This article reviews recent research on how mass opinion affects policy making in the
context of US national institutions. Three themes materialize. First, research provides …

Has rising import competition contributed to the polarization of US politics? Analyzing
multiple measures of political expression and results of congressional and presidential …

Census statistics play a key role in public policy decisions and social science research.
However, given the risk of revealing individual information, many statistical agencies are …

America faces daunting problems—stagnant wages, high health care costs, neglected
schools, deteriorating public services. How did we get here? Through decades of …

During the past two generations, democratic forms have coexisted with massive increases in
economic inequality in the United States and many other advanced democracies. Moreover …

Rarely these days does a news cycle pass without new stories of political dysfunction in
Washington, DC New reports of stalemates, fiscal cliffs, and failed grand bargains have …

Abstract The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion synthesizes leading studies of public
opinion from the late 1980s in a top-down model of opinion formation and change. The core …

The development and elaboration of the spatial theory of voting has contributed greatly to
the study of legislative decision making and elections. Statistical models that estimate the …

Information is being produced and stored at an unprec-edented rate. It might come from
recording the public's daily life: people express their emotions on Facebook accounts, tweet …

We consider the relationship between the preferences of American voters and the
preferences of the US legislators who represent them. Using an Internet-based, national …