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Comment by pfraze | Hacker News Reader

There's probably some cool insights in here, but I'll need some help understanding it. For instance, what does an edge in the graph represent? What can I tell from the boldness of the line?

@DavidChoinard can you give us a key?

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The thickness of edges represents the number of times the pair of senators voted the same in the Senate (only edges above a threshold are shown).

The two tightly coiled clusters shows just how weak the relationships are between the two parties.

The closer the nodes are to the center, the more bipartisan those Senators are. In the current Congress, Sens. Murkowski and Collins really stand out as by far the most bipartisan senators and important linchpins in bridging the gap between both parties. (this bar graph of partisanship shows that: http://i.imgur.com/gYCMaxo.png)

Also, it’s clear that in the current Senate, partisanship is a lot more pronounced among Democrats, likely because they hold the majority in the Senate. (ie. they have a lot less incentive to compromise)

While there were ups and downs, it’s clear that there’s a general trend of the Senate becoming a lot more divided over the last 25 years. Comparing 1989 to today is striking — opinions were a lot more intertwined back then (this static image really emphasize it: http://i.imgur.com/4kDokyz.jpg).

Interesting stuff, thanks for putting it together.

The last url looks like some kind of political mitosis. There's probably a joke here related to the genome of government being split into two identical halves…

It probably pays to note that the house and senate were Democratic majorities in 1989, with a Republican president.

I would expect that to create a somewhat different dynamic than the party alignments of today.

Have you considered doing PCA and plotting the first two principle components?

A more plausible reason for why Democrats would be more "partisan" is because moderate Democrats have been defeated by Republicans in recent elections, particularly in red states. This will likely be more pronounced if people like Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor are taken out.

I think your explanation of recent partisanship is perhaps not quite specific enough. I suspect the cause is the increasing reliance on threats of filibuster which make the stakes much higher for "crossing the floor".

Please describe the visualization (relationships you mentioned, how the nodes are colored) in the webpage. It is hard to understand what's going on there.

It would be great if you can make the data public, if possible. You could probably analyze each senator across the years.

as someone who is generally familiar with key political figures, i'd say this graph is awesome. it immediately quantifies information that you otherwise would guess at based on what people say about them. the time series is also telling.

David,

This may be asking for a bit much, but would you kindly put together a series of snapshots for a long time, spaced every 2 years? I would be willing to help out in building the automation and so forth if it's a big task.

I'm guessing that the thickness of the edges represents how often do two given senators vote the same way on a bill. And then the nodes are laid out in a way to cluster together those that have a history of voting similarly.

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