Vital Statistics on American Politics 2011-2012

There is no other print source, online source, or Web search engine that provides the wide range and depth of insight found in Vital Statistics on American Politics. This new edition is updated with the most recent information available.

What sets this book apart is the experience of editors Harold Stanley and Richard Niemi. These scholars consult hundreds of sources to calculate and locate the data, facts, and figures that offer a vivid and multifaceted portrait of the broad spectrum of United States politics and policies.

In over 230 tables and figures, students, professional researchers, and interested citizens will find chapters devoted to key subject areas such as elections and political parties, public opinion and voting, the media, the three branches of U.S. government, foreign, military, social and economic policy, and much more. For depth of information and ease of use, this volume is the best resource of its kind available and should be a key component of all academic and large public library collections.

Harold W. Stanley is the Geurin-Pettus Distinguished Chair in American Politics and Political Economy at Southern Methodist University (SMU). In 1979, he joined the University of Rochester Department of Political Science and served as its chair from 1996 to 1999. Known as an expert in American national politics and electoral change in the South, Stanley currently serves as associate provost at SMU. Richard G. Niemi is Don Alonzo Watson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester, where he has taught for forty-five years and has served as department chair, associate dean for graduate studies, and interim dean. He earned his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1967. Professor Niemi has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Lund (Sweden) and at the University of Iowa. In 2007–2009 he was president of the American Political Science Association’s Section on State Politics and Policy. He is a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of numerous works on political socialization, civic education, voting behavior, and various aspects of state politics. He has an ongoing interest in the Native Americans of upstate New York and Wisconsin, from whom he can trace a portion of his ancestry.