pvsR (version 0.1.1)

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

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 variables describing the candidate. The returned data frame contains a row for each 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.

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.

Examples

# First, make sure your personal PVS API key is saved as character string in the pvs.key variable:
pvs.key <- "yourkey"
# get ratings by candidate and special interest group
rating <- Rating.getCandidateRating(candidateId="9490")
rating