Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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State of the Nation Al Gore is benefitting from two seemingly disparate trends — higher satisfaction with the state of the nation and increased worry about longer-term economic issues. A substantial dip in public satisfaction with national conditions, which was particularly evident in the spring and early summer, has reversed itself. More than half of […]
Tuned Out The presidential campaign is not on the minds of most Americans. Fewer than half of registered voters (46%) say they have thought a lot about the election. That represents a modest decline from a similar point in the campaign four years ago (when 50% said they gave the campaign a lot of thought) […]
Political analysts looking for historical parallels can’t decide whether the 2000 presidential race looks more like a rerun of 1988 or 1960. Will Vice President Al Gore take a page from Vice President George Bush’s play book, when he overcame a big deficit in the early polls and soundly defeated Michael Dukakis? At a comparable […]
Bush Bounces Back In the presidential race, key voting groups continue to shift back and forth between Bush and Gore, as the public is clearly having difficulty making up its mind about this contest. Some of the gains Gore made in the immediate aftermath of the primary season have since been reversed. Senior citizens rallied […]
Introduction and Summary A year after the massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, the vast majority of the public believes it is the responsibility of parents to ensure that such tragedies are not repeated. In fact, a plurality identifies poor parenting — not peer pressure or violence in the media — as the primary cause […]
There is a good deal of social science research now suggesting that people are not interested in learning about the inside baseball of politics, or being educated in the black arts of how to run campaigns. The survey data from this year tends to reinforce that. In October Americans told pollsters from the Pew Research […]
The study, the first of several the Project will provide through the course of the campaign, examined two weeks of coverage, enough to be sizable and still allow the results to be timely. Future studies will focus on other areas as well, such as the Internet and on additional cable outlets, though these reach far […]
When asked to predict the future, public confidence in science and technology is again evident. Eight-in-ten people say that cancer and AIDS will probably be cured; 23% and 19%, respectively, think that cures will definitely be found. Half of the public says scientists may be able to clone humans by the mid-21st century. Those who […]
An overwhelming 81% say they are optimistic about their lives and the lives of their families over the next half century; 40% consider themselves very optimistic. These optimists tend to be young, college educated and have higher than average incomes. Among Americans under age 30, 85% report feeling positive about their futures, compared to 72% […]
Introduction and Summary Americans anticipate many perils in the next century, but none of them, no matter how grave, can dim the public’s positive view of the future. Despite consensus forecasts of natural disasters, environmental calamities and international terrorism, Americans are near unanimous in their confidence that life will get better for themselves, their families […]