Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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    Post Election Headlines Play it Safe

    How did newspapers play the Nov 7 election on their front page? Did they see an ideological realignment in the country, or some deeper shift? A review of the day-after headlines in 230 newspapers across the country reveals that it was nothing quite so dramatic and many tread closer to Sergeant Joe Friday’s “Just the Facts, Ma’am.”

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    Attitudes Toward Homosexuality in African Countries

    That’s the percentage of the public in both Kenya and Nigeria that says that homosexuality can never be justified. In the U.S. half of the public, including 80% of pentecostals, take that view.

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    The Election Pundits…Who Got Closest?

    There was no shortage once again on cable and elsewhere in which pundits were asked how the midterm election would come out, something that of course by its nature was unknowable in advance. The general consensus among political prognosticators was that Nov. 7 was going to bring Democratic gains in Congress. Among a group of the most widely quoted election oracles, no one hit exactly what the final House tally appears likely to come out, but one prognosticator got very close.

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    Religious Voters and the Midterm Elections

    Washington, D.C. Despite predictions from some pundits that sex scandals involving former Rep. Mark Foley and former National Association of Evangelicals President Ted Haggard would make evangelicals disillusioned with the GOP, exit polls showed evangelicals supported Republicans at levels similar to previous elections. Exit polls showed Democrats also did well among their core constituencies; compared […]

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    Participation 2.0

    As we’ve seen during this election season, participating online can also motivate users to participate offline.

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    Internet and Health

    That’s the percent of internet users who go online for health information.

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    Vote Count Confidence

    That’s the percentage of registered voters who expressed concern about whether their ballots would be tallied properly in Tuesday’s election.

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    Which Polls Had it Right?

    The final tally from the mid-term election is in—you know the poll in which people actually vote—and the media polls can now be graded. With each election, there are more media outlets, and more polls. Usually, the polls begin to converge as election day nears. This year, the polls varied widely. How did they stack up against the actual vote?

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    Evangelicals and Evolution

    That’s the percentage of white evangelical Protestants that rejects the notion that humans and other living things have evolved over time, espousing instead a view that life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.

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    Centrists Deliver for Democrats

    The political center forcefully asserted itself in Tuesday’s midterms. The national exit poll showed that political independents, who divided their votes evenly between George Bush and John Kerry in 2004, swung decisively in favor of the Democrats. With roughly nine-in-ten Republicans and Democrats casting ballots for representatives of their parties, just as they did two […]