Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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The news media offered the American public a fine education in campaign tactics but told them little about matters that actually will affect them as citizens in the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.
Democrats Make Gains The Democratic Party now enjoys as big an advantage over the Republican Party as it has in at least a decade, though recent shifts in party affiliation have not been dramatic. In 1999, 34% of Americans identify themselves as Democrats, 27% say they are Republicans and 39% are Independent. In 1994, the […]
Introduction and Summary Journalists increasingly agree with public criticism of their profession and the quality of their work. Overwhelmingly, news media professionals say the lines have blurred between commentary and reporting and between entertainment and news. A growing number of reporters, editors and news executives also say that news reports are full of factual errors […]
The potential for conducting public opinion surveys online is a hot topic today. With the Internet’s tremendous growth, an online poll can now compile literally tens of thousands of opinions quickly and at a fraction of the cost of traditional telephone surveys. Already many commercial websites invite people to voice their views on a range […]
The number of Americans who go online to get news has tripled in the last three years. In 1995, just 4% of Americans went online for news at least once a week. Now, anywhere from 15% to 26% go online for news on a weekly basis, according to recent Pew Research Center surveys. This range […]
Results for the survey are based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates among a nationwide sample of 597 parents who have one or more child between the ages of 8 and 17, during the period September 19-23, 1998. For results based on the total sample, one can say with […]
Introduction and Summary Public interest in the White House sex scandal has not increased at all with the news that President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky will soon give grand jury testimony. Only 29% of Americans are following news of the controversy very closely, despite a torrent of media coverage. News interest is nearly identical to […]
The data used in this analysis are from two national telephone surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates. The two surveys — the “Standard” survey and the “Rigorous” survey — asked exactly the same questions, but for experimental purposes the surveys […]
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 […]
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 […]