Of Polls, Mountains: U.S. Journalists and Their Use of Election Surveys

Polls are a prominent feature of U.S. election news coverage.Although polls are used to explain voter opinion, they are employedmostly to fuel horse-race coverage and to craft images consistentwith the candidates’ positions in the race. Moreover,U.S. journalists sometimes misinterpret polls by slighting thepossibility that changes in candidate preference are the resultof survey error rather than real change. On balance, U.S. journalists’dependence on polls adversely affects the quality of Americanelection coverage.     

WHY THE DEMOCRAT-REPUBLICAN PARTISANSHIP GAP VARIES FROM POLL TO POLL

Polls taken in late 1980 and 1984 varied by up to 20 pointsin the spread they reported between Democratic and Republicanidentifiers. We found three systematic and sizable differencesacross polls: polls that sample only voters, polls that emphasize"today" or the present in their question wording, and pollsthat are taken close to election day (at least in circumstanceslike those of 1984) tend to favor the party currently advantagedin the presidential race.     

Likely (and Unlikely) Voters and the Assessment of Campaign Dynamics

Only in recent years has the "likely voter" technology beenextended to polls well in advance of an election. In the caseof the 2000 U.S. presidential election, CNN/USA Today/Galluptracking polls indicated considerable fluctuations in likelyvoter preferences, greater than among the larger pool of registeredvoters surveyed. This article explores how Gallup’s likelyvoter model exaggerates the reported volatility of voter preferencesduring the campaign. Much of the reported variation in candidatepreference reported by Gallup in that election is not due toactual voter shifts in preference but rather to changes in thecomposition of Gallup’s likely voter pool. The findingshighlight dangers of relying on samples of likely voters whenpolling well before Election Day.     

THE OBSESSION TO FORECAST: PRE-ELECTION POLLS IN THE ISRAELI PRESS

The generous coverage of pre-election polls in the media hasstimulated a debate on the effects of publicized polls on voters.Data for this study come from a content analysis of all pressreports on polls during six pre-election campaigns in Israel(1969–88). The findings highlight the impressive increaseof poll reports both by space and by prominence in the press.Analysis of the reports' content reveals that the style of reportingpolls has become dominated by "horse-race" journalism, wherepredictions and popularity ratings are the leading themes. Inaddition, although the reports have become more detailed andinformative, they still do not adequately define or interpretmethodological deficiencies. Finally, the analysis examinesthe intercorrelations between attributes of coverage and predictionserrors. The fact that the independent variable, media coverageof polls, has changed significantly calls for the inclusionof this factor in any study of polls' effects.     

Pollsters Under Attack: 2004 Election Incivility and Its Consequences

The 2004 election was remarkable for a number of reasons, includingthe harsh, personal attacks from all parts of the politicalspectrum on a number of media pollsters. The idea of "killingthe messenger" has been around long enough for the phenomenonto have its own name, but it appears to have intensified muchmore than in the past. The article details the experiences oftwo polls and their pollsters, one national and one statewide.These attacks are part of a growing practice of trying to mitigateperceived damage by any message in the political marketplace.The article suggests that while there are positive effects fromthese developments, including heightened awareness among votersof polling methods, negative effects can damage the credibilityof specific polls and their sponsors, as well as the professionin general, including market and other public opinion research.The article ends with a call for researchers to be more openwith their methods and measures, and to strongly defend properlydone research against critics; for journalists to be more discerningin evaluating poll criticisms before publishing them; and forprofessional organizations to help the public better understandpolling, market research, and other public opinion researchand their benefits to society.     

The Impact of Cell Phone Noncoverage Bias on Polling in the 2004 Presidential Election

Despite concerns that the accuracy of preelection telephonepolls would be harmed by the omission of voters who could bereached only by cell phone, most national polls performed wellin predicting President George W. Bush’s reelection in2004, and state polls were generally accurate as well. The nationalexit poll conducted by the National Election Pool found that7 percent of Election Day voters had cell phone service butno land line; younger voters were far more likely to be cell-only:19 percent among those age 18–24 and 20 percent amongthose age 25–29. Within these two youngest age cohorts,cell-only voters were significantly more likely to be singleand childless. While cell-only voters were more supportive ofJohn Kerry than voters overall, they were similar to other voterswithin their own age cohort. Because of this, preelection telephonesurveys that weighted their data appropriately by age were notsignificantly biased by the absence of the cell-only voters.     

