Measuring State Partisanship and Ideology with Survey Data

Abstract

The study of state politics has suffered because of the lack of good data on major political orientations at the state level. This paper briefly discusses this problem and the need for survey-based measures, and then presents sets of estimates of state partisanship and ideology. These are derived from aggregating CBS News-New York Times polls at the state level. Using fifty-one polls taken from 1974 through 1982, our estimates are based on over 76,000 respondents. The estimates are shown to have good overall validity and reliability, and should prove valuable in studies of comparative state elections and policymaking.