Political pollsters continue to cast a wary eye on the growing number of Americans who use only a cell phone and have no landline. The Pew Research Center estimates that this group now constitutes one-in-ten adults. But three Pew surveys of cell-only Americans this year have found that their absence from landline surveys is not creating a measurable bias in the bottom-line findings.

National elections are the high season for pollsters and with Election Day now less than two weeks away, new polls on the fight for Congress are being released nearly every day. Commonly, pollsters use something called the "generic ballot" to assess the state of the congressional race. Just how accurate is the "generic ballot" in predicting election results?

White evangelical Protestants have become the most important part of the Republican Party's electoral base, making up nearly one-in-four of those who identify with the GOP and vote for its candidates. This analysis examines the current state of evangelical support for the GOP, in light of the approaching 2006 elections.

A new survey finds large differences between Americans who are not registered to vote or vote only rarely and those who cast ballots at least some of the time. These two groups at the bottom of the voting participation scale are much less likely than regular or intermittent voters to believe that voting will make much of a difference.

In a Pew Forum roundtable conversation, Forum senior fellow John Green and two prominent journalists speculate that it will be difficult for the Republican Party to mobilize evangelicals to go to the polls in great numbers next month. They also discuss challenges faced by the Democratic Party in appealing to this segment of the electorate.

Unlike the past three mid-term election campaigns, Democrats are more enthusiastic than Republicans about voting this year.

About one-third of Democratic voters now describe themselves as liberal, an increase since 2000, when just one-in-four Democrats self-identified with the "L-word." Meantime, some 41% of Democrats now call themselves moderate and 23% say they are conservatives.

Ceremonies at Harvard honor scientists who discovered why woodpeckers don't get headaches, why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard and how many photos are needed to ensure that no one in the picture has their eyes closed. Plus declining teacher quality and the latest research into shop-a-holics.

Red States Stay Red, Blue States Get Bluer, Swing States Deadlock

A statistical view of Hispanics at mid-decade