Political Science

This work provides an authoritative overview of the composition of public opinion in America, the methodologies by which public opinion is measured, and the importance of polling to U.S. politics, policy, and culture.This revised edition is a comprehensive resource for understanding all aspects of public opinion polling in the United States, including major and emerging theories and concepts; historical and current methodologies; political, journalistic, and corporate uses; landmark events and developments in the history of polling; and influential people and organizations.

Polling UnPacked gives us the full story, from the first rudimentary polls in the nineteenth century, through attempts by politicians to ban polling in the twentieth century, to the very latest techniques and controversies from the last few years. Equal parts enlightening and hilarious, the book requires no prior knowledge of polling or statistics to understand.

In Gender Differences in Public Opinion, Lizotte utilizes nationally representative data, mainly from the American National Election Study, to study these gender gaps, the explanatory power of values, and the political consequences of these differences. She examines the gender differences in several policy areas such as equal rights, gun control, the death penalty, and the environment, as well as social welfare issues. The result is an insightful and revealing study of how men and women vary in their policy positions and political attitudes.

Intelligence analysts conduct these analyses every day, using decades of propriety By providing analysts with the best practices in survey methodology and nonsurvey methods for gathering data on public opinion, they will be armed with a clearer sense of important shifts in attitudes, elections, and unrest.

Public Opinion is a comprehensive and multidisciplinary examination of public opinion in the United States. Drawing on scholarship in political science, psychology, sociology, and communications, the authors explore the nature of political and social attitudes in the United States and how these attitudes are shaped by various institutions, with an emphasis on mass media. The book also serves as a provocative starting point for the discussion of citizen moods, political participation, and voting behavior.

As Elections and Surveys Director for CBS News, Salvanto is the person behind so many of the poll numbers you see today. Here he takes us inside the world of polling and shows how to look at the numbers the way the pros do. How can pollsters talk to 1,000 people and claim to know the country? How do they decide who gets interviewed, what questions to ask? Salvanto also provides a useful guide to how you should watch elections to come.

Dedicating a chapter to each decade from the 1930s to the present, Seltzer discusses historical events of the period and what the U.S. public thought of those events according to Gallup polls and other public opinion surveys. Each chapter is divided into the following categories: world events; U.S. politics; race; sex and gender; the economy; science, technology and the environment; and popular trends. Within each chapter, approximately 40 survey questions were chosen for more extended analysis: breaking down the results by race, age, gender, education, region, and political party.