Polls and Public Opinion

CURRENT POLL DATA FULL-TEXT: | Newspaper |Television | State-specific
DATA ARCHIVES (earlier years and/or longitudinal studies)
POLLING ORGANIZATIONS (identify items for purchase; articles, other info)
DATA PLUS ANALYSIS | DATA WITHIN ARTICLES (SUBJECT RESEARCH) | SELECTED BOOKS

Twenty questions a journalist should ask about poll results. From the National Council on Public Polls.

For statistics, data sets, and other data resources please consult Statistics Sources.

National Poll Data

The Gallup Poll Current year news releases.

Mugar Reference X HN90 .P8G3 1945+; also

The Gallup poll cumulative index : public opinion, 1935-1997
Mugar Reference X HN90 .P8G29 1999

The Harris Poll Reports from 1999 and 2000.

Polling Report From the website: "An independent, nonpartisan resource on trends in American public opinion."

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press Polls on politics, the media and American values back to 1995.

Public Opinion Online (Roper) 1936+
(Access through Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe BU ; choose "Reference" on the menu, then "Polls & Surveys".)
Claims to be the most comprehensive full-text collection of public opinion in the United States. The file includes data from Gallup, Harris, Roper; ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC; Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal.

Roper's journal The Public Perspective is available full-text through Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe from 1989+ (choose "News", then "General News"; enter your subject and in the "additional terms" box enter "publication (public perspective)". Make sure you change the "source" default to "magazines & journals" and the "date" default.)

Zogby International Latest news and trends.

Newspaper

Los Angeles Times Poll Focus on national issues and California politics.

The New York Times/CBS News Poll National polls back to 1996 (registration required).

USA Today/CNN/Gallup Polls Back to October, 1998.

The Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll National polls back to 1995 (Subscription required).

The Washington Post Poll Archive From January 1998.

Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe years vary (FULL-TEXT*) BU
Newspapers, trade journals, wire services and transcripts of broadcasts.
*Wall Street Journal is indexed, not Full-text.

Television

ABC News Polls 1999+

CBS News Polls Apr. 1998+

USA Today/CNN/Gallup Polls October 1998+ .

The Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll 1995+ (Subscription required).

State-specific

Mason-Dixon News Media Polls National coverage of state-specific polls.

National Network of State Polls Confederation of organizations that conduct state-level surveys. Publishes quarterly newsletter.

For polling conducted in individual states, try the OnPolitics Data Directory.

Data Archives

GSSDIRS (General Social Survey Data and Information Retrieval System
The GSS (General Social Survey) is an "almost annual" personal interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). Since 1972 more than 35,000 respondents have answered over 2500 different questions.
Part of the ICPSR Data Archive, which claims to be the "world's largest archive of computerized social science data".

The NES (National Election Studies) Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior
This easy-to-use subset of the larger data archive provides tables and graphs that display the ebb and flow of public opinion and electoral behavior and choice in American politics from 1948-1998.

Odum Institute's Public Opinion Poll Question Database
Search specific poll questions among the more than 230,000 questions in the Institute's archive by key words, date, study number, study title, or state. The system displays the full question text, study information, and frequency distributions.
Since 1965, the Odum Institute has operated the Louis Harris Data Center, the national depository for publicly available survey data collected by Louis Harris and Associates, Inc. More than 1,200 Harris Polls from as early as 1958 are archived.
From 1991 through 2000, the Institute served as the national headquarters for the National Network of State Polls.

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research Social science polls, presidential approval ratings and election analysis.

While the database is a fee-based service through the website, BU students have access to two Roper products through Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe:
Roper's journal The Public Perspective from 1989+ (choose "News", then "General News"; enter your subject and in the "additional terms" box enter "publication (public perspective)". Make sure you change the "source" default to "magazines & journals" and the "date" default.)
Public Opinion Online (Roper) 1936+
(choose "Reference" on the sidebar, then "Polls & Surveys".)

Polling Organizations

American Association for Public Opinion Research
Code of Professional Ethics and Practices and articles from Public Opinion Quarterly.

Council of American Survey Research Organizations
Trade organization for commercial survey research companies based in the United States. See their CASRO Code of Standards and Ethics for Survey Research as well as The CASRO Poll about Polls.

National Council on Public Polls Useful critical analyses of polls and polling methods.
"Its mission is to set the highest professional standards for public opinion pollsters, and to advance the understanding...of how polls are conducted and how to interpret poll results." from the site

Data plus Analysis

Center on Policy Attitudes
Surveys about the role of the government on education, the federal budget, and health care policy.

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
Polls on politics, the media and American values back to 1995.

PIPA (Program on International Policy Attitudes)
Survey articles on selected topics covering nationwide polls, focus groups and polling conducted by other organizations.

Public Agenda Public opinion and policy analysis on top issues.

Selected Books

American attitudes : who thinks what about the issues that shape our lives
Pardee Reference HN90.P8 M58 1996

To search for books about public opinion on a particular subject in our web catalog, look first for the primary subject (e.g., voting; abortion) and limit the search with the "words in the subject" phrase "public opinion".

Data within articles (subject research)

Often polling information is provided within the context of an article discussing the topic. These indexes are particularly useful in identifying research based on polls and public opinion:

Social Sciences Full-Text 1983+ (partial full-text 1995+) ChRiv Includes American Enterprise.

Education Full-Text 1983+ (partial full-text 1995+) ChRiv

CQ Researcher 1991+ ChRiv

ABI/Inform 1970+ BU (partial full-text)Primarily business and economics journals.

TableBase ChRiv Primarily a marketing source; provides consumer choice and opinion information.

Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe years vary (full-text*) BU
American Demographics is available full-text, as is Roper's journal The Public Perspective (choose "News", then "General News"; enter your subject and in the "additional terms" box enter "publication (public perspective)". Make sure you change the "source" default to "magazines & journals" and the "date" default.)
*Wall Street Journal is indexed, not full-text.

JSTOR years vary (full-text) BU
A full-text collection of back issues (from volume 1 to approximately five years ago) of core scholarly journals. Public Opinion Quarterly is included.