NOMINATE (scaling method) (original) (raw)

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. 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 (or liberal-conservative) spectrum.