Quarterly Update
A message from Pew Research Center President Michael Dimock · Subscribe ↗
Dear readers,
Since our founding, Pew Research Center has sought to reflect the voices of all Americans through our work. By conducting surveys and analyzing government data, we have examined the nation’s rich racial and ethnic diversity. We have studied a host of related subjects, too, including public views of racial equality, the experiences of multiracial Americans and Hispanic identity across generations.
2020 brought a renewed focus on race and ethnicity as the U.S. grappled with the coronavirus pandemic’s disproportionate impact on people of color and the unrest spurred by the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans. These events and others are part of a much longer arc of change: The nation is wrestling with what identity means, how inequality plays out in politics and social life, and what it means to be represented.
These shifts in public conversations also point to a need for better data. While the Center is proud of our work on race and ethnicity to date, the events of the past year have challenged us to develop new research designs, address different questions, and even reconsider our analytical lenses to better represent the diversity of people and voices in our nation.
Moving ahead, you’ll see Pew Research Center do more to explore diversity within racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., in addition to our traditional comparisons across groups. Recent examples include studies on the growing diversity of Black Americans, a deep look at faith among Black Americans and a detailed demographic portrait of Asian Americans. You’ll see us blend quantitative and qualitative research approaches to help us reflect voices that may not be represented in traditional national surveys of the public. And you’ll see us explore changes and enhancements to the very ways that we define racial and ethnic groups as the public’s thinking about identity evolves.
We believe this research will help journalists, policymakers, business leaders, philanthropists and the public develop a more nuanced understanding of today’s America. We look forward to sharing our insights with you.
Michael Dimock
President, Pew Research Center
U.S. politics and policy
Though our outsize focus much of the past year has been on the pandemic and the 2020 election, we have continued our domestic public opinion work on current topics such as gun policy, voting access, the minimum wage and views of the new Biden administration, as well as the government’s handling of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Featured research
- Republicans and Democrats move further apart in views of voting access
- Amid a series of mass shootings in the U.S., gun policy remains deeply divisive
- Biden nears 100-day mark with strong approval, positive rating for vaccine rollout
- Most Americans support a $15 federal minimum wage
- Most Americans are critical of government’s handling of situation at U.S.-Mexico border
Our latest global research findings
Our recent global research has focused on views of national identity in the U.S. and Western Europe, as well as opinion on what types of changes are needed to economic and political systems in the wake of the pandemic.
The state of polling
Both the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections raised questions about the accuracy of election polling. With the 2020 election now several months behind us, Pew Research Center is among the survey research organizations examining our own survey processes and the state of polling more broadly.
