The dynamics of aggregate public opinion - particularly James Stimson's measure of policy mood - have long been used to explain electoral outcomes and government responsiveness in the United States. However, we still know little about policy mood outside the US and a few Western European countries. Understanding the relationship between policy and preferences outside the pool of advanced democracies is crucial as voters outside that context are often depicted as outcome oriented; that is, they are depicted as voting based on valence issues, where there is shared agreement on the preferred outcome, instead of on a set of coherent policy preferences. We argue that this depiction of voters is attributable to the absence of data in these countries and not to the absence of coherent policy preferences. We test our argument by analyzing nearly three decades of Uruguayan public opinion data including 78 different questions administered 295 times. Our analysis shows that policy preferences across related issues in Uruguay largely move in tandem, suggesting that a coherent policy mood indeed exists. Further, we provide evidence that this policy mood is distinct from symbolic political ideology and that it responds thermostatically to changes in government. This thermostatic responsiveness suggests that Uruguayans do not merely focus on whether the economy is good or bad but, rather, update their policy preferences in response to the direction of government policy. Together, these results offer a much more nuanced depiction of public opinion outside advanced industrial democracies than previous research suggests, with important implications for democratic accountability in Latin America and other developing economies.

Our 2020 analysis correctly forecasted Joe Biden's victory and the outcome of every state except Georgia. That forecast relied on economic data from 125 days prior to Election Day and presidential approval data from 104 days (or more) before the election. Since 2000, our model would have correctly forecasted the winner in 95% of all states. We updated our State Presidential Approval/State Economy Model for 2024. This article summarizes the model and its historical accuracy as well as new data updates. We then generate forecasts for the overall two-party popular vote, each state's outcome, and the Electoral College winner for the 2024 US presidential election. One hundred days prior to Election Day, our model forecasts a split two-party popular vote (50.3% for Trump, 49.7% for Harris) but a notable Trump advantage in the Electoral College, with slightly less than a three-in-four chance that Trump wins the election. This Republican advantage 100 days prior to Election Day sheds light on Biden's abrupt decision to drop out of the race and suggests that if Harris wins, she will have overcome extremely challenging fundamentals, and/or that Donald Trump and the Republican Party will have squandered a sizeable Electoral College advantage.

As survey methods adapt to technological and societal changes, a growing body of research seeks to understand the tradeoffs associated with various sampling methods and administration modes. We show how the NSF-funded 2022 Collaborative Midterm Survey (CMS) can be used as a dynamic and transparent framework for evaluating which sampling approaches - or combination of approaches - are best suited for various research goals. The CMS is ideally suited for this purpose because it includes almost 20,000 respondents interviewed using two administration modes (phone and online) and data drawn from random digit dialing, random address-based sampling, a probability-based panel, two nonprobability panels, and two nonprobability marketplaces. The analysis considers three types of population benchmarks (election data, administrative records, and large government surveys) and focuses on the national-level estimates as well as oversamples in three states (California, Florida, and Wisconsin). In addition to documenting how each of the survey strategies performed, we develop a strategy to assess how different combinations of approaches compare to different population benchmarks in order to guide researchers combining sampling methods and sources. We conclude by providing specific recommendations to public opinion and election survey researchers and demonstrating how our approach could be applied to a large government survey conducted at regular intervals to provide ongoing guidance to researchers, government, businesses, and nonprofits regarding the most appropriate survey sampling and administration methods.

Scholars have reached different conclusions about the relationship between carceral contact and community engagement and civic participation. We offer a theoretical account that aims to synthesize this work to argue that incarceration should depress trust in the state but may increase, decrease, or produce no substantial effect on community or civic engagement, leading to no overall average association. We use data from the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS), a nationally representative survey of adults in the United States (n = 2,703) to conduct an expansive test of associations between direct (own) and indirect (family member) incarceration and trust in the state, civic participation, and community engagement. Our findings show that incarceration may not uniformly depress political and civic behaviors, on average. Furthermore, they inform our understanding of seemingly divergent conclusions in prior research, underscoring potential variability of prosocial actions and their enabling and constraining conditions in the wake of carceral contact.

