THE MISSISSIPPI POLL

Welcome to the Mississippi Poll!

The Mississippi Poll is a service to the people of Mississippi and to MSU students and faculty. Citizens can learn what average citizens are thinking about important public issues, and do not have to depend on any public official or on the mass media to learn what the opinions of Mississippians are. MSU students and faculty can use the Mississippi Poll to conduct original research, which results in their presenting papers at professional association meetings and publishing in refereed journals and other scholarly avenues.

The Mississippi Poll is conducted by undergraduate political science majors at MSU, supervised by our graduate students, under the overall direction of Professor Steve Shaffer. State-of-the-art polling facilities of MSU's Social Science Research Center are used to poll people. Every two years, we contact approximately 600 adult Mississippi residents, and ask them about one hundred questions about political issues. Our first poll was conducted in 1981 and our most recent was in 2008.

In 2008 we are inaugurating a National Poll, also sponsored by the SSRC at MSU. It is directed by Professor Barbara Patrick and assisted by alumnus and SSRC professional staff member Tonya Thornton-Neaves. Results should be available on our website in the coming months. We anticipate that this national poll will join the Mississippi Poll as a longitudinal database.

Questions Included in the Mississippi Poll, and Its Methodology:

The results for frequently asked questions from all polls conducted since 1981 are available on one computer disk in a Cumulative File in an SPSS for Windows format. It makes it incredibly easy for anyone with the SPSS program to analyze the Mississippi Poll. Copies of this data source are available to MSU political science and public administration students and faculty.

Some Results from Past Polls:

Publications

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