether he really deserves another term as Senator.

Personally, I find it sad that the Democrats could not come up with a better candidate to run against Bush. It saddens me even more that such a poor candidate as Kerry is staying close in this election merely because many voters want anyone but Bush. Well, we might just get that wish. Are we really sure that we want it?

Totally arbitrary horseshit.

[Elwood P Dowd]

You can either compare senators to each other, or to some other arbitrary descriminator of liberalness, centristness, or conservativeness.

You can count or not count no-votes, which is also a totally arbitrary choice. How you count no-votes is totally arbitrary. Voting records are important, but they're really not the most important way to guage what's going on in congress.

If some dude doesn't vote because he's the only communist in the senate, and knows his vote will lose, then that doesn't mean he's less communist. Obviously. For important bills, everyone knows how everyone else would vote, long before the vote is called.

And DeLay's streamlining bill passage in the house is a much bigger deal anyway. The whole no-amendments-in-the-general-assembly thing is fucked up, and means that you will constantly get people voting for things that they do not support or against things that they do support. I think. I guess I say that without being sure.

Whatever.