Micropolitics of race and ethnicity in women's prisons in two political contexts

Research over the past two decades has focused on the topic of race as important for understanding order and compliance in men's prisons. However, relatively little research considers how subjective understandings of imprisonment are influenced by race, particularly in the case of women prisoners. The current study analyses 139 interviews conducted with women prisoners in California and England in order to determine how race and ethnicity shape prisoners' experiences and abilities to cope with institutional confinement. Findings suggest that women's understandings of their racial identities differ substantially in these two contexts. In California, where the conditions of confinement are more extreme and white women assume a minority status, racial identity emerges as a salient factor in coping with the adversities of prison life. By contrast, in England, it is the women of colour, and particularly foreign nationals, who have a greater appreciation of the role of race and ethnicity in their daily lives. These findings have implications for our understanding of how prisoners draw on their lived experiences to make sense of their carceral worlds.     

How Does Public Management Affect Government Performance? Findings from International Research

Despite the growing importance of public management reform aroundthe world, relatively little scholarship evaluates the contributionsof public management to government performance, that is, tothe character and consequences of service provision by publicagencies. One study (Hill and Lynn 2005) evaluated over eighthundred American empirical studies that address issues of publicmanagement effectiveness in a wide variety of fields, subfields,and disciplines. In this article we employ the analytic frameworkof Hill and Lynn—a polycentric "logic of governance"—toevaluate 193 research articles published in English that usenon-American, or what we will term international, empiricalevidence. Our evaluation reveals more similarities in Americanand non-American public management research, and in the determinantsof government performance, than one might expect, given thedistinctiveness of the American politico-administrative system.These similarities may be deceptive, however. Internationalinvestigators exhibit somewhat different modeling strategies,tending, for example, to favor more linear managerialist hypotheses—changesin structure lead to changes outcomes, for example—thanAmerican research, which is more concerned with intragovernmentalcomplexities. The fact that the use of a polycentric logic ofgovernance revealed highly suggestive similarities and differencesin the determinants of performance in public organizations suggeststhe potential value of this kind of analytic strategy in bothsingle investigations and in meta-analyses of public managementreform.     

Preelection Polls in Israel: Structural Constraints on Accuracy

This article examines the last two Israeli election campaignsof 1981 and 1984, and suggests that structural variables greatlyaffect the accuracy of reported preelection polls. Pollsters'quest for more detail and refinement driven by competition andmass media pressures for highly processed predictions is liableto result in less accurate reports. The kind of errors in polls'projections are situation-bound and greatly depend on the natureof the floating vote in the system. Interpollster accuracy,however, is mainly determined by pollster–sponsor dependencies.Pollsters working for political parties projected results morefavorable to their sponsors or less favorable to their sponsors'opponents. Moreover, the stronger the pollster–sponsorstructural dependencies, the greater the inaccuracy.     

Conformity to AAPOR Standards in Newspaper Reporting of Public Opinion Polls

This study examines three newspapers' level of conformity toAAPOR standards of minimal disclosure in their reporting ofpublic opinion polls. Analysis of 116 polls published in theperiod of 1972–79 indicates a dramatic increase in thenumber of polls reported, but not in the level of conformityto AAPOR standards. Conformity is higher when the polls concernelections rather than nonelection topics, and when newspapersthemselves, rather than external sources, are the sources ofthe polls.     

