Multilevel regression and poststratification (MrP) is a powerful tool for estimating local public opinion from national survey data. However, it has seen little use outside of the United States, owing to its rather stringent data requirements. In this paper, I prove that an extension of MrP using synthetic poststratification (MrsP) can overcome these limitations without introducing error. I the...

Edmund Burke was a much better political philosopher than he was a politician. Burke was a Member of Parliament for Bristol for six years, from 1774 to 1780. He visited the constituency infrequently during that time, and managed to alienate his electorate through a combination of his rather unpatriotic support for America during the war and a general lack of attention to the principal concerns ...

Public opinion on the European Union (EU) is significant and therefore a worthwhile topic of consideration. Analyses have identified and ordered the factors that impact public opinion on the EU, as well analyzed the efficacy of EU funds. Yet the confluence of these two lines of inquiry is understudied. Some Member States have surpluses and others deficits relative to the EU budget, which could ...

This article analyzes public opinion data on environmental issues collected in two major surveys. The data reveal substantial concern about the environment in both developing and industrial countries along with perceptions that the quality of the environment has declined and will continue to decline. Developing country respondents rate their local and national environmental quality lower than d...

Disclaimer: This report is released to inform interested parties of research and to encourage discussion. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Census Bureau. 1 This article reports the results of research and analysis undertaken by Census Bureau 1 staff. It has undergone a more limited review than official Census Bureau publications. This report is r...

OBJECTIVES (1) Determine the frequency of gun ownership, acquisition, and transfer; (2) assess gun storage practices; and (3) compare the views of firearm owning and non-owning adults regarding the protective value of keeping a gun in the home. SETTING AND METHODS Over three different time periods (1995, 1996, and 1999) stratified, random digit telephone surveys were conducted in a five count...

Recent formulation of the Zaller model of mass opinion is generalized to include the interaction between agents. The mechanism of interaction is close to the bounded confidence model. The outcome of the simulation is the probability distribution of opinions on a given issue as dependent on the mental capacity of agents. Former result was that small capacity leads to a strong belief into random ...

We develop an approach to studying public opinion that accounts for how people process competing messages received over the course of a political campaign or policy debate. Instead of focusing on the fixed impact of a message, we emphasize that a message can have variable effects depending on when it is received within a competitive context and how it is evaluated. We test hypotheses about the ...

What is the effect of democratic competition on the power of elites to frame public opinion? We address this issue first by defining the range of competitive contexts that might surround any debate over a policy issue. We then offer a theory that predicts how audiences, messages, and competitive environments interact to influence the magnitude of framing effects. These hypotheses are tested usi...