The final measure connects the original UWF Survey to what is happening amoung our state representatives on the Federal level.
DC Inbox is a repository of over 60,000 official e-newsletters sent from members of the U.S. Congress to their constituents. Starting in August 2009, every official e-newsletter sent was captured and compiled to create the database. Depending on the specific Congress and chamber 80-95% of all legislators sent at least one e-newsletter during their term. DC Inbox is the most comprehensive and easily accessible online archive of these official communications.
This data set holds potential for many research areas. Political scientists, such as Mayhew, have long supposed that members of Congress present themselves in a way that may not accurately reflect their acts in office; yet for the most part this supposition remains untested for lack of systemic data. Having a recorded set of texts containing strategic legislator communications offers a powerful, and increasingly easier to analyze data set.
We counted the frequency with which Florida Representatives in Congress mentioned our 12 original Indicators of Strength in their newsletters between the years of 2013 and 2015.
Mentions of Military, bases, or veterans are the most frequent mentions among Florida Congressional members. The second most frequent mention is Education, this includes both K-12 and Higher Education. While these two align with our Survey findings, the frequency of mention towards Agriculture and State Parks do not. Furthermore, the lack of frequency for Coast Line, Electoral Votes, and both indicators of Population do not align with our UWF Survey Results.
Furthermore, among the indicators observed in this study, Florida’s top rankings in comparison with the other states are among the Indicators of Sports & Recreation, Tourism, and Coastlines (Ports). Congressional mention of Tourism and Sports are moderately high, but the mentions of the coastline or ports is significantly low.
Overall, Congressional Representation is somewhat aligned with significant divergence in the areas of Population and Coastal Ports.
