Vital Statistics on American Politics

There is no other print source, online source, or web search engine that provides the wide range and depth of insight found in Vital Statistics on American Politics (VSAP), published since 1988. VSAP provides historical and statistical information on all aspects of American politics: political parties, voter turnout, public opinion, campaign finance, media perspective and influence, congressional membership and voting patterns, the presidency and executive branch, military policy and spending, Supreme Court and federal court make-up and caseloads, as well as foreign, social, and economic policy.

In over 230 tables and figures, students and professional researchers will find chapters devoted to key subject areas such as elections and political parties, public opinion and voting, the media, the three branches of U.S. government, foreign, military, social and economic policy, and much more. With a firehose of data available online and in many disaggregated locations, this book requires the authors to consult hundreds of sources to calculate, locate, and assemble the data, facts, and figures that offer a vivid and multifaceted portrait of the broad spectrum of United States politics and policies. For depth of information and ease of use, this volume is the best resource of its kind available and should be a key component of all academic and large public library collections. This edition will bring some new and exciting developments. The book was traditionally published biennially, but the retirement of the book′s longtime authors, Harold Stanley and Richard Niemi, brought some challenges that required putting the book on hold temporarily. We′re now ready to embark on a new vision for the book and welcome onboard a new academic and librarian author team, Jeffrey Bernstein and Mandy Shannon, to cover the last four years. This fresh pair of eyes will allow us to look at emerging areas in political science scholarship while still updating the existing data that have proven so valuable over multiple editions. Not only will we update with the most recent information available, but we will introduce new data literacy elements in the form of 3 to 5 short essays per chapter (about 500-800 words each) that focus on understanding, evaluating, and critically appraising data, and their uses and limitations.

VSAP has a richly-deserved reputation for putting valuable data into the hands of students of politics; we hope this new edition will gain a similarly strong reputation for being an important tool in teaching students how to be intelligent consumers of those data.