Peter Hart's Voices of the Voters

Peter Hart

Director, Voices of the Voters

 

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Peter Hart's Voices of the Voters

Since 2004 the Annenberg Public Policy Center has been holding focus groups around the U.S. with voters across the political spectrum to gain insight into their attitudes and opinions about presidential candidates and campaigns and the issues defining those campaigns. These groups are moderated by veteran pollster and public opinion expert Peter Hart. In 2009 APPC expanded the project beyond elections to gauge opinions about President Obama, Congress and the state of the nation.

At each session, Hart moderates an open discussion with ten to twelve voters. Afterward Hart and a select group of political journalists gather in the same room to comment on what the group had to say and what their observations might suggest about the state of politics and government at that time.

Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, in their account of the 2008 presidential election (The Battle for America 2008, Viking, 2009), write of the groups:

"In the spring of 2007, nearly nine months before the first primary and a year and a half before the election, the pollster Peter Hart conducted the first of ten focus groups. These sessions, each lasting up to three hours and sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, were designed to track the attitudes of voters as the campaign unfolded. The voters represented the range of the American electorate, demographically, politically, and ideologically, and by race, age, and gender. The three focus groups that met before 2008 began to set the stage for all that followed and proved to be remarkably revealing about the political currents that would mark the entire year."  

Latest Information

APPC Hosts Focus Group of Philadelphia-Area Voters Tuesday, December 08, 2009 On November 30, APPC hosted a focus group of 11 voters from the Philadelphia area moderated by veteran pollster Peter Hart. During the two-hour discussion the group members - a mix of Republican, Democratic and independent voters - expressed concerns over the economy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other issues facing the nation.   Learn More

 

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Published Datasets

Dated	Project	Title
12/08/2009	Peter Hart's Voices of the Voters	APPC Hosts Focus Group of Philadelphia-Area Voters

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