Across most of the presidential battleground states, particularly in the Midwest, President Obama’s lead rests on a surprisingly strong performance among blue-collar white women who usually tilt toward the GOP. A National Journal analysis of recent polling results across 11 states considered battlegrounds shows that in most of them, Obama […] Read more »
Survey Dispels Myths About White Working-Class Americans
Less than two months before Americans go to the polls to elect their president, a new national survey released today upends commonly held-beliefs about white working-class Americans. The report, “Beyond God and Guns: Understanding the Complexities of the White Working Class in America,” highlights the significant divides among white working-class […] Read more »
AP-GfK poll reveals demographic divides driving close contest for the presidency
The presidential race remains a tight contest, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll, but beyond that near-even split on the vote lie shifting public views of the nation’s outlook and an electorate beginning to tune in to watch the candidates duke it out for the 17 percent of likely […] Read more »
Romney Has Support Among Lowest Income Voters
Although President Barack Obama has a substantial voting edge over Republican Mitt Romney among low-income Americans, Romney still gets about a third of the vote among those whose household incomes are less than $24,000 a year. Although Romney does better on the other end of the income scale, Obama gets […] Read more »
A Third of Americans Now Say They Are in the Lower Classes
The percentage of Americans who say they are in the lower-middle or lower class has risen from a quarter of the adult population to about a third in the past four years, according to a national survey of 2,508 adults by the Pew Research Center. Not only has the lower […] Read more »
Why Surveys Should Pay Attention to Prisoners
Undocumented immigrants are hard to count because they often hesitate to answer strangers’ questions. Homeless people will be missed by landline phone surveys. Prisoners, by contrast, are literally a captive population for the purposes of survey research. And yet many major government polls exclude them entirely. [cont.] Carl Bialik, Wall […] Read more »