I get a 500 Internal Server Error on Congressman Raúl R. Labrador (R-ID).
Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
11–20 of 27 posts
Re: Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
#12Cool idea, it would be nice if you could provide a little bit more information about why the results are the way they are, or the percentage that they match, maybe recent bills that they agreed on. As someone from Canada I have no idea who these people are or why the relationship would be expected/unusual.
Thanks for the feedback. We plan to add a relative index to represent how closely a congressperson votes with respect to one another. The main idea of the map is to show geographic voting trends among congress members. In the future we want to expand on the recent bills idea you gave and provide an in-depth analysis of the different bills people voted on.
Re: Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
#13I'm additionally interested in who never vote together. Do some Congressmen just never agree? Are there aggregate patterns here that change over time [e.g. partisanship]? I believe there's a ton of interesting data in this area, and this is a good starting point.
Thanks for the comment. I agree it's a good starting point but theres a lot that can be done. One plan we wanted to implement was a filter to match congressman based on different topics they voted on. Ex funding, etc. For aggregate patterns we would have to look at prior voting records as well, but it seems like a great idea. All our code is on github, and we'll slowly list all the features we want to add on the wiki there.
Re: Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
#14I'm additionally interested in who never vote together. Do some Congressmen just never agree? Are there aggregate patterns here that change over time [e.g. partisanship]? I believe there's a ton of interesting data in this area, and this is a good starting point.
Thanks for the comment. I agree it's a good starting point but theres a lot that can be done. One plan we wanted to implement was a filter to match congressman based on different topics they voted on. Ex funding, etc. For aggregate patterns we would have to look at prior voting records as well, but it seems like a great idea. All our code is on github, and we'll slowly list all the features we want to add on the wiki…
Leaderboards, all of this needs to be in sortable leaderboards, front and center...
Great work so far!
Re: Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
#15Cool! I would love to be able to "vote" on a couple (dozen) bills and see who I vote like.
Re: Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
#16I get a 500 Internal Server Error on Congressman Raúl R. Labrador (R-ID).
Looks like it's a unicode problem, because, if I manually fix the URL to eliminate the accented character, it works:
Re: Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
#17I'm additionally interested in who never vote together. Do some Congressmen just never agree? Are there aggregate patterns here that change over time [e.g. partisanship]? I believe there's a ton of interesting data in this area, and this is a good starting point.
Likewise, how does the voting structure and people's votes differ from their norm when voting result is near break-even. E.g. 7/6 split. I feel there's a lot of media and public perception management going on, agreed upon by parties or those in who have majority playing games OR worse those who are playing double-agent, mostly voting for "their" side, but when it matters, switching over to their real team / beliefs / friends / money-buddies (lobbyists wants). Would too be interesting to match up the data with who all received money, and how votes look based on industry, and specific companies, etc..
Re: Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
#18I'm additionally interested in who never vote together. Do some Congressmen just never agree? Are there aggregate patterns here that change over time [e.g. partisanship]? I believe there's a ton of interesting data in this area, and this is a good starting point.
Thanks for the comment. I agree it's a good starting point but theres a lot that can be done. One plan we wanted to implement was a filter to match congressman based on different topics they voted on. Ex funding, etc. For aggregate patterns we would have to look at prior voting records as well, but it seems like a great idea. All our code is on github, and we'll slowly list all the features we want to add on the wiki…
Implementing what I wrote in comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6575348 would give great insight too. I'm sure a lot is blatantly obvious, but visualizing data is always helpful to reenforce it in someone's mind.
Re: Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
#19Cool tool, but the search interface could use a little work. Some sort of autocomplete would make it easier to find congressmen by name (I typed "Bernie Sanders" when I had to put in "Bernard Sanders").
Re: Show HN: Find members of Congress with similar voting records
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I get how it couldn't be symmetric? Is there an explanation or I guess I don't get the definition of like.
It's based on how similar someone is to someone else and some people have closer matches than others. Fictitious Example where your listing top 5: Adam and Bob are a 80% match. Bob and Ted are a 90% match. Adam has 1 match better than 75%, but Bob has 5 matches better than 85%. Thus Adam links to Bob as his #1, but Bob does not link to Adam in his top 5.
yep! for a great example, try out Rush Holt (http://www.congressbuddies.com/?name=Rush%20Holt)
None of his top-5 "buddies" have him anywhere in their own top-5 lists, which is pretty unusual.