National Polls Research Articles

Improving Subnational Opinion Estimation from Cluster-Sampled Polls

Abstract The development of multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) has allowed scholars to more accurately estimate subnational public opinion using national polls. However, MRP generally recovers less accurate estimates from polls whose respondents are selected using cluster sampling – also called area-probability sampling. This is in part because cluster-sampled polls rely on a complex form of random sampling focused on national representativeness that may result in small or unrepresentative subsamples in subnational geographies. This has limited MRP’s usefulness in subnational opinion estimation in several contexts, including historical polls in the US, where cluster-sampling was common into the 1980s, and large academic studies in many countries today. In this paper, I propose two approaches to improve estimation from MRP with cluster-sampled polls. The first is pooling data from multiple surveys to produce a larger sample of clusters. The second is clustered MRP (CMRP), which extends MRP by modeling opinion using the geographic information included in a survey’s cluster-sampling procedure. Using simulations, I show that both methods improve upon traditional MRP, and I validate them using historical polls in the US

The Division Wall in Mind: An Analysis of the Continuous East-West Divide in Germany after Reunification

Abstract: German elections have attracted the attention of stakeholders from all over the world over the past few decades. This article will focus on the important role played by the Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD) party in the German election process. German Alternative fr Deutschlands support in national polls, as well as its success in regional elections, has posed an alarming threat for many Germans. Ruling parties and foreign countries have unanimously expressed their concern over this mass-based success, labeling it as the turning point of German politics. The paper will attribute the contrasting support rates in the East and West Germany to the lasting regional divide in economy, society and culture, and reveal the historical reasons behind respectively. There is no coincidence that the Right ideology is again gaining grounds in German politics, since the division period and reunification policies have both left irreversible impacts on the unified country, making voters vulnerable to AfD promises.

Implications of the 2024 Election Outcome for U.S. Health Policy

On the basis of 28 national opinion polls, the authors summarize Democrats’ and Republicans’ views on health policy issues and discuss the implications of the 2024 election outcome for U.S. health policy.

Reasons for Prematurely Terminating an Interview by Respondents in National Polls Regarding the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict

Reasons for Prematurely Terminating an Interview by Respondents in National Polls Regarding the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict

A secularizing society? Case studies of English northern industrial towns in the 1950s

Abstract The religious historiography of Britain during the 1950s remains underdeveloped. Such scholarship as there is has drawn disproportionately upon national church statistics and opinion polls. In this article, the findings of three contemporaneous studies of religion in northern industrial towns are presented: Rawmarsh and Scunthorpe (1954–6), Billingham (1957–9), and Bolton (1960). Sundry indicators are illuminated, including churchgoing and rites of passage. No support is found for the claim that the 1950s were a decade of ‘religious revival’. Mainstream Protestantism was at an increasingly low ebb, and Catholicism was soon to feel the chill winds of secularization also.

Hybrid immunity from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection and vaccination in Canadian adults: A cohort study.

Few national-level studies have evaluated the impact of 'hybrid' immunity (vaccination coupled with recovery from infection) from the Omicron variants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). From May 2020 to December 2022, we conducted serial assessments (each of ~4000-9000 adults) examining SARS-CoV-2 antibodies within a mostly representative Canadian cohort drawn from a national online polling platform. Adults, most of whom were vaccinated, reported viral test-confirmed infections and mailed self-collected dried blood spots (DBSs) to a central lab. Samples underwent highly sensitive and specific antibody assays to spike and nucleocapsid protein antigens, the latter triggered only by infection. We estimated cumulative SARS-CoV-2 incidence prior to the Omicron period and during the BA.1/1.1 and BA.2/5 waves. We assessed changes in antibody levels and in age-specific active immunity levels. Spike levels were higher in infected than in uninfected adults, regardless of vaccination doses. Among adults vaccinated at least thrice and infected more than 6 months earlier, spike levels fell notably and continuously for the 9-month post-vaccination. In contrast, among adults infected within 6 months, spike levels declined gradually. Declines were similar by sex, age group, and ethnicity. Recent vaccination attenuated declines in spike levels from older infections. In a convenience sample, spike antibody and cellular responses were correlated. Near the end of 2022, about 35% of adults above age 60 had their last vaccine dose more than 6 months ago, and about 25% remained uninfected. The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection rose from 13% (95% confidence interval 11-14%) before omicron to 78% (76-80%) by December 2022, equating to 25 million infected adults cumulatively. However, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) weekly death rate during the BA.2/5 waves was less than half of that during the BA.1/1.1 wave, implying a protective role for hybrid immunity. Strategies to maintain population-level hybrid immunity require up-to-date vaccination coverage, including among those recovering from infection. Population-based, self-collected DBSs are a practicable biological surveillance platform. Funding was provided by the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Pfizer Global Medical Grants, and St. Michael's Hospital Foundation. PJ and ACG are funded by the Canada Research Chairs Program.

