Research Guides: *Politics: Public Opinion

Background Resources

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (WPSA) This link opens in a new window
Political science journal articles. Search by subject, "opinion polls" or "public opinion."

iPOLL This link opens in a new window
U.S. national-level opinion polls; a subset of the Roper Center Public Opinion Archive searchable by text of question.

American National Election Studies (ANES)
Key dataset for understanding elections and public opinion. Single years and cumulative files available for online analysis via SDA Archive.

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) This link opens in a new window
Social science data archive. Requires free registration
Pew Research Center This link opens in a new window
Public opinion data and reports on attitudes toward politics, media, social trends, religion, internet & tech, Hispanics and global issues. Time period: 1990-present

Odum Institute Archive
Includes Harris Poll and National Network of State Polls.
General Social Survey
Core national survey on American attitudes, since 1972. Excellent for studying trends.
Cooperative Congressional Election Study
36,500 person national survey on Congressional elections.

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research This link opens in a new window
Public opinion poll data archive, U.S. and some international. Time period: 1930s-present.
World Values Survey This link opens in a new window
Cross-national survey on values and beliefs.
Representative national samples of each society are interviewed, using a standardized questionnaire that measures support for democracy, tolerance to foreigners and ethnic minorities, support for gender equality, the role of religion and changing levels of religiosity, the impact of globalization, attitudes toward the environment, work, family, politics, national identity, culture, diversity, insecurity, subjective well-being, and etc.

Pew Global Indicators
Opinion surveys conducted around the world. Good for finding how residents of one country view another.
International Social Survey Programme
Similar to the GSS but conducted in countries around the world.
Eurobarometer Surveys
Conducted by the European Commission.

National Network of State Polls Dataverse
A confederation of organizations that conduct state-level surveys. Archive contains polls from 25 states.

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
While searching within news, add terms("POLLS & SURVEYS") to search terms to locate news article reporting on polls results. By limiting to locations, you can find local and state-level polling.

Pacheco, Julianna. 2014. "Measuring and Evaluating Changes in State Opinion across Eight Issues." American Politics Research 42(6): 986-1009.
The supplemental data for this article provides time series of state level opinion on spending on education and welfare, abortion, the death penalty, presidential approval and consumer sentiment.