Waldo Jaquith - The bill cosponsorship matrix explains the SB714 crossover vote.

The bill cosponsorship matrix explains the SB714 crossover vote.

On 1 February 02010 with 8 comments

The interesting thing about a few senate Democrats crossing party lines to vote for SB714 (“Individual health insurance coverage; resident of State shall not be required to obtain a policy”) is that it gave me a chance to test out the accuracy of the partisanship matrix that I use on Richmond Sunlight.

The theory behind the simple algorithm is that bill cosponsorships is a form of a social network. Whenever a legislator cosponsors another legislator’s bill, has his bill cosponsored by another legislator’s bills, and the total overlap between one legislator’s copatroning relationships and another’s, allows one to see with which legislators a legislator has the greatest number of sympathetic connections, legislatively-speaking.

Under this ranking, the six least partisan (that is, most likely to work with Republicans) Democratic members of the senate are, from least partisan on down, Edd Houck, Chuck Colgan, John Edwards, Roscoe Reynolds, John Miller, and Phil Puckett. Of those six, all but Edwards voted for HB10. In that regard, this system seems to have performed pretty well.

Incidentally, the most partisan Democratic members of the senate appear to be Mary Margaret Whipple, Patsy Ticer, and Chap Petersen.

One more fun fact: Fully half of the Republican members of the senate are ranked as less partisan than Democrats. Robert Hurt is the single ~~least~~ most [see comment below] partisan member of the senate, again, in terms of bill cosponsorship relationships.

8 Comments

So Hurt’s the most liberal Republican State Senator.

Posted by NotAndySere on 2 February 02010 @ 6am

To what extent is the result that VA Senate republicans are less partisan than their democratic colleagues a result of their being in the minority and, therefore, co-sponsoring non-controversial bills that are introduced by the Senate leadership? It might be interesting to see what the results are for the House. It might also be interesting, if possible, see if the partisanship measures change dramatically when an individual moves from the house to the senate.

Posted by Laura G on 2 February 02010 @ 8am

So Hurt’s the most liberal Republican State Senator.

I didn’t state or imply that, nor do the data support that notion.

To what extent is the result that VA Senate republicans are less partisan than their democratic colleagues a result of their being in the minority and, therefore, co-sponsoring non-controversial bills that are introduced by the Senate leadership?

I can’t summon any method of determining that, since there’s no automated method of determining “non-controversial.” (But I’m open to ideas!) I suppose I could devise a query that would eliminate all bills that passed unanimously, but since the vast majority of bills pass unanimously, the remaining corpus of data would be so small as to be non-representative.

It might also be interesting, if possible, see if the partisanship measures change dramatically when an individual moves from the house to the senate.

After this session, there will be a couple of examples of legislators to test that on—that might be interesting.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 2 February 02010 @ 11am

All the same Waldo, I’m sure Hurt’s congressional campaign thanks you very much for supplying that piece of information:-)

Posted by Steve Vaughan on 2 February 02010 @ 12pm

Have you eliminated commendations?

Posted by perlogik on 2 February 02010 @ 2pm

Have you eliminated commendations?

Nope. I tried that, but it didn’t make any difference at all, because they’re so widely cosponsored. That rising tide raises all of the ships.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 2 February 02010 @ 4pm

That actually HURTS Hurt that he’s bi-partisan. Tea party debate at Brookville High School in Lynchburg on February 27. Times is 7:00 PM I think

Posted by Martha on 3 February 02010 @ 11am

I originally wrote here that Sen. Hurt is the most bipartisan member of the Senate. In fact, the opposite is true: I was misreading the data. See my follow-up blog entry for specifics.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 18 February 02010 @ 9pm

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