Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Publications

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    Primary Preview: Dynamics Differ for the Two Parties in Early Races

    With the first votes of the 2008 presidential election soon to be cast in the early-decision states, the likely outcome of these contests is more in doubt than in any election cycle in recent history. For the Democratic candidates, the decisive factors are personal and tactical. For Republican contestants, however, the ultimate outcome may be […]

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    What Was — and Wasn’t — On the Public’s Mind in 2007

    As in previous years, public opinion played an important role in shaping many of 2007’s major news stories. This year, fewer dominant trends were carryovers from the preceding year and those that were assumed a somewhat different — and in the case of the Iraq war less pessimistic — cast. Read full analysis at Pewresearch.org

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    Gas Prices, Disasters Top Public’s News Interests In 2007

    Summary of Findings Man-made and natural disasters dominated the list of the public’s top news stories in 2007. Nearly half of Americans (45%) tracked news about the shootings of 33 students at Virginia Tech University very closely, while nearly as many paid very close attention to reports on the Minneapolis bridge collapse and the California […]

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    An Impassioned Debate: An Overview of the Death Penalty in America

    (Updated June 26, 2008) In this article: The role of the courts Lethal injection and the Baze case Child rape and the Kennedy case The history of the death penalty The death penalty worldwide Few public policy issues have inflamed passions as consistently and as strongly as the debate over capital punishment. Religious communities have […]

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    Death Penalty Timeline

    Timeline provided by Stateline.org Return to the death penalty issue page  The Death Penalty Since 1972 (Links to U.S. Supreme Court decisions provided by oyez.org and the Web site of the U.S. Supreme Court)  1972 Furman v. Georgia: The U.S. Supreme Court effectively voids 40 state death penalty statutes and suspends capital punishment, ruling that […]