During much of the second half of the twentieth century, public opinion in both the United States and Britain became more punitive as crime rates rose. These shifting public attitudes had a profound influence on criminal justice policies. What is less understood is how public attitudes in these countries have responded to declining crime rates since the early-1990s. To understand how the public reacts to declining crime rates, we focus on crimes recorded by the police as well as data on actual victimisation. We also draw on more than 4,000 national survey questions to construct measures of public concern about crime and support for punitive criminal justice responses. Our analyses illustrate parallels in the crime drop measured by victimisation surveys in the two countries (with recorded violent crime in England and Wales the exception to this overall trend). The over-time patterns in public concern about crime and punitive sentiment are more complex, with the US public becoming less punitive (in line with declining crime rates) while the British public's concern with crime appears more in tune with actual crime rates. Given the distinct social, political and institutional settings offered by the two countries, the parallel dynamics of crime and the mixed response of public opinion help illustrate the importance of the comparative analysis of crime and its effects on society as well as the importance of considering multiple measures of public opinion related to crime and punishment.

Racial and ethnic minority and lower-income groups are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and suffer worse health outcomes than other groups in the United States. Relative to whites and higher-income groups, racial-ethnic minority and lower-income Americans also frequently express greater concern about high-profile global environmental threats like climate change, but they are widely misperceived as being less concerned about these issues than white and higher-income Americans. We use new survey research to explore public perceptions of COVID-19-another global threat marked by substantial racial, ethnic, and class disparities-finding a distinct pattern of misperceptions regarding groups' concerns. We then discuss how these misperceptions represent a unique form of social misinformation that may pose a threat to science and undermine the cooperation and trust needed to address collective problems.

It is fairly well-known that proper time series analysis requires that estimated equations be balanced. Numerous scholars mistake this to mean that one cannot mix orders of integration. Previous studies have clarified the distinction between equation balance and having different orders of integration, and shown that mixing orders of integration does not increase the risk of type I error when using the general error correction/autoregressive distributed lag (GECM/ADL) models, that is, so long as equations are balanced (and other modeling assumptions are met). This paper builds on that research to assess the consequences for type II error when employing those models. Specifically, we consider cases where a true relationship exists, the left- and right-hand sides of the equation mix orders of integration, and the equation still is balanced. Using the asymptotic case, we find that the different orders of integration do not preclude identification of the true relationship using the GECM/ADL. We then highlight that estimation is trickier in practice, over finite time, as data sometimes do not reveal the underlying process. But, simulations show that even in these cases, researchers will typically draw accurate inferences as long as they select their models based on the observed characteristics of the data and test to be sure that standard model assumptions are met. We conclude by considering the implications for researchers analyzing or conducting simulations with time series data.

Some scholars argue that Donald Trump's electoral college victory in 2016 was predicated on his ability to attract racially hostile white voters. Others argue that the increased relationship between whites' racial attitudes and presidential vote choice in 2016 was because racial attitudes and partisanship had become even more aligned following the presidency of Barack Obama. Building on research that shows voters tend to update their policy positions to align with their preferred candidates, we propose a third mechanism that helps account for the strong relationship between whites' racial attitudes and vote choice in 2016. We hypothesize that over the course of the presidential campaign, many whites shifted their survey responses on questions related to race and immigration to align with their support for Trump or Clinton. To test this argument, we use a unique panel dataset from surveys conducted by YouGov of more than 5,000 respondents interviewed at multiple points during the 2016 presidential election campaign. We find that the strong link between white attitudes toward Black Americans and Trump support observed in prior studies is likely due as much to white Trump supporters updating their survey responses to report opinions more consistent with Trump's, as it is to Trump drawing support from more racially antagonistic white voters. Similar results emerge with respect to whites' immigration opinions. These findings complicate our understanding of the 2016 election by offering direct evidence that Trump's campaign benefited from and catalyzed racial divisions. The results also hold implications for how we study election and campaign effects and the stability of race and immigration attitudes.

