Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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The Blue Dress The press was largely on the mark in its reporting on the dress that quickly became central to the Clinton-Lewinsky story. ABC’s early reporting turned out to be highly accurate. The stain did turn out to be the president’s semen. And although Lewinsky in her testimony maintained the dress wasn’t, as ABC […]
The public’s news interests help explain the relative resilience of these news sources. Crime, health and community — the focus of much of today’s local news — are the subjects that most interest Americans. The public expresses considerably less interest in news about political figures and events in Washington and international affairs — topics which […]
Survey Findings Pre-election polling is tricky work. A number of unknown factors can stand in the way of accurate predictions — problems with identifying registered and likely voters, uncertainties about voter turnout, and last-minute shifts in candidate preference. But estimating voter preferences in biracial elections has been especially difficult. Pre-election surveys, even those taken just […]
Table 1. Initial and Reluctant Respondents: A Demographic Profile (Based on unweighted data) Amenable Respondents Reluctant Respondents (No refusal) (Refusal conversion) (N=917) (N=542) % % Sex Male 45 41 Female 55 59 Race White 79 83 Black 13 9 Other 8 8 Age Under 30 20 18 30-49 44 40 50-64 16 20 65+ 17 […]
Introduction and Summary A unique survey research experiment finds that public opinion polls, as they are typically conducted, do not understate conservative opinions or support for the Republican Party. Conservative critics of the polls have charged that these surveys are politically biased. A methodological study by the Pew Research Center finds little evidence of this, […]
Demographics On the whole, both samples (even unweighted) fairly closely reflected the American public. In most demographic categories, both samples differed from U.S. Census figures by 4 percentage points — the statistical margin of error — or less.[1. All demographic comparisons presented in this section are based on unweighted data. Most surveys use mathematical weighting […]
Popular Today vs. Legacy Tomorrow The steady stream of allegations involving a White House sex scandal and cover-up has not eroded President Clinton’s popularity. And while the story continues to interest the public, it appears to have lost some of its resonance: The number of people saying Clinton should be impeached if he lied under […]
Public satisfaction with the state of the nation has lifted out of the doldrums of the early 1990s, with 46% today saying they are satisfied. While this is up 20% points or more from the period 1993 through mid-1996, half of all Americans (50%) still describe themselves as dissatisfied with the way things are going. […]
Old Ways Work Best Many of the problems and challenges mothers face today are related to changes in the lives of women and the evolution of the American family. The jury is still out on whether or not these changes are beneficial for society. Very few women (17%) believe that most divorced couples who split […]