U.S. Elections & Voters

by Robert Ruby and Timothy Samuel Shah, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life March 21, 2007 If Nigeria’s presidential election takes place as scheduled on April 21, it will mark the first transfer of power from one elected civilian president to another in the country considered the key to stability for all of West […]

Summary of Findings The 2008 presidential campaign has kicked off earlier than usual with more candidates than usual, but many people appear not to have noticed. Americans are no more likely to say they have given the presidential campaign much thought than they did in December, and just small minorities can name a candidate they […]

As the number of declared presidential candidates grows, followers of early poll readings should bear in mind some caveats. Early frontrunners for the Republican nomination in most of the past seven open contests have gone on to win the nomination, but this year there are two GOP frontrunners instead of one clear leader. On the Democratic side, even when there is a clear frontrunner as there is this year with Sen. Hillary Clinton, the early polls have been less reliable in predicting who will capture the nomination.

The strong showing of Democrat Barack Obama in early trial heat polls for the 2008 presidential election raises anew the question of whether the American public is ready to support an African American candidate for president. Recent polling points to two significant shifts on this question.

Americans flocked in record numbers to their favorite media sources for political news last fall. In this report, fans of newspaper, TV and online news sites tell how and why they differ.

That's the portion of campaign internet users -- adults who used the internet during the 2006 midterm election campaigns to get political news and information and discuss the races through email -- who also used the internet to create and share political content. These creators are particularly active in every type of online political activity.

Twice as many Americans used the internet as their primary source of news about the 2006 campaign compared with the most recent mid-term election in 2002.

64% of registered voters received recorded telephone messages in the final stages of the 2006 mid-term election.

Summary of Findings Politicians and political reporters are scrambling to book flights for New Hampshire and other presidential primary states, but the public is far from engaged in the jockeying for 2008. About a quarter of Americans (23%) say they have given a lot of thought to candidates who may be running for president, while […]

Key West, Florida Some of the nation’s leading journalists and distinguished scholars gathered in Key West, Fla., in December 2006 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. To help journalists better understand the role religion played in the 2006 midterm election, Pew Forum Senior Fellow John Green and […]