Stimson, James A. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

James A. Stimson is Raymond Dawson Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the author of numerous articles and essays of macro theory, political economy, voting behavior, and methodology. He coauthored, with Edward G. Carmines, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (1989).

Praise for the first edition:

"Despite more than five decades of systematic survey analysis, the character and significance of public opinion research remains as elusive a phantom as it was in Walter Lippmann's day. In Public Opinion in America, James Stimson is able to illuminate some of the darker corners of public opinion research and to link the study of opinion to major issues in American politics. I recommend it."

--Benjamin Ginsberg, Cornell University

"In the field of opinion research this book is a rare treat. For all the analytic sophistication, it captivates the reader with a tantalizing plot. Stimson has detected some powerful currents pulsing through the body of mass opinion. Far from being pale reflections of a leader's pronouncements, the public's policy 'moods' outline the shape of political eras to come. It will be surprising to learn that public opinion has been drifting back to liberal solutions in the 1980s, a swing that offers hope to liberal candidates but may not threaten the 'gentler-kinder' brand of conservatives."

--Helmut Norpoth, State University of New York at Stony Brook

Perseus Books Group Web Site, March, 2000

Public opinion matters. It registers itself on the public consciousness, translates into politics and policy, and impels politicians to run for office and, once elected, to serve in particular ways. This is a book about opinion-not opinions. James Stimson takes the incremental, vacillating, time-trapped data points of public opinion surveys and transforms them into a conceptualization of public mood swings that can be measured and used to predict change, not just to describe it. To do so, he reaches far back in U.S. survey research and compiles the data in such a way as to allow the minutiae of attitudes toward abortion, gun control, and housing to dissolve into a portrait of national mood and change.

Using sophisticated techniques of coding, statistics, and data equalization, the author has amassed an unrivaled database from which to extrapolate his findings. The results go a long way toward calibrating the folklore of political eras, and the cyclical patterns that emerge show not only the regulatory impulse of the 1960s and 1970s and the swing away from it in the 1980s; the cycles also show that we are in the midst of another major mood swing right now-what the author calls the "unnoticed liberalism" of current American politics.

Concise, suggestive, and eminently readable, Public Opinion in America is ideal for courses on public opinion, public policy, and methods, as well as for introductory courses in American government. Examples and illustrations abound, and appendixes document the measurement of policy mood from survey research marginals. This revised second edition includes updated data on public opinion and voters through the 1996 presidential election.

Public Opinion?
The Concept of Policy Mood
Developing a Measure of Mood
The Components of Mood
An Electoral Connection?
Reflections on the Present and Future of American Politics