Although statistical analysis of federal election results is abundant, state election results have not received the same level of scrutiny. CQ has attempted to address this disparity through a partnership with InContext, Inc., an international information company specializing in "politicoeonomic analyses that juxtapose socioeconomic data against . . . political jurisdictions." This partnership has already produced two titles: The Almanac of State Legislatures [RBB Ja 15 95] and The State Atlas of Political and Cultural Diversity (1997), which used digitized images of the nation's 6,744 state legislative districts as the basis for their analyses.
State Legislative Elections uses these images, 1990 U.S. Census data, and state legislative election results from 1990^-96 to create maps and charts that show voting patterns and socioeconomic data for each Senate and House district in the nation. Four-color maps show the geodemographic makeup of each district within a state, that is, what areas are rural, suburban, urban, or mixed and the location of major cities. Charts indicate which party won general elections during the relevant time period, the percentage of the vote received, and the district's geodemographic makeup. These charts also contain key demographic data, including average household income in the district, percent with a college education, percent of households receiving Social Security, and percent of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans in the district. A useful feature would have been an appendix matching cities, towns, and counties to their legislative district(s). Users may need to determine the number of the district(s) they are researching from another source before using this book.
Coauthor Michael Barone, former senior writer at U.S. News and World Report, contributes one-page essays on each state's political history and trends. His essays are informative and entertaining but do not contain citations to any sources. They illustrate the difficulty in addressing time-sensitive material in a monograph, as they contain numerous references to elections scheduled for 1997 and 1998. It's too late for the 1997 elections, but to obtain maximum benefit from Barone's insights into the upcoming 1998 elections, librarians will need to order and catalog this book as a "Rush!" Useful for political researchers, lobbyists, public interest groups, and political junkies of all types, and recommended for public and academic libraries.
