UK OC OK? Interpreting Optimal Classification Scores for the U.K. House of Commons
Abstract
Poole's (2000, Non-parametric unfolding of binary choice data. Political Analysis 8:211–37) nonparametric Optimal Classification procedure for binary data produces misleading rank orderings when applied to the modern House of Commons. With simulations and qualitative evidence, we show that the problem arises from the government-versus-opposition nature of British (Westminster) parliamentary politics and the strategic voting that is entailed therein. We suggest that political scientists think seriously about strategic voting in legislatures when interpreting results from such techniques.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Outside the U.S. Congress, roll call votes are less reliable.
“but outside the U.S. Congress roll call votes are less reliable (Spirling and McLean 2007).”
From Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts (2013) · cites this paper as Spirling and McLean 2007
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 12 · Cited by 94
- Authors
- Spirling, A., & McLean, I.
- Affiliations
- University of Rochester (US)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Venue
- Political Analysis
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2007
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 85-96
- ISSN
- 1047-1987 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4989
- OpenAlex
- W2115002784
- Cited by
- 94
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 30.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Political Analysis (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Game Theory and Voting Systems
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Science Research and Education
- Keywords
- optimal classification, House of Commons, strategic voting, rank order, legislative voting
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
