"Delegate Positions on All Substantive Roll Calls at the United States Constitutional Convention, 1787"
This data set contains 5,121 yae or nay positions (including preferences) on 620 substantive motions for 55 delegates who attended the United States Constitutional Convention held in 1787. Since delegate votes were not recorded at the Constitutional Convention -- only the votes of state delegations were recorded -- delegate votes were inferred from statements made by delegates during debate, motions and seconds, and the formal rule that the vote recorded for each state was determined by the majority of its delegation. Source information was used in a way that allows delegates to change their preferences across the course of the Convention. This data set also contains state positions on each motion as well as category codes for each motion. Observations include the roll call number, the vote recorded for the state on the motion, and the vote or preference inferred for each delegate, including information about attendance.
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"Delegate Votes on 28 Motions at the U. S. Constitutional Convention, 1787"
This data set contains delegate votes on 28 motions at the U.S. Constitutional Convention -- an earlier NSF project. Nine of the motions are related to slavery, sixteen come from a disparate list created by McDonald (1958), and four are related to public debt and currency issues (one of which is also in the second category). Votes were inferred from delegate statements in debate, speeches, manuscripts, and other sources, as well as the formal rule that each state's vote is determined by the majority of its delegation. The key difference between this dataset and the previous dataset, is that this one uses information throughout a delegate's career, such as statements he made in the Congress of the Confederation or his state legislature, to code votes. In other words, it does not allow preferences to change throughout a delegate's career -- which provide more dense coding. Each observation includes the delegate's name, state, ICPSR state code, state vote on the motion, and the vote inferred for the delegate on the motion.
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For detailed information on these two studies see:
Dougherty, Keith L, Jac Heckelman, Paul Carlsen, and David Gelman. "A New Dataset of Delegate Positions on all Substantive Roll Calls at the U.S. Constitutional Convention," Historical Methods, 2012, 45(3): 135-141.
Dougherty, Keith L, Jac Heckelman, Paul Carlsen, and David Gelman. "A New Dataset of Delegate Positions on all Substantive Roll Calls at the U.S. Constitutional Convention," Historical Methods, 2012, 45(3): 135-141.