Measuring and accounting for strategic abstentions in the US Senate, 1989–2012

Abel Rodríguez and Scott Moser

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, 2015, vol. 64, issue 5, 779-797

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="rssc12099-abs-0001">

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.

Date: 2015
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