Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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  • report

    Nielsen Starts Watching the Ad Watchers

    Nielsen Media Research, the gold standard in the TV ratings industry, has announced that it will release numbers in December that show how many people actually sit through commercials on TV. That new yardstick will affect how much advertisers will pay to air those ads and will very possibly alter the economics of the TV marketplace. And not everyone in the TV business is happy about this.

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    Voter Turnout and Congressional Change

    In recent decades, there have been three basic ways that turnout has worked to produce the sort of “big wave” midterm that the Democrats are hoping for next week.

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    Karl Rove’s Ground War Challenge

    In an election environment which seems to favor the Democrats in so many ways, the Republicans continue to hold two strong cards; they have more money and they are better at getting out the vote than are the Democrats.

  • short reads

    Support for Civil Unions vs. Gay Marriage

    That’s the number of Americans who favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements giving them many of the same rights as married couples — a figure that is nine percentage points higher than it was in October 2003. But only 35% favor legalizing gay marriages.

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    Thinking about a Career Switch?

    Nearly half of U.S. workers expect they will switch careers sometime in the future. Young workers and part-time workers are more likely to say they are very or somewhat likely to change careers.

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    Is There a Culture War? A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life

    James Davison Hunter and Alan Wolfe Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion & Public Life E.J. Dionne Jr. and Michael Cromartie, Series Editors Order the book In the wake of a bitter 2004 presidential campaign and in the face of numerous divisive policy questions, many Americans wonder if their country has split in two. People are […]

  • fact sheet

    The Supreme Court Revisits the Partial Birth Abortion Issue

    Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Introduction On Nov. 8, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in two cases that challenge the constitutionality of the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The related cases, Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, offer the high court an opportunity to […]

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    Not Much Good News in the New Circulation Numbers

    The new numbers for the newspaper industry are out, and they show another disheartening drop of nearly 3% in total average daily circulation. But the picture may be more complicated than the first impression. Not all papers are hurting, and many companies have trimmed questionable circulation. The industry also is boasting that, when online readers are included, overall readership is growing.

  • short reads

    Liberal Democrats

    That’s the percent of Democratic voters who think of themselves as “liberals.”