Our resulting network (displayed above) has three separate components. Two of these components represent the major parties; Democrats in the top left corner and Republicans in the bottom right corner. Between them, in the upper right corner, is a small bipartisan component of five members that has four Republicans and one Democrat. The fact that this small component contains the network’s only bipartisan connections makes it interesting and worth investigating. We figured we might be able to use NPAT Common Space Scores to examine this unusual group. These scores are available online and are annually updated by Boris Shor of Georgetown University and Nolan McCarty of Princeton University. The scores allowed us to quantify the general ideology of state legislators by putting them on a scale from high to low. A higher score indicates that a member is more conservative, a lower score indicates that a member is more liberal.

Figure 2: NPAT Scores of Members in the Bipartisan Network Component

According to the NPAT scores, we were able to find relationships between the most conservative member of the House (Representative Daryl Metcalfe), a liberal Republican, and even a Democrat (Representative Tony DeLuca). This isn’t necessarily an unexpected result though. We limited our network because we wanted to find subtle, issue-specific relationships that might be overshadowed in the full data set. Similarly, NPAT scores are calculated by taking all of a member’s votes into account to quantify an overall ideology, not an issue-specific ideology. If these members are ideologically similar on gun issues, that subtlety might be lost under all the other data used to create the score. Basically, our network and the NPAT scores are measuring two different things so we can’t compare the two. Later in this post, we’ll return to the idea of a gun-specific score.

Our current model suggests that the parties are almost completely isolated from each other on the gun issues. A bill typically requires 102 votes to pass, more than 50% of the 203 total members. Legislation can only move through the House if at least some of the 119 Republicans support it. Additionally, it is hard to see how a bill introduced by a member of the bipartisan component would be able to get any traction given the relative isolation of that component. Votes are obviously only part of the story, so we wanted to build and explore a more robust data set.

There is often a financial component where donors (both individuals and organizations) will contribute to the campaigns of elected officials they agree with, especially with controversial issues like gun control. Using data from FollowTheMoney.org and the Pennsylvania Department of State, we pulled all available contributions for 2014 and 2015 to current legislators from gun control and advocacy groups. Gun control and gun advocacy groups contributed a total of $23,265. Gun control contributions come from only one group, Ceasefire Pennsylvania. Ceasefire Pennsylvania is an organization that works with voters and elected officials across Pennsylvania to address gun violence issues through education and gun control legislation. Gun advocacy contributions come from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Firearm Owners Against Crime (FOAC). Both of these groups are dedicated to the preservation of Americans’ second amendment rights. Both groups are very active in backing candidates who also support the rights of gun owners. FOAC is a Pennsylvania specific organization based in Western Pennsylvania, while the NRA has a national scope but is active on the state level.

One noteworthy assumption we made was that donors contribute to elected officials as a way of supporting those who are already ideologically in-line with them. There is a notion that campaign contributions are used by wealthy individuals and organizations to incentivize a member to adjust their position on a given issue. We haven’t done any hard data analysis to say whether or not this is the case. We do, however, acknowledge that fully exploring whether certain money moves politicians, or whether politicians attract certain money could be a post by itself. For now, we assume that money helps win elections by enabling candidates to better communicate with voters.

The table below shows the breakdown of these gun-related contributions by the recipient’s party and their stance on gun issues:

Figure 3: Pennsylvania State Level Contributions by Party and Position

Gun advocacy groups were responsible for 82% of contributions. Additionally, of the $19,000+ in contributions from gun advocacy groups, 73% went to Republicans. Gun advocacy groups also spread their money among more candidates by contributing to 32 candidates, at an average of $594 each. Comparatively, gun control groups contributed to just 8 candidates, at an average of $321 each.

The Pennsylvania state financial landscape echos the deep partisan divides we see on the national level. Compare the table above with the table below; the table below breaks down contributions made directly to federal candidates across the country from gun control and gun advocacy groups during the 2014 election. The pattern, in which Republican gun advocates receive the overwhelming majority of contributions, is similar. At the federal level, however, the discrepancy is much larger.

Figure 4: Nation-Wide Federal Level Contributions by Party and Position

To flesh out the data a little more, and make it comparable to our voting data, we created a financial relationship network. Relationships in the network are based on members taking money from the same groups. For example, Representative Daryl Metcalfe and Representative Harry Readshaw received $2,000 and $1,000 from FOAC, respectively. Because both members took money from the same group, we draw a relationship between them. The weight of the relationship is determined by how much money they received. The average of their contributions is $1,500 which is the value we assign to the weight of the relationship. When we draw the network blue lines are stronger relationships and red lines are weaker.

Representative Krueger-Braneky (the recipient of $2,000 from Ceasefire Pennsylvania) was excluded from our vote network for not having enough voting data to include. For consistency, we will also be excluding her from the financial contribution network.