Middle-Aged and Older Adult Employment and the Perceived Risk of Running Out of Money During COVID-19: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis.

The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) adversely affected the health of middle-aged and older adults and altered their economic outlook. Several national polls revealed older adults felt stress about money and many reported difficulties in paying expenses during 2021. Although such descriptive reports have raised awareness, peer-reviewed studies utilizing panel data can offer additional insight. As such, the purpose of this study was to contribute to this growing literature by examining the demographic, economic, and health factors associated with employment and the perceived risk of running out of money for middle-aged and older adults during the pandemic. This study utilized the April-May 2020, April-May 2021, and March 2022 waves of the Understanding America Study. Next, a dynamic panel data model was formulated to account for reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity with a sample of 2,302 adults between the ages of 50 and 74. Employment (-2.77, p < .05) was negatively associated with the perceived risk of running out of money. Male, higher education levels, currently married, and health insurance status also exhibited a negative association. Meanwhile, a positive association was found for non-White (6.79, p < .01). Financial well-being is an important consideration in later life and what role employment played during the COVID-19 pandemic is a worthwhile examination. A better understanding of which factors may be associated with the perceived risk of running out of money during the pandemic can be useful when devising policies which address financial security for middle-aged and older adults.

Voters’ Expectations in Constituency Elections without Local Polls

Abstract How do voters form accurate expectations about the strength of political candidates in constituency elections if there are no reliable constituency polls available? We argue that voters can use national election polls and past election results to increase the accuracy of their expectations. A survey experiment during the German federal election of 2021 confirms that the provision of national election polls and past results increases the accuracy of voters’ expectations. The analysis further shows that voters leverage the information to update their beliefs. The results have relevant implications for debates about belief formation in low-information environments.

Participant‐driven salient beliefs regarding abortion: Implications for abortion attitude measurement

AbstractObjectiveGuided by the Reasoned Action Approach, we used a salient belief elicitation (SBE) to elicit participant‐generated beliefs regarding abortion. SBE is a formative research technique used to elicit people's control (i.e., perceived facilitators and barriers associated with a behavior), behavioral (i.e., perceived positive and negative consequences of doing a behavior), and normative (i.e., influence of important people/peers regarding a behavior) beliefs regarding a particular behavior (i.e., abortion).MethodsWe administered our SBE to English‐ and Spanish‐speaking U.S. adults (N = 608) from NORC's AmeriSpeak® panel. We used inductive content and thematic analyses to assess open‐ended questions.ResultsWe found that participants’ control and behavioral beliefs referenced circumstances used to assess abortion attitudes in polling item (e.g., rape) and reasons people seek abortion (e.g., financial reasons) as well as potential negative emotions (e.g., shame) and positive consequences (e.g., autonomy) associated with abortion. Participants indicated pregnant people's partners and people seeking abortion as salient referents.ConclusionParticipants mentioned several contexts reflected in common measures used to assess abortion attitudes by national polls and surveys. However, we also found other relevant circumstances not reflected in common measures and a range of salient referents. We recommend abortion attitudes measures account for these participant‐driven salient beliefs.

Binary-Tree-Fed Mixnet: An Efficient Symmetric Encryption Solution

Mixnets are an instrument to achieve anonymity. They are generally a sequence of servers that apply a cryptographic process and a permutation to a batch of user messages. Most use asymmetric cryptography, with the high computational cost that this entails. The main objective of this study is to reduce delay in mixnet nodes. In this sense, this paper presents a new scheme that is based only on symmetric cryptography. The novelty of this scheme is the use of binary graphs built by mixnet nodes. The root node collects user keys and labels without knowing their owners. After feeding each node by its graph, they can establish a random permutation and relate their keys to the incoming batch positions through labels. The differences with previous symmetric schemes are that users do not need long headers and nodes avoid the searching process. The outcomes are security and efficiency improvements. As far as we know, it is the fastest mixnet system. Therefore, it is appropriate for high-throughput applications like national polls (many users) or debates (many messages).

Labour Under New Management

ABSTRACT: In the next British general election, due to happen within the year, the Labour Party is set to sweep into power after fourteen years in opposition. Its two major rivals, the Conservative Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP), have imploded in scandal and division. The financial meltdown unleashed by the forty-nine-day tenure of former Prime Minister Liz Truss propelled Labour to a commanding position in national opinion polls, one that her successor, Rishi Sunak, has been unable to dent at the time of writing. A police investigation into misappropriation of donations and the resignation of First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon have undermined the SNP at a moment when the pandemic, war, and Conservative vulnerability have made the case for independence seem far less pressing than it did a decade ago. Local council and by-election results from the rural shires of Yorkshire to the satellite towns of Glasgow suggest that Labour is advancing on all fronts.

