One of the most intractable problems associated with studying representation in the U.S. House of Representatives involves the measurement of district-level constituency opinion. In measuring constituency opinion in House districts, scholars have relied on a number of alternative approaches, including the use of demographic variables, small-sample estimates of public opinion, presidential election results, referenda data, and "bottom-up" simulated opinion. In this article we develop an innovative "top-down" simulation of House district opinion that provides more reliable and valid measures of House district ideology. We model state-level ideology (as measured by Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993) as a function of various demographic and political variables found at both the state and House district levels, and then use the estimates from the state-level model to generate predicted ideology scores for each House district during the 1980s and 1990s. Our findings suggest that the top-down simulated measure is a valid indicator of House district ideology that can be used in a number of research venues. Representation is particularly important to democratic theory. According to Considering the important role that representation plays in democracies, the study of representation has occupied a central place in the field of political science and has long captivated the interest of both theorists and empirical analysts. Although scholars have explored a range of representational behaviors, the focus of much of this research has been on what The concept of policy representation requires at least some level of congruence between the policy views of constituents and the policy behavior of repre
