Gettin’ Better All The Time
Adam Sharp, one of the best young minds on the other side of the aisle in the Shenandoah Valley (and a worthy foe), tweeted earlier today about a great tool on VPAP. For the uninitiated, VPAP is wonkesse for the Virginia Public Access Project, a non-profit non-partisan group dedicated to gathering and making public as much information about the General Assembly and state elections as possible. All of this information is available through other resources–however, VPAP makes it incredibly easy to look at all the available information about a Delegate’s electoral history, finances, and lobbyist ties in a single glance.
So what new tool am I addicted to? Why, a handy floor map for both the House and the Senate that visually highlights a number of facts about various legislators. These include gender, party, age, length of service, region, birth state, and margin of victory. Some notes:
- Women have made better in-roads in the Senate (20%) versus the House (16%)
- The House is significantly younger (53% under 55) than the Senate (42.5%)
- 69% of the House was elected after George Allen left Richmond; 47.5% of the Senate was elected in the intervening years
- The 540 Area Code is the fourth most represented in the Senate and tied for third in the House; remember, though, that its the geographically largest
- The House has more native Virginians (54%) than the Senate (52%); for all you nativists out there, the “come heres” are in check…..for now.
- Only 11% of the House had a close (less than 10%) election last time, 20% of the Senate has close ones.
- On the flip side of the coin, 42.5% of the Senate went uncontested, versus 56% in the House.
A plethora of interesting information is to be had. One minor quibble–the region breakdown is not by pure geographical region but by area code. Honestly, I don’t consider Fredericksburg part of the Valley by any stretch of the imagination. However, the regions are a matter of debate as it is, and not all parts of a region are created equal (note Adam and I’s debate in a recent thread on ethnic varieties in caucasian voters).
Outside of that one geeky (and admittedly, regionally envious) quibble, an awesome tool and a great addition to VPAP’s veritable cornucopia of useful political info.
