Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
As the American public has learned more about Mitt Romney over the course of the past year, his image has changed substantially. Last fall, the one word that came to mind most frequently when people were asked to describe Romney was Mormon. The same question this spring elicited the words rich and no more frequently […]
As Paul Ryan prepares to accept his nomination as the GOP’s vice presidential candidate, the American public has a mixed impression of him. When asked what one word comes to mind when thinking about Ryan, the most frequent responses are conservative, intelligent, good, unknown, and young. In the latest national survey by the Pew Research […]
Overview As the Republican convention gets underway, more Americans express interest in learning about what’s in the GOP platform than in the speeches by either Mitt Romney or his running mate. About half of the public (52%) is interested in learning about the Republican Party’s platform, while 44% are interested in Romney’s acceptance speech and […]
The Political Party scale was determined by selecting a set of questions from the Pew Research Center’s 2012 American political values survey representing a range of political values that are each consistently associated with party identification.
As the 2012 party conventions approach, the Democratic Party continues to maintain an advantage in party identification among voters, but its lead is much smaller than it was in 2008. In more than 13,000 interviews conducted so far in 2012, 35% of registered voters identify with the Democratic Party, 28% with the Republican Party and […]
Abortion has emerged as an issue in the 2012 presidential race, following Missouri GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin’s controversial comments about abortion and “legitimate rape.” In recent years, narrow majorities of the public have consistently said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The Democratic Party is widely favored over the GOP […]
Despite limited primetime coverage, the Republican and Democratic conventions still give the parties a chance to define their presidential candidates and spark public interest in the campaign. In 2008, notably, both conventions attracted sizable audiences, especially among their own partisans. In a Pew Research Center survey conducted after the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., […]
Overview For the second time in a decade, the believability ratings for major news organizations have suffered broad-based declines. In the new survey, positive believability ratings have fallen significantly for nine of 13 news organizations tested. This follows a similar downturn in positive believability ratings that occurred between 2002 and 2004. The falloff in credibility […]