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
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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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