Question

We have a data set that has information on all 435 U.S. House districts. We have two variables of interest:
•whether a majority of voters in the district support homosexual rights (yes/no)
•whether the district elected a Democratic or Republican House member (partisan direction of the vote)

We calculate a lambda with the 'partisan direction of the vote' as our dependent variable. That lambda is equal to .53. Describe what that lambda means in as much detail as possible. Refer specifically to the variables in question.

Answer 1

Lambda is one of the statistical measures that can be used to analyse the association when the variables (response and explanatory) is of nominal nature. It is used to indicate whether the explanatory variable referred to be a good predictor for the response variable.

It is given that lambda with the 'partisan direction of the vote' as our dependent variable and it is equal to 0.53. Here, the explanatory variable is voters. Therefore, the value 0.53 indicates that the district voters can be referred as the moderate predictor to elect a Republican House member (partisan direction of the vote).