Hofstra's National Suburban Poll

Second National Suburban Poll
October 2008

Press Release:
Second National Suburban Poll Shows Obama Pulling Ahead of McCain in Suburbs, Closing Gap in Rural Areas, Far Ahead in Cities
29-OCT-08

• Second National Suburban Poll Shows Obama Pulling Ahead of McCain in Suburbs, Closing Gap in Rural Areas, Far Ahead in Cities [PDF]
  October 2008

First National Suburban Poll
September 2008

The poll is the first of its kind to survey the voting preferences of a volatile and decisive voting block: suburbanites. The party that has built a bridge to the suburbs from its base in the cities (Democrats) or the rural areas (Republicans) has won the presidency and controlled Congress for nearly two decades. This poll will not only show which party is succeeding in the suburbs, but will shed light on the future of national politics by surveying opinions on a variety of issues that affect suburban residents.

• The Swing Suburbs: A presidential election in a time of stress [PDF]
  September 2008
• National Suburban Poll [PDF]
  September 25, 2008
• Watch the Press Conference on iTunes U
  (requires the installation of iTunes application on your computer.)
  Select the Educate '08 category, then select Video.

The poll was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates and their CEO Evans Witt and Senior Project Director Dawn Crossland under the guidance of the NCSS Executive Director, Lawrence Levy and NCSS Academic Director Christopher Niedt.

Seven scholars whose research focuses on public opinion, electoral politics, and suburbanization have kindly volunteered to serve on our advisory committee:

Katrin Anacker is Research Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, Co-Editor of Housing Policy Debate, and Organizer for the Suburban World conference. She and her colleagues have recently developed a suburban typology for analyzing presidential election outcomes.

Meena Bose is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra. She is also co-editor of The Uses and Abuses of Presidential Ratings.

Juliet Gainsborough is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bentley College, and author of Fenced Off: The Suburbanization of American Politics.

Liora P. Schmelkin is Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of Graduate Studies at Hofstra. She has conducted extensive survey work in her research on education.

Jeffrey Sellers is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern California. He has researched state-society interactions from the perspective of cities and communities, and compared differences in political participation across the metropolis in the US and Europe.

Alan Walks is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto, Mississagua. He has studied changing party preference in Canadian cities and suburbs, as well as divergence of urban and suburban opinion on subjects such as neoliberal policy reform.

Isaac Martin, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC San Diego. He is the author of The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics.