The ANES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior

The Guide provides immediate access to tables and graphs that display the ebb and flow of public opinion, electoral behavior, and choice in American politics over time. It serves as a resource for political observers, policy makers, and journalists, teachers, students, and social scientists.

The Guide currently contains data from 1948 through 2008. (NOTE: no ANES time series study was conducted in 2006).

Displays in the Guide are organized into nine topics:

  1. Social and Religious Characteristics of the Electorate
    (such as age, race, gender, education, and religion)
  2. Partisanship and Evaluation of the Political Parties
  3. Ideological Self-Identification
  4. Public Opinion on Public Policy Issues
    (such as health care, affirmative action, abortion, the military, and the economy)
  5. Support for the Political System
    (such as trust in government and government responsiveness)
  6. Political Involvement and Participation in Politics
    (such as voter turnout, campaign contributions and other activities, attention to the campaign in the media, and interest in politics)
  7. Evaluation of the Presidential Candidates
  8. Evaluation of Congressional Candidates
  9. Vote Choice
    (for president, for U.S. House of Representatives, and split-ticket voting)

Questions represented in the Guide are a small but significant portion of the questions that have been asked in the American National Election Studies time series. Guide data have been produced from the ANES Cumulative Data File, which combines data from the individual ANES time series studies for selected questions.

To download the ANES Cumulative Data File, visit the ANES Data Center.

For more information about the Guide, see How to use the ANES Guide.

Additional information: