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
Link to the ASCII text version of this table  


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?"


Graph of Response:


Percent among demographic groups who responded:

 
 
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)


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