1,721,169 research outputs found
Race, Region, and Vote Choice in the 2008 Election: Implications for the Future of the Voting Rights Act
Full text linkThe election of an African American as President of the United States has raised questions regarding the continued relevance and even constitutionality of various provisions of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Barack Obama’s apparent success among white voters in 2008 has caused some commentators to question the background conditions of racially polarized voting that are key to litigation under section 2 of the VRA. His success in certain states, such as Virginia, has also raised doubts about the formula for coverage of jurisdictions under section 5 of the VRA. This Article examines the data from the 2008 primary and general elections to assess the geographic patterns of racial differences in voting behavior. The data suggest that significant differences remain between white and minority voters and among jurisdictions that are covered and not covered by section 5 of the VRA. These differences remain even when controlling for partisanship, ideology, and a host of other politically relevant variables. This Article discusses the implications of President Obama’s election for legal conceptions of racially polarized voting and for decisions concerning which jurisdictions section 5 ought to cover
Replication Data for: The Geography of Racially Polarized Voting: Calibrating Surveys at the District Level
No full textAbstract: Debates over racial voting, and over policies to combat vote dilution, turn on the extent to which groups' voting preferences differ and vary across geography. We present the first study of racial voting patterns in every congressional district in the US. Using large-sample surveys combined with aggregate demographic and election data, we find that national-level differences across racial groups explain 60 percent of the variation in district-level voting patterns, while geography explains 30 percent. Black voters consistently choose Democratic candidates across districts, while Hispanic and White voters’ preferences vary considerably across geography. Districts with the highest racial polarization are concentrated in the parts of the South and Midwest. Importantly, multi-racial coalitions have become the norm: in most congressional districts, the winning majority requires support from minority voters. In arriving at these conclusions, we make methodological innovations that improve the precision and accuracy when modeling sparse survey data
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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Judging Gerrymandering: Improving Methods for Measuring Partisan Distortion and Its Component Parts
No full textThis paper improves upon the existing mathematical methods for measuring partisan distortion and evaluating partisan gerrymandering in plurality-won, single-member district electoral systems. The measures and models presented in the paper are evaluated using data from Congressional, State House, and State Senate elections in the state of Florida. How can partisan distortion be measured in a manner deemed acceptable by the U.S. Supreme Court? How are metrics of distortion affected by their implicit assumption of uniform or uncorrelated district turnouts? Can the component of distortion due to non-uniform district sizes be extracted from these metrics in attempt to isolate the pure gerrymandering component of distortion? Does the creation of a minority opportunity district create partisan distortion? First, I present a conceptually improved extension to the method of uniform partisan swing, called "diagonalized partisan swing," which accounts for non-uniform, correlated district turnouts. Second, I successfully extend Ralph Brookes' method for isolating the components of partisan bias to the efficiency gap metric. I find that, for both the efficiency gap and partisan bias metrics, there are non-negligible differences between the isolated gerrymandering component of the metric and the metric itself. Third, I use algebraic and statistical models to argue that the creation of a minority opportunity district creates partisan distortion in a manner that disfavors the minority group's preferred party. The novel models presented in this paper lay the foundation for further investigation into the sources of distortion and their proper measurement. These advancements are important as the judiciability of partisan gerrymandering will remain in question until a robust method for its measurement can be developed
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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