MAIL SURVEYS FOR ELECTION FORECASTING?: AN EVALUATION OF THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH POLL

Because of slow turnaround time and typically low response rates,mail surveys have generally been considered of little valuein election forecasting. However, statewide mail surveys conductedby the Columbus Dispatch newspaper since 1980 have made remarkablyaccurate forecasts of Ohio election outcomes. In comparisonto statewide surveys by two other organizations employing conventionaltelephone interview methods, the mail surveys were consistentlymore accurate and were generally less susceptible to sourcesof inaccuracy such as high rolloff and low publicity. The mailsurvey's advantage is attributable at least in part to largersample sizes, sampling and response procedures that yieldedmore representative samples of voters, lack of the need to allocateundecided respondents, and superior questionnaire design. Thesefindings suggest that mail surveys not only may be viable alternativesto telephone surveys but may actually be superior to them undersome conditions. Further-more, these results demonstrate thatsurveys with low response rates are not necessarily low in validity.     

Rum, policy, and the Portuguese: or, the maintenance of elite supremacy in post-emancipation British Guiana

Cette recherche en géographie historique, en Guyane Britannique au dix-neuvième siécle, étudie les raisons qui ont amené un groupe d' immigrants Portugais de Madère à dominer le commerce au détail à la fin de l' esclavage. Un recours à la théorie d' une société pluraliste nous indique la marche à suivre pour expliquer le ‘pourquoi’ de cette domination. Certains indices orientèrent notre recherche. Nous nous sommes demandés ‘pour qui’ cette société pluraliste était-elle si nécessaire et qui d'autres, en plus de Portugais, bénéficiaient de ce contrôle du commerce au détail. Nous avons la preuve évidente que les Portugais avaient reçu l'appui de l'élite europiéne, d'autre part les planteurs avaient tout intérêt à garder les Noirs comme ouvriers sur leurs plantations, les privant ainsi de leurs droits. Une importante immigration de main-d'euvre indienne engagée sous contract et l'appui des planteurs permit à l'élite de maintenir son contrôle de la colonie en établissant et en perpétuant les divisions ethniques sur les plans économique, social et géographique. The central questions of this research on the historical geography of nineteenth-century British Guiana are how and why an immigrant group from Madeira (the Portuguese) came to dominate the post-emancipation retail trade of the colony. A recourse to plural-society theory suggested where one should inquire. By asking for ‘whom’ the creation of a plural society was so necessary; and ‘who’ else, besides the Portuguese, benefited from Portuguese control of the retail trade, one received sufficient clues and direction to know where to look. Evidence was uncovered which established that the Portuguese initially received help from the European elite. This support and substantial indentured immigration from India enabled the elite to maintain its control of the colony by establishing and perpetuating ethnic divisions in the colony's economy, society, and geography.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSISTENCE IN RESPONDENT SELECTION FOR PREELECTION SURVEYS

Different techniques for respondent selection can affect dataquality. These differences can result in variations in the distributionof partisans in preelection surveys, which in turn can havean effect on the distribution of candidate preference. Persistencein trying to interview designated respondents in telephone householdsincreased the number of Republicans in a 1984 sample, and thereforeReagan's margin over Mondale. Such differences in interviewingtechniques might account for some of the variations in nationalpreelection estimates of the outcome of the presidential election,and they suggest that caution be used in comparing marginalsfor party identification from different surveys employing differentrespondent selection techniques.     

"This Irreligious Art of Liing": Strategies of Disguise in Post-Reformation English Catholicism

Abstract  In the long Tridentine phase of Catholic history, the conduct of the Church, faith and praxis was nothing if not demonstrative in its execution, devising, for example, a triumphalist architectural and artistic form, the baroque, that shouted out its advertisements for an apparently ultra-confident creed. The great Council that created the tone of Catholicism over the four centuries that followed it defined the priest in particular as a public exemplar of the faith, a man of unambiguous integrity, stable residence and assured income.
In England, as in the Netherlands, in contrast, the practice of the faith was covert, not overt, and priests were men on the run, sacerdotal vagrants, adopting a culture of deceit and disguise that aligned their lifestyles were those of any criminal underground: they used disguises, false papers, encoded language, aliases and fictive personae, employed chains of people-handlers and safe-houses, setting up patterns of behaviour that distanced them (a) from the clerical requirements of the Tridentine Church itself and (b) from assumptions about truth that were becoming firmly embedded in English Protestant culture: Catholicism itself could be presented as an "irreligious art of liing".     

PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PANAMA CANAL TREATIES OF 1977

In April 1978, after nine months of national debate, the Senatenarrowly ratified new Panama Canal treaties. Voting was apparentlyinfluenced by numerous opinion polls, which were seen as showingincreased support for the treaties. But several analysts haveshown that this interpretation was erroneous; public opinionconsistently opposed the treaties. This study attempts to determinewhat went wrong. It begins by arraying and analyzing all nationalpoll results on the topic in order to establish a coherent pictureof public opinion. It then identifies a number of polling andreporting practices which may have contributed to the misinterpretationof the findings. The study concludes with recommendations foralleviating these problems.