Rating.getCandidateRating: Get a candidate's rating by special interest groups

In umatter/pvsR: Interact with the Project Vote Smart API for Scientific Research

Description

This function is a wrapper for the Rating.getCandidateRating() method of the PVS API Rating class which grabs a candidate's rating by special interest groups (SIG). The function sends a request with this method to the PVS API for all candidate and SIG IDs given as a function input, extracts the XML values from the returned XML file(s) and returns them arranged in one data frame.

Usage

Rating.getCandidateRating(candidateId, sigId=NULL)

Arguments

candidateId	a character string or list of character strings with the candidateId(s) (see references for details)
sigId	(optional) a character string or list of character strings with the special interest group's ID(s) (see references for details)

Value

A data frame with a row for each rating of a candidate and columns with the following variables describing the candidate:
candidateRating.candidate.title,
candidateRating.candidate.firstName,
candidateRating.candidate.middleName,
candidateRating.candidate.lastName,
candidateRating.candidate.suffix,
candidateRating.candidate.office,
candidateRating.rating*.sigId,
candidateRating.rating*.ratingId,
candidateRating.rating*.categories.category*.categoryId,
candidateRating.rating*.categories.category*.name,
candidateRating.rating*.timeSpan,
candidateRating.rating*.rating,
candidateRating.rating*.ratingName,
candidateRating.rating*.ratingText.

Author(s)

Ulrich Matter <ulrich.matter-at-unibas.ch>

References

http://api.votesmart.org/docs/Rating.html
Use Candidates.getByOfficeState(), Candidates.getByOfficeTypeState(), Candidates.getByLastname(), Candidates.getByLevenshtein(), Candidates.getByElection(), Candidates.getByDistrict() or Candidates.getByZip() to get a list of candidate IDs.
Use Rating.getSigList() to get a list of special interest group's IDs.
See also: Matter U, Stutzer A (2015) pvsR: An Open Source Interface to Big Data on the American Political Sphere. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0130501. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130501

Examples

# First, make sure your personal PVS API key is saved as an option
# (options("pvs.key" = "yourkey")) or in the pvs.key variable:
## Not run: pvs.key <- "yourkey"
# get ratings by candidate and special interest group
## Not run: rating <- Rating.getCandidateRating(candidateId="9490")
## Not run: head(rating)

umatter/pvsR documentation built on Jan. 9, 2021, 4:35 p.m.