Research Guides: Public Opinion: Resources

Background Resources

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (WPSA)
Political science journal articles. Search by subject, "opinion polls" or "public opinion."

iPOLL
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.

Polling the Nations
Opinion polls and surveys searchable by question. 1986 to present
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
Social science data archive. Requires free registration
Pew Research Center
Independent opinion research group that studies attitudes toward politics, media, social trends, religion, internet & tech, Hispanics and global issues. Coverage: 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
Public opinion poll data archive, U.S. and some international. Coverage: 1930s-present.
World Values Survey
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
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.

Access to thousands of news, business, legal, and medical publications and information sources, including: newspapers, newsletters, magazines, trade journals, wire services, and broadcast transcripts. It offers some international resources in French, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. The legal component of the database includes comprehensive, current legal information which consists of federal and state case law, statues, secondary sources such as law reviews, and state legal materials. Includes Shepard's Citations for all federal and states court cases back to 1789.

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.