Labour Under New Management

ABSTRACT: In the next British general election, due to happen within the year, the Labour Party is set to sweep into power after fourteen years in opposition. Its two major rivals, the Conservative Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP), have imploded in scandal and division. The financial meltdown unleashed by the forty-nine-day tenure of former Prime Minister Liz Truss propelled Labour to a commanding position in national opinion polls, one that her successor, Rishi Sunak, has been unable to dent at the time of writing. A police investigation into misappropriation of donations and the resignation of First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon have undermined the SNP at a moment when the pandemic, war, and Conservative vulnerability have made the case for independence seem far less pressing than it did a decade ago. Local council and by-election results from the rural shires of Yorkshire to the satellite towns of Glasgow suggest that Labour is advancing on all fronts.

Анализ феномена сhildfree и формирование традиционных семейных ценностей у современной студенческой молодежи в регионе (на примере Омской области)

Today, the demographic situation in Russia has become extremely challenging. According to official statistics, in 2022, there were 594,557 more deaths than births. Over the period from 1991 to 2022, natural growth in Russia was positive only for two years, in 2013 and 2014, and averaged 24,013 to 32,038 per year. The peak prevalence of death over birth occurred in periods when the economic, social, and political conditions were the most challenging. Between 1999 and 2005, and again in 2020 and 2021, Russia saw a decline in birth rates, with the number of deaths exceeding the number of births. This resulted in a loss of between 700,000 and 900,000 people during these periods. There are several factors contributing to this situation, but one of the major concerns today is the relatively low birth rate in the face of social, economic, and political upheaval. According to national opinion polls, people aged 25 to 29 years old want an average of two to three children, while the estimated number of children per person is 1.99 for women and 2.02 for men. The total fertility rate in 2022 is 1.42 children per woman. In other words, indicators characterizing people's potential readiness for childbearing actions are relatively low and become lower when considering their desires and opportunities. Against this backdrop, various social trends are emerging. While for most people, leading a family life with at least one child can be considered happiness, there are now individuals who choose to live a childless life. This phenomenon is known as childfreedom and is controversial, as it causes disagreement among many people. Today, childlessness is not only a health issue, but also a social and psychological one, as only a portion of the population associates childlessness with infertility. Therefore, in order to develop a strategy for educating the younger generation, it is essential to understand the family values and attitudes of modern young people towards the phenomenon of being childfree.

Bias and Variance in Multiparty Election Polls

Abstract Recent polling failures highlight that election polls are prone to biases that the margin of error customarily reported with polls does not capture. However, such systematic errors are difficult to assess against the background noise of sampling variance. Shirani-Mehr et al. (2018) developed a hierarchical Bayesian model to disentangle random and systematic errors in poll estimates of two-party vote shares at the election level. The method can inform realistic assessments of poll accuracy. We adapt the model to multiparty elections and improve its temporal flexibility. We then estimate bias and variance in 5,240 German national election polls, 1994–2021. Our analysis suggests that the average absolute election-day bias per party was about 1.5 percentage points, ranging from 0.9 for the Greens to 3.2 for the Christian Democrats. The estimated variance is, on average, about twice as large as that implied by usual margins of error. We find little evidence of house or mode effects. Common biases indicate industry effects due to similar methodological problems. The Supplementary Material provides additional results for 1,751 regional election polls.

Reminders of Japanese redress increase Asian American support for Black reparations

Informational interventions can shape policy attitudes, and in this study, we examined whether largely unknown information about past reparations payments toward one minoritized group would shape current policy judgments. In 1942, the U.S. government wrongfully relocated and imprisoned more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. In 1988, the government apologized and offered $20,000 USD in reparations payments. Japanese American redress is a recent, but not widely known, concrete example of communities who have successfully fought for reparative economic action. In two preregistered studies of online crowdsourced panels of Asian Americans (N = 329, N = 500), an intervention that raised awareness of this history of incarceration and redress increased support for reparations for Black Americans, relative to a control condition, and national polling data on support for reparations. Exploratory analyses revealed that the degree of learning about Japanese American redress in the intervention explained its impact on support for Black reparations. Future research should target representative samples to understand how education about past redress within one’s own social group affects support for reparative economic justice for others.