The Polls--Review: Public Opinion Research and Support for the Iraq War

Professors Peter Feaver, Christopher Gelpi, and Jason Reifler'stheory of the determinants of public support for war has receiveda great deal of attention among academics, journalists, andpolicymakers. They argue that support for war hinges on initialsupport for military action and the belief in the success ofthe war. In this review, we take a critical and constructiveview of their work, focusing on methodological concerns. Wediscuss the dependent variable used by the authors—individualcasualty tolerance—and argue that it is an insufficientmeasure of war support. We also make the case that their independentvariables of interest—initial support for war and evaluationof war success—may, in fact, be best understood as indicatorsof latent support for the war more generally. Finally, we discussthe need for more research into the determinants of supportfor war, focusing on core values and elite rhetoric as potentialvariables for continued and future study.     

Race, Class, and Family Structure: Differences in Housing Values for Black and White Homeowners

Several scholars have argued that the continuing disadvantage of Blacks vis-à-vis Whites has more to do with social class factors than with race. Other scholars have suggested that differences in family structure account for Black disadvantage. This study addresses these issues in terms of housing values by analyzing (1) the effects of race on housing values net of socioeconomic status and other relevant demographic variables, (2) the interaction of race with socioeconomic status in determining housing values, (3) the interaction of race with household structure in determining housing values and, (4) changes in the relative impact of race on housing values from 1970 to 1990. The findings indicate that Blacks own homes of lower value regardless of their socioeconomic status or household structure. Additionally, the negative effect of race was greater for Blacks of higher status. However, there was a stronger negative association between race and housings values in 1970 than in 1980 or 1990, providing some evidence for a narrowing of the Black-White gap in housing values. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Identity without Politics: Framing the Parity Laws and Their Implementation in French Local Politics

This article provides an alternative approach to the argumentsof "critical mass," whose tenets assume that policies fosteringwomen’s rights would arise from an increase in women’spolitical representation. Instead, the article argues that thecultural repertoires that are used to justify women’shigher numerical presence also matter. Indeed, different repertoires—suchas claiming women’s inclusion into politics in the nameof women’s interests or in the name of their difference—havedifferent political outcomes. This case study of the Frenchsex-parity laws, which ensures a 50-percent quota of women inpolitics, explores the connection between the rationales tolegitimize the laws and their implementation at the local level.This provides for, first, an investigation of how the requirementto make the parity claim compatible with French cultural repertoireson citizenship and sovereignty has led parity advocates to definesexual difference as universal. Then, drawing on interviewswith local politicians, it shows how this rationale underliningsexual difference has failed to define gender relationshipsas political and, thus, to promote gender equality in localpublic policies.     

THE SHORT-TERM EFFECT OF ELECTION POLLS ON FOREIGN EXCHANGE RATES: THE 1988 CANCDIAN FEDERAL ELECTION

Polls do not simply measure public opinion; they also providevital information that the public can use to form opinions andto make decisions. Using multiple regression analysis, the authorsfound that published polls had a powerful impact on the valueof the Canadian dollar during the 1988 Canadian federal election.This appears to have been due to the unprecedented importanceof economic issues in the federal campaign, the distinctivepositions taken by the major political parties with respectto the U.S.-Canadian Free Trade Agreement, and to the proliferationof "horse-race" polls in the media. These results have implicationsfor understanding the behavior of other elite groups, such asfinancial contributors and volunteer campaign workers, who mayalso use published horse-race polls to handicap election outcomes.     

Do Exit Polls Influence Voting Behavior?

This article summarizes the findings of the effect of exit pollson voting behavior. Both macro and micro methods have been used,and no methods are perfect. Exit polls appear to cause smalldeclines in total voting in areas where the polls close latefor those elections where the exit polls predict a clear winnerwhen previously the race had been considered close.     

Diversity, Representation, and Performance: Evidence about Race and Ethnicity in Public Organizations

In the past twenty years, the growing percentages of racialand ethnic minorities in the United States have led scholarsto pay increased attention to the issue of diversity. However,very little research using the public organization as the unitof analysis has sought to understand the true impact of workforcediversity on work-related outcomes. This study seeks to understandthe impact of one type of diversity—race and ethnicity—onorganizational outcomes in public education. Using data fromTexas public school districts, the article finds that diversityamong managers is unrelated to the three performance outcomestested, while diversity among teachers is negatively relatedto one and positively related to two performance outcomes. Representationamong managers, on the other hand, is positively related toall three performance outcomes, while representation of teachersis negatively related to one of the outcomes.     

