Former Founding Director of Pew Research Center
Andrew Kohut was the founding director of Pew Research Center. He served as the center’s president from 2004 to 2012, and directed the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press from 1993 to 2012. He was president of The Gallup Organization from 1979 to 1989. In 1989, he founded Princeton Survey Research Associates, an attitude and opinion research firm specializing in media, politics, and public policy studies. He served as founding director of surveys for the Times Mirror Center 1990-1992, and was named its director in 1993. He was a past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the National Council on Public Polls. In 2005, he received the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s highest honor, the Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement. He was a frequent commentator on public opinion for National Public Radio, the PBS NewsHour and other news media outlets. He wrote widely about public opinion for leading newspapers and magazines, as well as for scholarly journals. Kohut co-authored four books, including America Against the World and Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Changing Role in American Politics.
Twenty five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans are now as satisfied with life as West Germans.
The impact of the “Fall of the Wall” on American opinions about the Cold War were as profound as the event was dramatic.
How many Americans are likely to vote, and which voters in the survey are the likely voters? Important as these questions are, there is almost no consensus among the pollsters as to how to identify each of these groups.
Despite growing political polarization between the GOP and Democratic bases, there’s a sizable “middle” that still matters in elections.
Since the Affordable Care Act was passed nearly four years ago, a plurality of Americans have disapproved of it. Since the onset of the Great Recession 6 years ago, more than 80% of Americans have rated economic conditions as only fair or poor. And since winning a second term, Barack Obama’s approval score has mostly been in the mid-40s or lower.
When asked about the future prospects of “children today,” Americans generally said that when today’s kids grow up, they would be worse off financially than their parents. While this is a pretty glum judgment about what lies ahead for today’s children, Americans’ optimism resurfaces when people are asked about their own kids.
Polls show that Americans don’t want to get too involved in Ukraine’s problems with Russian encroachment, just as they have been disinclined to get drawn into other recent world trouble spots, including Syria, Egypt and Libya.
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