•Survey experiments with U.S. nationally representative samples have reported less belief in “global warming” than “climate change”.•Given shifting public opinion in the U.S., it is useful to replicate such studies over time.•In our latest replication attempt, we found no effect of global warming/climate change wording on existence beliefs.•However, “climate change” (vs. “global warming”) was attributed more to natural than human causes, and vice versa.•For survey experiments, replication studies should replicate both the treatment and the sampling procedure.

Over the past half century, Chile has fluctuated wildly in terms of economic prosperity and democratic health. Using 78 surveys archived at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, we document the evolution of Chileans' perceptions of their personal, family, and national economic conditions during major political and economic changes. The data show that prior to the Pinochet dictatorship, despite a growing economic crisis, Chileans' perceptions of their family's economic situation-particularly among the lower socio-economic class-improved, suggesting that Allende's social and economic policies may have had their intended effect. In contrast, through the democratic transition and the contemporary period, economic evaluations typically tracked objective economic conditions. We conclude by discussing how these patterns can inform public opinion research in Latin America and beyond.

What percentage of Americans have ever had a family member incarcerated? To answer this question, we designed the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS). The survey was administered in the summer of 2018 by NORC at the University of Chicago using their AmeriSpeak Panel. It was funded by FWD.us, which released a separate report using the data. The data show that 45 percent of Americans have ever had an immediate family member incarcerated. The incarceration of an immediate family member was most prevalent for blacks (63 percent) but common for whites (42 percent) and Hispanics (48 percent) as well. College graduates had a lower risk of having a family member incarcerated, but the risk for black college graduates was comparatively high. The most common form of family member incarceration was the incarceration of a sibling.

The transfer of authority over the supervision of inmate populations from state and federal governments to private corporations is one of the most significant contemporary developments in the criminal justice system. Yet, the controversy surrounding the private prison industry has occurred in U.S. criminal justice policy circles without any understanding of the public's preferences toward these institutions. In this article, we test several theories that potentially explain opinions toward privatizing carceral institutions: the racial animus, business is better, conflict of interest, and problem-escalation models. These models are tested with original data from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. The data show that opinions toward the privatization of carceral institutions do not neatly fall along partisan or ideological divisions but are explained by beliefs about racial resentment, corporate ethics, and the potential ability of private companies to provide services cheaper than the public sphere. The results hold important implications for how we understand the future of private carceral institutions in the United States.

