To capture a comprehensive picture of the American electorate, USA TODAY, part of Gannett Co., Inc. , is launching a new project with Democracy Fund'sVoter Study Group and UCLA based on data from Nationscape, one of the largest election focused public opinion surveys ever conducted. The Nationscape survey will interview people in nearly every county, congressional district and mid-sized U.S. city in the leadup to the 2020 election.
The weekly survey was designed and is managed by UCLA political scientists Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch. It is fielded by market research platform Lucid and will conduct more than 500,000 interviews leading up to the 2020 elections, shedding light on attitudes and issues as they take shape. The survey asks questions about more than 40 issues and policies every week — capturing Americans’ attitudes as well as how they prioritize those policies. The project’s unprecedented size will also allow for demographic and geographic deep-dives on groups that are typically too small to examine.
USA TODAY and Gannett’s network of local market reporters will access Nationscape Insights analyses on Americans’ opinions across the country to generate interactive stories that allow people to understand the issues where voters agree and disagree, and how those opinions are changing over time.
This morning, USA TODAY released findings from Nationscape, based on interviews with 31,508 people conducted in 2020, revealing that Democratic and Republican voters both agree on issues such as background checks for gun purchases and tax cuts for families making less than $100,000 per year, but remain split on a range of policy issues, including health care and building a wall on the U.S. southern border. Among likely Democratic primary voters, the two issues where there is most disagreement are abolishing private health insurance and Medicare for All. The results, including data analysis and a data visualization component, can be found at www.usatoday.com.
“The Nationscape project is important for helping Americans learn about the diverse perspectives different communities have on key issues, and we’re thrilled to be able to leverage our local footprint in newsrooms across the country for this important effort,” said Nicole Carroll, editor in chief of USA TODAY.
