Politics Bulleted List
Elected Officials Attitudes Toward People
Graphs: [Location]
[Age]
[Gender]
- Once again, the percentages are nearly identical to the Fifth survey. 40.4% of respondents felt that elected officials did care what people like them thought and 59.6% felt they did not. There was a slight increase in the percentage of Europeans who felt that officials didn't care what they thought. Older respondents were more likely to think that officials did care what they thought.
Frequently Visited Political Web Sites
Graphs: [Location]
[Age]
[Gender]
- This question included the choice "search engine" to provide a baseline for comparison. 70.5% of respondents reported using search engines frequently. The political sites that respondents frequently are: online news (41.5%), CNN (37.4%), and sites not listed in our choices (24.1%). Only 11.7% reported visiting candidate's home pages frequently. A higher percentage of older respondents reported visiting online news sources frequently.
Hours Spent On Political Material
Graphs: [Location]
[Age]
[Gender]
- Most of the online users (29.81%) spend between 30 and 60 minutes per day, on average, viewing,
listening to, or reading news or other political material. Another 25.49% report spending between
15 and 30 minutes per day. Europeans are more likely to spend more time per day consuming
political information. Baby boomers (19-25 yr olds), consume much less political news than people
over 50 yr old. Where 64.69% 50+ consume over 30 minutes on average per day, this amount of consumption
only is reported by 50.32% of the 19-25 group.
How Often Do You Use White House Documents
Graphs: [Location]
[Age]
[Gender]
- Almost 2/3 of respondents have never accessed White House documents (63.6%). This percentage is up very slightly from the last survey. Fewer respondents from Europe report using White House documents, which is not surprising. The age group with the most use is 26-50 year olds (36.9% have used at least once).
Involvement With Issues Since Coming Online
Graphs: [Location]
[Age]
[Gender]
- Slightly less than half of respondents (44.8%) reported being more involved with political issues since coming online, which is a slight increase from the Fifth survey. Almost the same percentage, however, feel that they are equally involved. More European respondents report being equally involved than American respondents. A much higher percentage of younger respondents reported feeling more involved (50.1%) when compared to older respondents (38.7%).
Number Of Times Emailed Govt Official
Graphs: [Location]
[Age]
[Gender]
- Most respondents have never written email to a government official (75.6%). This is a slight increase from the last survey. Europeans are even less likely to have written (83.8%).
Offline Political Activities
Graphs: [Location]
[Age]
[Gender]
- The most popular offline political activities are: discussing issues (72.4%), signing petitions (44.8%) and influencing others (40.7%). Europeans reported less activity in the categories provided, but reported more activity in "other" political categories. Older respondents were more likely than younger respondents to: write letters, contribute money, attend meetings and volunteer.
Online Political Activities
Graphs: [Location]
[Age]
[Gender]
- As with the last survey, the largest category of activity was "other" (54.6%). Of those listed, respondents reported participating in online discussions, distributing information, and writing officials online. Females reported less activity in all categories except "other". Younger respondents were more likely to participate in the various online activities except for writing officials.
Opinions On Government Involvement
[Graph]
- This was a new question for this survey and will probably be revised for the next survey. The results, however, do provide an interesting first pass at understanding the political makeup of the web community. For this question, respondents were asked to state whether they agreed with, disagreed with or weren't sure for 10 statements. Five of them dealt with personal issues and five with economic issues. Each answer was given a certain number of points. Each respondent was then given a score for personal and economic issues and plotted on the two-dimensional graph below. The sizes of the dots in the graph indicate how many respondents fell into that category.
- The definitions of the various terms are as follows:
- Left-Liberals prefer self-government in personal matters and central decision-making on economics. They want the government to serve the disadvantaged in the name of fairness. Leftists tolerate social diversity, but work for economic equality.
- Libertarians are self-governors in both personal and economic
issues. They believe the government's only purpose is to protect people from coe
rcion and violence. They value individual responsibility, and tolerate economic
and social diversity.
- Centrists favor selective government intervention and emphasize practical solutions to current problems. They tend to keep an open mind on new issues. Many centrists feel that the government serves as a check on excessive liberty.
- Right-Conservatives prefer self-government on economic issues, but want official standards in personal matters. They want the government to defend the community from threats to its moral fiber.
- Authoritarians want government to advance society and individuals through expert central planning. They often doubt whether self-government is practical. Left-authoritarians are also called socialists, while fascists are right-authoritarians.
These definitions and the questions used are Copyright 1995-6 by Advocates for Self-Government who are otherwise unaffiliated with this survey.
- The largest group of web users fell in the the Centrist category (38.4%) followed by Left-liberal (27.3%) and Libertarian (25.1%). Most puzzling is the large dot at 100% in both categories. We are still looking into why this particular point is so large and out of proportion with the ones around it.
Primary Sources Of Political Information
Graphs: [Location]
[Age]
[Gender]
- For this question, respondents could check more than one answer. There were no major differences between these responses and those from the Fifth survey. Primary sources identified by more than 50% of respondents were: local papers, network news, TV news channels (i.e. CNN/MSNBC), and online news. As with the previous survey, national newspapers were the most frequently cited source of political information.
- Left-Liberals prefer self-government in personal matters and central decision-making on economics. They want the government to serve the disadvantaged in the name of fairness. Leftists tolerate social diversity, but work for economic equality.
- Libertarians are self-governors in both personal and economic issues. They believe the government's only purpose is to protect people from coe rcion and violence. They value individual responsibility, and tolerate economic and social diversity.
- Centrists favor selective government intervention and emphasize practical solutions to current problems. They tend to keep an open mind on new issues. Many centrists feel that the government serves as a check on excessive liberty.
- Right-Conservatives prefer self-government on economic issues, but want official standards in personal matters. They want the government to defend the community from threats to its moral fiber.
- Authoritarians want government to advance society and individuals through expert central planning. They often doubt whether self-government is practical. Left-authoritarians are also called socialists, while fascists are right-authoritarians.