Does life tenure, legal precedent, judicial ideology, and the facts of cases insulate U.S. Supreme Court justices from the public’s shifting preferences, or do Supreme Court decisions follow public opinion? Despite decades of scholarship on this topic, the question of a Court-opinion connection—and the precise causal mechanism linking them together—still invites disparate perspectives, evidence, and substantive conclusions. In this chapter, we summarize the diverging theories, analytical approaches, and empirical results in the debate over public opinion's relationship with Supreme Court decisions. We then offer a theory of how the mass public, despite being generally uninformed about judicial decisions, can influence the decisions of the highest court in the land. We then discuss the sizeable evidence in support of this perspective, how this relationship could be changing in the modern era, and avenues for future research. 1 A previous version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, January 2016, San Juan, Puerto Rico. We would like to thank Robert Howard and Kirk Randazzo for their helpful comments and guidance. The Supreme Court of the United States decides that a corporation cannot hide itself behind the plea of self-incrimination, when called upon to produce its letters and documents. This no doubt is gain; there are lawyers who think it doubtful if the question would have been so decided a few years ago. The judicial indicator is beginning to turn to the pressure of the greater social force, the public. --Melville M. Bigelow, The Atlantic Monthly, December 1906 Does the prevailing state of popular opinion shape the content of Supreme Court decisions? The answer to this question raises important implications about the Court's role in the American political system, the democratic nature of its decisions, and the determinants of legal policy change. But, the answers proposed by existing literature have fostered little agreement. At the turn of the 20th century, esteemed legal scholar Melville M. Bigelow, while lamenting the state of 19th-century corporate economic regulation, noted how prevailing popular sentiment seemed to alter (for the good of society, in his view) the state of the law (Bigelow 1906). And, history is replete with similar suggestions that public opinion has critically shaped legal interpretation and policymaking by the U.S. Supreme Court (see, e.g., Friedman 2010). Yet, scholars continue to provoke a lively debate over the merits of the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence used to suggest justices, and thus the Court's policy outputs, actually respond to the mass public's preferences. Despite decades of continued scholarship, the question of a Court-opinion connection---and the precise causal mechanism linking them together---still invites disparate perspectives, evidence, and substantive conclusions. While most scholars would agree that the democratic process induces some degree of indirect responsiveness through the election of the President and U.S. Senate,2 wide disagreement exists over the presence of a direct linkage beyond the selection of justices. Some studies argue there is little reason, or evidence, to suggest public opinion has any direct impact on justices (Norpoth and Segal 1994; Segal and Spaeth 2002). Other scholars acknowledge empirical evidence supporting the appearance of a direct causal linkage, but they doubt the (direct) causal mechanism to justify the apparent relationship. For instance, it may be the apparent relationship is largely a function of how justices' changing attitudes might parallel changes in public opinion. That is, justices' attitudes are not fixed (Ulmer 1973, 1981; Baum 1988; Epstein, Martin, Quinn, and Segal 2007), and the same social forces that shape public opinion also influence the justices' preferences, thus creating the mere appearance of a direct linkage (Giles, Blackstone, and Vining 2008).3 Yet, many scholars have argued that mass opinion directly constrains the Court's decisions, as justices strategically adjust decisions (at the margins) to match shifts in the public mood and ensure the efficacy of those decisions.4 And, proponents of public opinion's direct impact have 2 See, e.g., Barnum (1985); Casper (1972); Cook (1977); Dahl (1957); Flemming and Wood (1997); Funston (1975); Giles, Blackstone, and Vining (2008); Marshall (1989, 2008); McGuire and Stimson (2004); Mishler and Sheehan (1993, 1994, 1996); Norpoth and Segal (1994). 3 Even studies arguing for a direct linkage have acknowledged that unobserved social forces may be leveraging their empirical results (Epstein and Martin 2011; Flemming and Wood 1997; Link 1995; Mishler and Sheehan 1993, 1996). 4 The public mood (or the public’s policy mood) refers to the extent the public supports more liberal or more conservative government policy (Stimson 1991). See, Casillas, Enns, and offered considerable empirical evidence. For instance, there is compelling qualitative, historical legal scholarship (e.g., Friedman 2010) and systematic social scientific evidence linking public opinion (to some degree) to Court decisions (e.g., Mishler and Sheehan 1993; McGuire and Stimson 2004, Casillas, Enns, and Wohlfarth 2011).5 But, these scholars examining a direct impact have presented a variegated mix of analytical strategies and drawn competing conclusions about the extent of public opinion's constraining effect. Existing studies have analyzed the Court's aggregate case outcomes each term,6 or the aggregate votes of each justice during each term,7 or individual case outcomes and justice votes.8 Many studies have considered whether the impact of public opinion might vary across different justices.9 Scholars have examined differences in responsiveness across issue areas, with some Wohlfarth (2011); Epstein and Knight (1998); Flemming and Wood (1997); Hall (2014); Link (1995); McGuire and Stimson (2004); Mishler and Sheehan (1993, 1996); Murphy (1964). 5 See also, Bryan and Kromphardt (2016); Enns and Wohlfarth (2013); Epstein and Martin (2011); Flemming and Wood (1997); Hall (2014); Link (1995); Mishler and Sheehan (1994, 1996); Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson (1995). 6 Casillas, Enns, and Wohlfarth (2011); Link (1995); McGuire and Stimson (2004); Mishler and Sheehan (1993); Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson (1995). 7 Flemming and Wood (1997); Giles, Blackstone, and Vining (2008); Mishler and Sheehan (1996). 8 Bryan and Kromphardt (2016); Enns and Wohlfarth (2013); Epstein and Martin (2011); Hall (2014); Marshall (1989, 2008). 9 Enns and Wohlfarth (2013); Flemming and Wood (1997); Giles, Blackstone, and Vining (2008); Mishler and Sheehan (1996). studies finding general consistency (Flemming and Wood 1997; McGuire and Stimson 2004), and also inconsistency (Link 1995). Others have examined the potential conditionality of public opinion's impact within different case contexts, such as political salience, policy content, public support, and coalition size.10 And, many studies have explicitly considered varying theoretical and empirical implications of the relationship's temporal dynamics.11 Despite this diverse and extensive body of research, there is still no clear consensus on the nature of the relationship. In this chapter, we first review the existing literature, including the predominant theoretical arguments made in the debate on public opinion's impact on Supreme Court decisions and empirical evidence presented to support those arguments. Next, we present our theoretical perspective of how public opinion influences the justices and their consideration of cases. In particular, we posit the public mood establishes a bounded, yet dynamic, zone of consensus that, on average, may constrain justices' behavior across all types of cases. And, while grounding our discussion in literature on public opinion in American politics, we argue the public has a latent policy preference of which justices should find it prudent to anticipate. Thus, even for cases perceived to be under the public's radar, justices should perceive their decisions risk attracting the attention of the news media, the public, and other branches of government if they repeatedly issue judgments outside the public's zone of consensus. Lastly, we consider several analytical challenges present in this debate and discuss potential directions for future research. 10 Bryan and Kromphardt (2016); Casillas, Enns, and Wohlfarth (2011); Enns and Wohlfarth (2013); Giles, Blackstone, and Vining (2008); Hall (2014). 11 Flemming and Wood (1997); Giles, Blackstone, and Vining (2008); Mishler and Sheehan (1993, 1996); Norpoth and Segal (1994). The State of the Debate A primary means through which public opinion may shape Supreme Court decisions is the selection of justices.12 At least since the seminal work of Dahl (1957), many scholars have argued that Court decisions should indirectly reflect public opinion to some degree, given that citizens elect the president and U.S. Senators that nominate and confirm justices. Thus, so long as these officeholders select justices who hold policy views consistent with the mass public that elected them into office – and to the extent those justices decide cases consistent with their own legal policy preferences – Supreme Court decisions should remain in step with the public. In short, as “judicial replacement” occurs, public opinion should indirectly shape the Court's composition and subsequent judicial policymaking. And, some studies argue the personal protection afforded by life tenure and general lack of progressive ambition offer little reason to expect justices to be directly responsive to public opinion beyond this selection effect (Norpoth and Segal 1994; Segal and Spaeth 2002).13 While this indirect “judicial replacement” argument receives wide scholarly agreement, it neither ensures a strong Court-opinion relationship, nor precludes the operation of

