Center for Political Studies National Election Studies

Abstract

Late May, 1979, has been targeted as the release date of data from a pre-presidential pilot study conducted under the supervision of its Board of Overseers by the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan. The pilot study is a direct outgrowth of a number of research conferences—on issue voting, party identification and response to leadership—held by the Board during the academic year of 1977–78. The conferences brought together some 60 scholars from across the nation in several locations for the purpose of advising the Board and the Center in preparation for the 1980 presidential study made possible by a long-term national resource grant from the National Science Foundation (for earlier reports on these conferences, see PS, Spring, 1978, pp. 240–242, and PS, Summer, 1978, pp. 342–343). The pilot study was recommended by a smaller group of scholars assembled in Ann Arbor in August, 1978, for the purpose of integrating the many suggestions for future electoral and related research received from the conference participants and from an equal number of other scholars who, because of limited resources, could not be invited to the conferences (for a report on the August workshop, see PS, Fall, 1978, pp. 504–505).