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Letters to the Editor
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To: Editor, Public Opinion Quarterly |
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From: Gary Langer and Jon Cohen
We appreciate the ongoing discussion of the inclusion of "moral values" on the issues list in the National Election Pool’s (NEP) 2004 exit poll. The subject has important methodological and analytical implications; we welcome data and informed debate on the construction of exit poll questions that are meaningful and, given their same-day use, clearly and easily interpretable.
Howard Schuman suggests that an open-ended question in a Pew Research Center survey immediately after the election provides ex post facto justification for including "moral values" on the issues list. To the contrary, we see these data as an object lesson in media priming. The Pew poll was conducted