The race relations “Problematic” in American sociology: Revisiting Niemonen’s case study and critique

Using articles drawn from the years 1996-1999, this paper updates and expands Jack Niemonen’s 1997 TAS analysis of the articles dealing with race and ethnicity in the four core sociology journals. We found a greater rate of publication and several new substantive areas incorporating race and ethnicity, but many of the patterns Niemonen identified remain in place. These articles are highly quantitative, rely heavily on U.S. Census categories, tend to explain racial and ethnic phenomenon as by-products of broader social forces (such as class-based stratification), and subsume these analyses under the headings of alternative subfields. Niemonen used these findings to offer a powerful critique of the status of race and ethnicity in sociology, the under-development of the racial and ethnic relations “problematic,” and its marginalization within the discipline as a whole. To reassess these interpretations and conclusions, we examined the relationships between methodology and substance, and compared the main sample with a subset of more specialized articles focused on race and ethnicity. We found a close connection between quantitative methods and the use of Census definitions of race and ethnicity, but surprisingly few differences between the race and ethnic subset and the more inclusive main sample appeared. These findings allow us to offer support and some important qualifications to Niemonen’s original conclusions. We would like to thank Jordan Bartlett for serving as our research assistant on this project, and the members of the Fall 2000 Race Theory Seminar at the University of Minnesota (Sociology 8211) who participated in and gave commentary on a preliminary version of this study. Thanks also to Professor Jack Niemonen who communicated at length with us about his coding procedures and even consented to code a number of articles for us.     

"What Group?" Studying Whites and Whiteness in the Era of "Color‐Blindness"

In this article I argue that despite the claims of some, all whites in racialized societies "have race." But because of the current context of race in our society, I argue that scholars of "whiteness" face several difficult theoretical and methodological challenges. First is the problem of how to avoid essentializing race when talking about whites as a social collective. That is, scholars must contend with the challenge of how to write about what is shared by those racialized as white without implying that their experiences of racialization all will be the same. Second, within the current context of color‐blind racial discourse, researchers must confront the reality that some whites claim not to experience their whiteness at all. Third, studies of whiteness must not be conducted in a vacuum: racial discourse or "culture" cannot be separated from material realities. Only by attending to and by recognizing these challenges will empirical research on whiteness be able to push the boundaries of our understandings about the role of whites as racial actors and thereby also contribute to our understanding of how race works more generally .     

Elite Revisionists and Popular Beliefs: Christopher Columbus, Hero or Villain?

According to revisionist historians and American Indian activists,Christopher Columbus deserves condemnation for having broughtslavery, disease, and death to America’s indigenous peoples.We ask whether the general public’s beliefs about Columbusshow signs of reflecting these critical accounts, which increasedmarkedly as the 1992 Quincentenary approached. Our nationalsurveys, using several different question wordings, indicatethat most Americans continue to admire Columbus because, astradition puts it, "he discovered America," though only a smallnumber of mainly older respondents speak of him in the heroicterms common in earlier years. At the same time, the percentageof Americans who reject traditional beliefs about Columbus isalso small and is divided between those who simply acknowledgethe priority of Indians as the "First Americans" and those whogo further to view Columbus as a villain. The latter group ofrespondents, we find, show a critical stance toward modal Americanbeliefs much more broadly. We also analyze American history school textbooks for evidenceof influence from revisionist writings, and we consider representationsof Columbus in the mass media as well. Revisionist history canbe seen as one consequence of the "minority rights revolution"that began after World War II and has achieved considerablesuccess, but the endurance of Columbus’s reputation—toa considerable extent even among the minorities who have theleast reason to respect him—raises important questionsabout the inertia of tradition, the politics of collective memory,and the difference between elite and popular beliefs.