Andrew Odewahn's Social Graph

Just watched Andrew Odewahn's brief presentation on youtube. He created a program that analyzed historical Senate data (roll-call vote records going back to the 102nd Session in 1991) with the intention of mapping coalitions within the Senate.

I thought his program was very interesting and highlighted the existence of not only Senate coalitions, but of overall party cohesion within the Democratic and Republican parties. Based on the information presented, Odewahn's program shows the greatest party cohesion during the 104th session (Jan. 3, 1995- Jan. 3, 1997). Interestingly, his presentation also highlights the extremely bipartisan voting nature of turncoat Senators Arlen Spector and Jim Jeffords; hinting at their future party changes.

Odewahn's graphs can be extremely useful to poli sci students for his masterful analyzation of Senate roll-call votes, yet his program is equally useful to information technology students for its seemingly simple code.