Coping Patterns During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Sexual and Gender Identity

ABSTRACT National polls have shown that COVID-19 has been highly stressful, negatively affecting well-being and life satisfaction overall, but few studies have focused on individuals with sexual and gender diverse identities. Pandemic-related stress may increase engagement in adverse or negative health-related coping behaviors and decrease engagement in positive coping strategies, potentially exacerbating existing LGBTQ+ health disparities. Relying on a nationally representative population-based sample, we examine disparities in rates of negative and positive COVID-19 coping behaviors by sexual and gender identities. Using Poisson regression models adjusted for key sociodemographic and pandemic related factors, we found higher rates of negative and positive coping behaviors among certain sexual and gender diverse groups compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. Specifically, we find that lesbian and gay respondents reported more positive and negative coping strategies compared to heterosexual persons. We also found higher rates of negative coping behaviors among plurisexual (bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual) and noncisgender adults (transgender or other nonbinary gender identity) compared to heterosexual and cisgender adults, respectively. We contribute to prior studies by focusing on both negative and positive pandemic related coping among sexually and gender diverse populations. These responses to the pandemic may have long-term implications for the health and well-being of sexual and gender diverse individuals.

Fair Machine Learning Post Affirmative Action

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision on June 29, effectively ended the use of race in college admissions [1]. Indeed, national polls found that a plurality of Americans - 42%, according to a poll conducted by the University of Massachusetts [2] - agree that the policy should be discontinued, while 33% support its continued use in admissions decisions. As scholars of fair machine learning, we ponder how the Supreme Court decision shifts points of focus in the field. The most popular fair machine learning methods aim to achieve some form of "impact parity" by diminishing or removing the correlation between decisions and protected attributes, such as race or gender, similarly to the 80% rule of thumb of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision. Impact parity can be achieved by reversing historical discrimination, which corresponds to affirmative actions, or by diminishing or removing the influence of the attributes correlated with the protected attributes, which is impractical as it severely undermines model accuracy. Besides, impact disparity is not necessarily a bad thing, e.g., African-American patients suffer from a higher rate of chronic illnesses than White patients and, hence, it may be justified to admit them to care programs at a proportionally higher rate [3]. The U.S. burden-shifting framework under Title VII offers solutions alternative to impact parity. To determine employment discrimination, U.S. courts rely on the McDonnell-Douglas burden-shifting framework where the explanations, justifications, and comparisons of employment practices play a central role. Can similar methods be applied in machine learning?

THE COUNTRIES OF SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE AND THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE

The article examines two parameters of the subject stated: policies of the state governments of South-Eastern Europe in view of the new developments in Ukraine, widespread attitudes, and the configuration of political forces in these countries which may provide a chance to pro-Russian circles. An analysis is based on both national and international opinion polls and the results of the last elections. As is shown, the traditionally strong Russophile sentiments in many countries of the region have reverberated again and affected the perception of the conflict. However, the potential of the pro-Russian forces is insufficient for a fundamental change in policies although the ruling circles cannot completely ignore it. The article concludes that the status and prospects of Russian cooperation with the countries of the region will remain unfavorable until the end of military operation in Ukraine, although the EU and the US are unlikely to succeed in achieving complete abandonment of Russian energy sources in a short time.

Whose War is it Anyway? Explaining the Black-White Gap in Support for the Use of Force Abroad

Building on long-standing work on a “gender gap” in war support, this article documents a recurring “race gap” in which Black Americans display less enthusiasm for war than their White counterparts. We compile time-series data on public opinion during the Iraq War collected from over fifty national polls and successive waves of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to assess potential explanations for the gap. We show that concerns about casualties best explain lower levels of support for war among Black Americans. Feelings of political alienation and preferences for domestic spending serve as more salient contributors to Black disapproval of war during the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, having a family member in the military does not explain lower Black support for war. Black antiwar rhetoric suggests that our casualty sensitivity and alienation findings stem from linked fate attitudes and concerns about fairness and “justness” of the war effort among Black Americans.

Consumer skepticism, advertising regulation, and the internet: Questions worth exploring

AbstractSince 1990, the US advertising, regulatory, and consumer information landscapes have changed materially, raising the possibility that consumers' fundamental beliefs about advertising as an activity or institution have also changed. Nine national polls of advertising sentiment, fielded between 1964 and 1989 by the Roper Organization or the Opinion Research Corporation, were replicated with panel members matched to the US adult population. Preliminary results suggest that the internet era may have fostered a trust‐because‐we‐can‐verify consumer attitude toward advertising. The internet has changed the consumer information landscape by reducing the difficulty of assessing claims, fostering independent evaluators who often include competitors, and providing a venue for consumer retaliation. The implications for advertising regulation may contradict the Pertschuk view (1982) of regulation again embraced by some at the Federal Trade Commission. Rather than enhancing the need for advertising regulation and enforcement, the internet may have reduced the need for such efforts.