Political Issues

Republicans and Democrats offer starkly different assessments of the impact of several of the nation’s leading institutions – including the news media, colleges and universities and churches and religious organizations.

Nearly six-in-ten rural Americans have a gun in their household, compared with smaller shares of suburban and urban gun owners.

A series of graphics explores public opinion on abortion, illustrating how opinion differs among various demographic groups, including religious, political, age and gender groups.

About a million immigrants receive U.S. green cards each year, but fewer than half are new arrivals from other countries. The majority already live in the United States on temporary visas.

While the demographic profile of NRA members is similar to that of other gun owners, their political views, the way they use their firearms and their attitudes about gun policy differ significantly from gun owners who are not members of the organization.

Among 17 Group of Twenty member countries, residents in just two countries have substantially more confidence in Trump than in Merkel on world affairs.

In Pew Research Center polling in 2001, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a margin of 57% to 35%. Since then, support for same-sex marriage has steadily grown. Based on polling in 2016, a majority of Americans (55%) support same-sex marriage, compared with 37% who oppose it. See the latest data on same-sex marriage.

While female gun owners resemble their male counterparts in some respects, their views on and experiences with guns often differ from those of male gun owners.

Many Russians say the collapse of the Soviet Union has been a bad thing for their country. Nostalgia for the Soviet past also extends to views of Josef Stalin.

Among gun-owning parents with children in their household, 54% say all guns in their home are kept in a locked place and 53% say they are all kept unloaded.