Dependent Variables
- Number of Democratic frames mentioned in senatorial press releases and floor statements between 1/1/05 and 2/28/05.
- Number of Republican frames mentioned in senatorial press releases and floor statements between 1/1/05 and 2/28/05.
- The number of mentions of the Democratic frames and the number of mentions of the Republican frames that appeared in articles in the Washington Post and the Washington Times between 1/1/05 and 2/28/05.
Independent Variables
- Whether or not a senator is up for re-election in 2006
Hypothesis : If a senator faces re-election in 2006 they should be less likely to use party frames.
- Number of electoral votes in a senator’s state
Hypothesis : The greater the number of electoral votes per-state the greater the number of corresponding party frames.
- Issue rating according to RetireSafe
Hypothesis : The interest group rating should correspond to the volume of party frames. The higher the conservative rating the greater the number of Republican party frame mentions. (An extremely high level of correlation allows us to use only the conservative interest group rating for both Democratic and Republican regression models.)
Created by Katie Parsley
Davidson College
Created on May 1, 2005