Bloggers Hammer Mitt Romney
The Republican presidential frontrunner was the target of significant criticism from bloggers last week in response to his remarks on Planned Parenthood and Rush Limbaugh as well as a column he wrote in 2009.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Background The past several years have brought changes to the bookselling ecosystem, including the rise of e-commerce (and of Amazon in particular) and the continuing decline of independent bookstores and the bricks-and-mortar mega-bookstore. Borders declared bankruptcy in 2011. The current bookstore landscape now includes Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, as well as smaller chains and […]
The public has long believed there is a growing financial divide between the rich and poor in this country. On a basic measure of inequality, a substantial majority continues to agree that “today it’s really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer.” Moreover, more Americans see a greater divergence in […]
Overview As Americans head to the polls this November, their values and basic beliefs are more polarized along partisan lines than at any point in the past 25 years. Unlike in 1987, when this series of surveys began, the values gap between Republicans and Democrats is now greater than gender, age, race or class divides. […]
The U.S. prison system is composed of federal prisons and state prisons. State prisons hold the bulk of the total prison population. Nearly 1.4 million inmates, or 87% of the total U.S. prison population, are under the jurisdiction of state correctional authorities. About 200,000 prison inmates, or 13% of the total, are under the jurisdiction […]
On balance, Vladimir Putin’s first-round victory in the March 4th presidential vote appears to sit well with most Russians, with a majority saying they are satisfied with the results of the election. Views on the fairness of the election, however, are more mixed. Only a plurality believe the presidential election was “clean,” while a substantial […]
Reading trends have fluctuated during the decades that polling organizations have been asking questions about Americans’ reading habits, especially when it comes to books. Our survey introduced several new dimensions of this exploration by asking about people’s purposes for reading, by looking at new technology formats, and by paying particular attention to the role of […]
Overview The growing controversy over the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida was the public’s top story last week, though African Americans express far greater interest in news about the killing than do whites. Overall, a quarter of Americans (25%) say they followed news about the African American teenager killed by a community […]