Measuring and Accounting for Strategic Abstentions in the US Senate, 1989–2012. Issue 5 (3rd April 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rodríguez, Abel; Moser, Scott
• Is Part Of: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Volume 64:Issue 5(2015:Nov.)
• Page Start: 779
• Page End: 797
• Publication Date: 2015-04-03
• Subjects: Factor analysis -- Item response model -- Non-ignorable missing value -- Roll-call votes -- Strategic abstention; Statistics -- Periodicals; 519.5
• DOI: 10.1111/rssc.12099
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0035-9254

Abstract

Summary: Strategic abstentions—in which legislators abstain from votes for ideological reasons—are a poorly understood feature of legislative voting records. The paper discusses a spatial model for legislators' revealed preferences that accounts for abstentions when missing values are non-ignorable and allows us to measure the pervasiveness of strategic abstention by identifying legislators who consistently engage in strategic abstentions, as well as bills for which the ideology of legislators is a key driver of abstentions. We illustrate the performance of our model through the analysis of the 101st–112th US Senates.