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Getting data on your government

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I created an R package a while back to interact with some APIs that serve up data on what our elected represenatives are up to, including the New York Times Congress API, and the Sunlight Labs API.

What kinds of things can you do with govdat? Here are a few examples.


How do the two major parties differ in the use of certain words (searches the congressional record using the Sunlight Labs Capitol Words API)?

# install_github('govdat', 'schamberlain')
library(govdat)
library(reshape2)
library(ggplot2)

dems <- sll_cw_dates(phrase = "science", start_date = "1996-01-20", end_date = "2012-09-01", 
    granularity = "year", party = "D", printdf = TRUE)
repubs <- sll_cw_dates(phrase = "science", start_date = "1996-01-20", end_date = "2012-09-01", 
    granularity = "year", party = "R", printdf = TRUE)
df <- melt(rbind(data.frame(party = rep("D", nrow(dems)), dems), data.frame(party = rep("R", 
    nrow(repubs)), repubs)))
df$count <- as.numeric(df$count)

ggplot(df, aes(yearmonth, count, colour = party, group = party)) + geom_line() + 
    labs(y = "use of the word 'Science'") + theme_bw(base_size = 18) + opts(axis.text.x = theme_text(size = 10), 
    panel.grid.major = theme_blank(), panel.grid.minor = theme_blank(), legend.position = c(0.2, 
        0.8))


Let’s get some data on donations to individual elected representatives.

library(plyr)

# Let's get Nancy Pelosi's entity ID
sll_ts_aggregatesearch('Nancy Pelosi')[[1]]
$name
[1] "Nancy Pelosi (D)"

$count_given
[1] 0

$firm_income
[1] 0

$count_lobbied
[1] 0

$seat
[1] "federal:senate"

$total_received
[1] 17197286

$state
[1] "WY"

$lobbying_firm
NULL

$count_received
[1] 11742

$party
[1] "R"

$total_given
[1] 0

$type
[1] "politician"

$id
[1] "85ab2e74589a414495d18cc7a9233981"

$non_firm_spending
[1] 0

$is_superpac
NULL
# Her entity ID
sll_ts_aggregatesearch('Nancy Pelosi')[[1]]$id
[1] "85ab2e74589a414495d18cc7a9233981"
# And search for her top donors by sector
nancy <- ldply(sll_ts_aggregatetopsectors(sll_ts_aggregatesearch('Nancy Pelosi')[[1]]$id))
nancy # but just abbreviations for sectors
   sector count     amount
1       P  1386 3263050.00
2       F  2148 3192072.00
3       H  1253 2086900.00
4       Q  1300 1529571.00
5       K  1411 1502517.00
6       N   926 1343187.00
7       B   712 1211544.00
8       W   759  817550.00
9       Y   822  666926.00
10      E   253  363539.00
data(sll_ts_sectors) # load sectors abbrevations data
nancy2 <- merge(nancy, sll_ts_sectors, by="sector") # attach full sector names
nancy2_melt <- melt(nancy2[,-1], id.vars=3)
nancy2_melt$value <- as.numeric(nancy2_melt$value)
ggplot(nancy2_melt, aes(sector_name, value)) + # and lets plot some results
    geom_bar() +
    coord_flip() +
    facet_wrap(~ variable, scales="free", ncol=1)

## It looks like a lot of individual donations (the count facet) by finance/insurance/realestate, but by amount, the most (by slim margin) is from labor organizations.

Or we may want to get a bio of a congressperson. Here we get Todd Akin of MO. And some twitter searching too? Indeed.

out <- nyt_cg_memberbioroles("A000358")  # cool, lots of info, output cutoff for brevity
out[[3]][[1]][1:2]
$member_id
[1] "A000358"

$first_name
[1] "Todd"
# we can get his twitter id from this bio, and search twitter using
# twitteR package
akintwitter <- out[[3]][[1]]$twitter_id

# install.packages('twitteR')
library(twitteR)
tweets <- userTimeline(akintwitter, n = 100)
tweets[1:5]  # there's some gems in there no doubt
[[1]]
[1] "RepToddAkin: Do you receive my Akin Alert e-newsletter?  Pick the issues you’d like to get updates on and sign up here!\nhttp://t.co/nZfiRjTF"

[[2]]
[1] "RepToddAkin: If the 2001 &amp; 2003 tax policies expire, taxes will increase over $4 trillion in the next 10 years. America can't afford it. #stopthetaxhike"

[[3]]
[1] "RepToddAkin: A govt agency's order shouldn't defy constitutional rights. I'm still working for #religiousfreedom and repealing the HHS mandate. #prolife"

[[4]]
[1] "RepToddAkin: I am a cosponsor of the bill being considered today to limit abortions in DC. RT if you agree! #prolife http://t.co/Mesrjl0w"

[[5]]
[1] "RepToddAkin: We need to #StopTheTaxHike. Raising taxes like the President wants would destroy more than 700,000 jobs. #4jobs http://t.co/KUTd0M7U"

Get the .Rmd file used to create this post at my github account – or .md file.


Written in Markdown, with help from knitr, and nice knitr highlighting/etc. in in RStudio.

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