Topic: Public Opinion
- Public Opinion
Public opinion is a collective attitude or preference concerning political issues shaped by a varied and complex interplay of factors. Group membership, personal experience, gender, race, education, class, media, government officials, elites, religion, geographical region, culture, and political ideology all affect socialization and knowledge acquisition that influence and are influenced by public opinion. Public opinion tends to be stable over time, but historical and catastrophic events, economic or technological changes, personal experiences, and group replacement may cause it to shift. Polling is a primary means to collect public opinion, and, despite its shortcomings, most agree that polls are invaluable to democratic societies.
Public opinion is vital to the concept and practice of democracy. The U.S. Declaration of Independence, for example, decried the British Crown for not adhering to the people’s voice. However, the institutional...
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Pollsters (Selected)
- American National Election Studies ANES produces high quality data from its own surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation. Free registration to access data. At the top menu, click on Resources and then ANES Question Search.
- Eurobarometer Surveys Public Opinion Analysis sector of the European Commission. Since 1973, the European Commission has been monitoring the evolution of public opinion in the Member States, thus helping the preparation of texts, decision-making and the evaluation of its work. Surveys and studies address major topics concerning European citizenship: enlargement, social situation, health, culture, information technology, environment, the Euro, defence, etc.
- FiveThirtyEight Aggregate polls. At FiveThirtyEight, we strive to accumulate and analyze polling data in a way that is honest, informed, comprehensive and accurate. While we do occasionally commission polls, most of our understanding of American public opinion comes from aggregating polling data conducted by other firms and organizations. This data forms the foundation of our polling averages, election forecasts and much of our political coverage.
- Gallup.com Some information is free, a subscription required for data downloads. At the bottom of a summary page see: View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).
- The Harris Vault (a Nielsen company) Discover and explore over forty years of insight released by The Harris Poll® in our new Harris Vault® archive. Simply utilize the search function to uncover data spanning subject matter and industry – dating back to The Harris Poll’s inception in 1963.
- Monmouth University Polling Institute The Monmouth University Poll received an A+ rating from the polling website FiveThirtyEight.com. In 2013, it was the only poll that correctly forecast the outcomes of both the November gubernatorial race and the unprecedented October U.S. Senate contest in New Jersey, leading the Asbury Park Press to call Monmouth’s polling “freakishly accurate.”
- Pew Research Center An "independent opinion research group that studies attitudes toward press, politics and public policy issues." Contains summaries of results, comparisons of how attitudes change over time, copies of questionnaires, and descriptions of survey methodologies
- PollingReport.com"An independent, nonpartisan resource on trends in American public opinion."
- Quinnipiac University Polls Frequently cited by journalists, public officials and researchers, the independent Quinnipiac University Poll regularly surveys residents nationwide and polls in more than a dozen states about political races, state and national elections, and issues of public concern, such as schools, taxes, transportation, municipal services and the environment.
- RealClear Politics Poll aggregator. Aggregations of polls, including the ones by RealClearPolitics or FiveThirtyEight, use polls' timeliness or previous accuracy to help smooth out methodological concerns—such as small sample sizes and historical biases—in order to better allow trends to emerge. The final poll averages published by RealClearPolitics, for instance, correctly predicted the winner around 90 percent of the time across the small set of nominating contests, compared to the 85 percent accuracy of the 370 final polls published for those same primaries and caucuses. The aggregated model was also more accurate than the raw polls in predicting the winner's vote margin, missing by 6.6 points on the Democratic side and by 3.8 points on the Republican side, on average.
- Reports from Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) Reports authored by PIPA. PIPA conducts studies of public attitudes on various international topics. The website contains studies of U.S. opinion and studies of worldopinion. They have also published a new website/webzine called WorldPublicOpinion.org, as a source of in-depth information and analysis on public opinion from around the world on international issues.
- TransAtlantic Trends Gauging public opinion is an invaluable tool for policymakers, the media, think tanks and academics alike. With the public opinion poll Transatlantic Trends GMF together with partners surveyed publics in Europe and the United States on issues such as foreign and security policy challenges, economic policy, and migration policy. Started in 2002 as World Views, Transatlantic Trends has gathered public opinion for over 13 years so far. From 2008 till 2011 GMF and partners spun out a stand -alone survey on immigration and integration issues, Transatlantic Trends: Immigration. From 2013 onwards, questions on migration and integration were reinserted into Transatlantic Trends.
- World Public Opinion International collaborative project whose aim is to give voice to public opinion around the world on international issues. Seeks to reveal the values and views of publics in specific nations around the world as well as global patterns of world public opinion.
Pollsters Rankings/Accuracy of Pollsters
- FiveThirtyEight Rankings Ranks most accurate pollsters
- How To Read Polls In 2020 it can be hard to know which polls to trust or how to make sense of them all. But don’t worry — it doesn’t take an advanced degree in statistics to interpret polling in a smart way. So the next time you come across a poll and are wondering what to make of it, just follow these 10 steps.1
Public Opinion Search
If you are looking for public opinion/polls on a topic, you might want to begin with searching on the Pew Research Center website to begin with (see link below)
Pew is non-partisan and has public opinion on many different subjects. To browse, click on "topics" on the site.
To search for a specific poll question, for example, a question about climate change, follow the link below and type in "climate change" and search:
If you do not find what you need there, see the links below for more sites to search.
- Pew Research Center Website The Pew Research Center is a "nonpartisan fact tank" conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis, and other empirical social science research around several broad themes: U.S. politics and policy, use and influence of the media, the role of the internet and technology, Hispanics in the U.S., the role of religion in public life in the U.S. and beyond, social & demographic trends in the U.S., and global attitudes. All data and reports can be browsed by topic, searched by question, and are freely downloadable. 1997-present
Subject-specific
- Public Opinion on Energy & Climate Change "The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) produces data-driven research that advances society’s understanding of the global energy challenge and translates research insights into real-world impacts through strategic outreach and training for the next generation of global energy leaders. "