THE ANES GUIDE TO PUBLIC OPINION AND ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR
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General Interest in Public Affairs  1960-2004


                           '60  '62  '64  '66  '68  '70  '72  '74  '76  '78  '80  '82  '84  '86  '88  '90  '92  '94  '96  '98  '00  '02  '04 
 
            Hardly at All   37   42   11   17   18   **   11   11   12   17   15   15   14   15   15   16   11   14   13   12   16    9   10 
        Only Now and Then    -    -   17   18   19   **   16   14   18   25   23   21   23   24   25   23   21   23   26   25   29   22   23 
         Some of the Time   42   42   42   30   31   **   36   36   31   34   35   35   36   35   37   33   41   35   39   37   36   42   41 
         Most of the Time   21   16   30   35   33   **   36   39   38   23   26   29   26   26   22   27   26   28   21   27   20   27   26 
               Don't Know    0    0    0    0    0   **    0    1    1    1    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0
                          ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 

                       N  1826 1293 1447 1288 1345      2191 2513 2399 2280 1404 1413 1926 2148 1765 1961 2246 1771 1503 1281 1533 1317 1059  



PERCENTAGE WITHIN STUDY YEAR
Table 6D.5
Source:  The American National Election Studies



     QUESTION TEXT:

     1964 AND LATER: "Some people seem to follow (1964: think about) what's
     going on in government and public affairs most of the time, whether
     there's an election going on or not. Others aren't that interested.
     Would you say you follow what's going on in government and public
     affairs most of the time, some of the time, only now and then, or
     hardly at all?"
     1960, 1962: "We'd also like to know how much attention you pay to
     what's going on in politics generally. I mean from day to day, when
     there isn't any big election campaign going on, would you say you
     follow politics very closely, fairly closely, or not much at all?"
       

     NOTE:  
     In 1960 and 1962, 'Only Now and Then' was not included as a response
     category.

     This question is variable VCF0313 in the ANES Cumulative Data File dataset.
     Consult the Cumulative Data File codebook for complete question text and annotation.
     Weight variable VCF0009A was used to produce this table (see weight documentation).

     Table generated:  27NOV05