The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $10 million to fund the American National Election Studies to study voter participation and decision-making in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, and in the mid-term elections of 2010.

The Institute for Social Research (ISR), which has conducted the study since 1948, shares the award with the Stanford University Institute for Research in the Social Sciences. 

“This new award allows us to move the ANES in new directions that respond to changing social, economic, and political conditions in American society,” said U-M political scientist Vincent Hutchings, a principal investigator of the project. “The study design reflects the reality that political involvement and participation, as well as voter choice, are the outcome of an intricate, multi-faceted process rather than a snapshot in time. We will use the study to probe the extensive political and social dynamism of the period between 2009-13, a remarkable period of American history marked by a dire economic situation, two wars, and the inauguration of the country’s first African-American president.” 

Hutchings, along with co-principal investigators Simon Jackman and Gary Segura of Stanford University, will lead the four-year collaboration.

The ANES is the longest political time series in the world, with data from every U.S. presidential election since Harry Truman’s unexpected victory in 1948. An online Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior (www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/nesguide.htm) provides easy access to tables and graphs that display the ebb and flow of public opinion, electoral behavior, and choice in American politics over time. Complete data from the study are available for analysis by scholars and political analysts.

The 2012 study will include the customary face-to-face interviews with national probability samples of eligible voters immediately prior to and following the presidential election. The 2012 study also will include large numbers of African-Americans and Latinos. An Internet-based pre- and post-presidential election survey will complement the traditional face-to-face study.

New to the current grant cycle, the ANES also will be conducting a series of Internet surveys called the 2010-12 Evaluations of Government and Society. The overarching theme of the surveys is to gauge political perceptions during one of the most momentous periods in American history.

“Perhaps the most enduring cleavage in American society involves questions of race and ethnicity,” Hutchings says. “Given the central role of race and racial attitudes in American politics, it is essential that we assess the effects of the nation’s first black president on racial attitudes and the racial divide in public opinion on a variety of public policy and socioeconomic issues.”

Other topics for all ANES surveys will be selected through submissions to an on-line commons designed to solicit input from a broad range of scholars.