National Election Studies
Encyclopedia
The American National Election Studies is the leading academically-run national survey
Opinion poll
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...
of voters in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, conducted before and after every presidential election
Election
An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...
. Though the ANES was formally established by a National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
grant in 1977, the data are a continuation of studies going back to 1948. The study has been based at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
since its origin and, since 2005, has been run in partnership with Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. Its principal investigators for the first four years of the partnership were Arthur Lupia
Arthur Lupia
Arthur Lupia is an American political scientist. He is the Hal R. Varian Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan.Lupia received a B.A. degree in economics from the University of Rochester and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in social science from the California Institute of...
and Jon Krosnick
Jon Krosnick
Jon A. Krosnick is the Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, professor of communication, political science and psychology at Stanford University.Krosnick received a B.A. degree in psychology from Harvard University and M.A. and Ph.D...
. Its current principal investigators are Vincent Hutchings, Gary Segura, and Simon Jackman.
The consistency of the studies, asking the same questions repeatedly over time, makes it very useful for academic research with the result that it is frequently cited in works of political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
. Early ANES data were the basis for The American Voter
The American Voter
The American Voter, published in 1960, is a seminal study of voting behavior in the United States, authored by Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes, colleagues at the University of Michigan...
(1960). Now ANES data are used by numerous scholars, students, and journalists. It is widely considered the "gold standard" of election studies.
The ANES has a long history of innovation. In 2006, it opened the ANES Online Commons, becoming the first large-scale academic survey to allow interested scholars and survey professionals to propose questions for future ANES surveys.