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    About Us

    To serve the research needs of social scientists, teachers, students, policy makers and journalists, the ANES produces high quality data from its own surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation. Central to this mission is the active involvement of the ANES research community in all phases of the project.


    Our Mission

    Why does America vote as it does on Election Day? The mission of the American National Election Studies (ANES) is to inform explanations of election outcomes by providing data that support rich hypothesis testing, maximize methodological excellence, measure many variables, and promote comparisons across people, contexts, and time. The ANES serves this mission by providing researchers with a view of the political world through the eyes of ordinary citizens.

Recent Errata and Announcements

View the log of updates to data releases and study announcements.

People

In the Spotlight

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2016 Time Series Study

As of Sunday, January 8, 2017, data collection for the ANES 2016 Time Series Study ended . We would like to thank all our respondents who took the time to respond to our study and contribute to its success.

While we are in the process of reviewing the data and preparing it for release, we can report that we are just shy of 1,200 face-to-face respondents during the pre-election phase and over 1,050 participated in the post-election reinterview. Just under 3,100 respondents participated in the internet mode of the study and almost 2,600 completed the post-election questionnaire. (Final numbers are pending final verification of individual cases.)

We aim to have an initial release of the data in March 2017. However, that will be dependent on when the review of the data is completed. Please check back here or follow us on Twitter @electionstudies for updates.

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ANES in the News

Researchers and analysts utilize ANES data to assess current events and identify trends in the behavior and attitudes of the electorate. Many papers concerning the 2016 campaigns and elections have already been produced as a result of research emplying recent ANES data. We work to update The ANES Biblography with new citations as much as possible and currently have over 7,000 citations from citations from books, books chapters, journal articles, conferences and more.

If you have a contribution, please submit your citation online. We welcome your help keeping this resources current.

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Guide to Public Opinion

The ANES Guide provides tables and graphs which display the over-time ebb and flow of public opinion, electoral behavior and choice. Data are from the ANES Time Series studies.

The ANES Guide was produced from the ANES Time Series Cumulative Data File which combines, for selected questions, data from individual Time Series study variables into common, cross-year variables. Questions which have been asked during 3 or more years in the Time Series are eligible for inclusion in the Cumulative Data File.

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History of ANES

"In 1948, under the direction of Angus Campbell and Robert Kahn, the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan, with financial support from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), carried out what it viewed as a pilot study of the national electorate...This study interviewed 577 respondents...With its use of area probability sampling for a national sample and with its focus on political behavior, the study provided an important pilot for the future..." -- from the "The Michigan, then National, then American National Election Studies," by Nancy Burns (2006).

Check out this brief historical timeline