Does the public doubt the existence of "global warming" more than "climate change"? While previously published research suggests that it does, others have argued that this effect either never existed or has disappeared amid broader shifts in public opinion. We draw on survey response theory to help reconcile this debate. We then analyze data from an October 2016 probability-based survey experiment (n = 1461 US adults) to test the prediction that the US public (and particularly, Republicans) continue to respond differently when asked whether global warming vs. climate change exists. Indeed, respondents who were asked about climate change responded "Yes" (definitely or somewhat) more often (85.8%) than respondents who were asked about global warming (80.9%), an effect observed for Republicans (74.4 vs. 65.5%) but not Democrats (94% in both conditions). We discuss broader implications for US public opinion and discourse in an era of significant proposed government rollbacks of climate and environmental policy.

Abstract Following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 US presidential election, the American Association for Public Opinion Research announced that “the polls clearly got it wrong” and noted that talk of a “crisis in polling” was already emerging. Although the national polls ended up being accurate, surveys just weeks before the election substantially over-stated Clinton’s lead and state polls showed systematic bias in favor of Clinton. Different explanations have been offered for these results, including non-response bias and late deciders. We argue, however, that these explanations cannot fully account for Trump’s underperformance in October surveys. Utilizing data from two national polls that we conducted in October of 2016 (n>2100 total) as well as 14 state-level polls from October, we find consistent evidence for the existence of “hidden” Trump supporters who were included in the surveys but did not openly express their intention to vote for Trump. Most notably, when we account for these hidden Trump supporters in our October survey data, both national and state-level analyses foreshadow Trump’s Election Day support. These results suggest that late-breaking campaign events may have had less influence than previously thought and the findings hold important implications for how scholars, media, and campaigns analyze future election surveys.