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Measuring Governors' Political Orientations Using Words as Data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Micah Weinberg
Micah Weinberg*
Affiliation:
The New America Foundation
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Abstract

This article introduces a parsimonious measure of the expressed political orientation of U.S. state governors that compares word choices in their “State of the State” speeches to the language of state and national party platforms. The technique used to generate this measure is Wordscores, a method that relies on the use of reference texts to generate a set of ideal points for gubernatorial rhetoric. I discuss the conventions and substantive content of governors' speeches and the choice of party platforms as reference texts before presenting the average “partisan signal” in speeches by 97 governors in all 50 states between 2000 and 2006.

Type
The Practical Researcher
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 96 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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