Re: Historical Congressional District shapefiles
I've been a bit behind on my summer email, but I would like to add to this
thread that I have U.S. House shapefiles for Virginia from 1790 to 1960,
plus those after 2000. Several of the historical files require some polygon
tweaking to account for a number of intracounty city-based districts. The
shapefiles ultimately will be incorporated into an ongoing public database
project on Virginia elections and state elected officials (1776-present):see
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/valeg/. In Virginia and
more than a few other states, a derivative benefit of creating these
congressional shapefiles from county/town subfiles is the real possibility
of simultaneously creating historical state legislative districts, too.
For those interested, I would like to encourage you to explore the
possibilities of creating similar state-based elections and historical
district databases in other states. Recent advances in the accessibility of
GIS software and university/college library server and relational database
capacities make these types of research projects manageable for relatively
small research teams.
Charles A. Kromkowski, Ph.D.
Department of Politics
P.0. Box 400787
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22904
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~cak5u/home.htm
On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 11:13:36 -0400
David Darmofal <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Andy,
>
> Hi. I'm not aware of any Congressional District shapefiles for the period
>you're interested in (though I'd be interested if others have found such
>shapefiles). Because spatial analysis is relatively new, one of the side
>effects, unfortunately, is that most shapefiles are for contemporary areal
>units, or those in the recent past. This is a good argument, by the way,
>for a grant for mapping units of historical interest.
>
> If your interest is in doing spatial econometric analysis, rather than
>mapping per se, you could construct the weights matrix by hand. It's
>tedious but definitely can be done with some historical maps.
>
> I should mention, by the way, that while the shapefile that you mentioned
>for the 103rd Congress is a great resource, it's not without its own
>problems. Many congressional districts contain islands, and the shapefile
>includes separate polygons for each island in a member's district. Thus,
>for example, Rep. Don Young from Alaska is associated with 78 separate
>polygons in that shapefile. If using the shapefile for a spatial
>econometric analysis, you'd want to be careful in defining neighboring
>districts so that you're not including the distinct polygons within
>members' districts as neighbors of each other.
>
> Best,
> Dave
>
>
>
>
> David Darmofal
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Political Science
> University of South Carolina
> 350 Gambrell Hall
> Columbia, SC 29208
> (803) 777-5440
> [log in to unmask]
> http://people.cas.sc.edu/darmofal/
>
>>>> [log in to unmask] 08/01/06 10:13 AM >>>
> Hello all,
>
> I'd like to map some roll call data from the second half of the nineteenth
> century, and wondered if anyone had ever come across Congressional
>District
> shapefiles for any part of this period. The Census Bureau appears to have
> Congressional District shapefiles only as far back as the 103rd.
>
> Thanks,
> Andy Eggers
>
> ___________________
> PhD Candidate
> Department of Government
> Harvard University
>
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