NOMINATE (scaling method)

NOMINATE

W-NOMINATE coordinates of members of the 111th House of Representatives.
Developers
Keith T. Poole, University of Georgia
Howard Rosenthal, New York University
v t e

NOMINATE (an acronym for Nominal Three-Step Estimation) is a multidimensional scaling application developed by US political scientists Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal in the early 1980s to analyze preferential and choice data, such as legislative roll-call voting behavior.^[1][2] In its most well-known application, members of the US Congress are placed on a two-dimensional map, with politicians who are ideologically similar (i.e. who often vote the same) being close together. One of these two dimensions corresponds to the familiar left–right political spectrum (liberal–conservative in the United States).

As computing capabilities grew, Poole and Rosenthal developed multiple iterations of their NOMINATE procedure: the original D-NOMINATE method, W-NOMINATE, and most recently DW-NOMINATE (for dynamic, weighted NOMINATE). In 2009, Poole and Rosenthal were the first recipients of the Society for Political Methodology's Best Statistical Software Award for their development of NOMINATE.^[3] In 2016, the society awarded Poole its Career Achievement Award, stating that "the modern study of the U.S. Congress would be simply unthinkable without NOMINATE legislative roll call voting scores."^[4]