National Election Studies Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The National Election Studies, carried out by the University of Michigan, is the leading academically-run national survey of voters in the United States, conducted after every federal election. Though the NES was formally established by a National Science Foundation grant in 1977, the data is a continuation of studies going back to 1948. The consistency of the studies, asking the same questions repeatedly over time, makes it very useful for academic research with the result that it is frequently cited in works of political science. Early NES data was the basis for The American Voter (1960), as well as later work in the Michigan school revisiting the same subjects.Other sources for such data include exit polls (until recently conducted primarily by the now-defunct Voter News Service) and the U.S. Census; the relative accuracy of these data sources, which frequently disagree, is a matter of considerable debate.