The ANES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior

Average Feeling Thermometer Rating Toward Congressional Candidates 1978 -2016

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Data Table

  '78 '80 '82 '84 '86 '88 '90 '92 '94 '96 '98 '00 '02 '04 '06 '08 '10 '12 '14 '16
Democratic Candidate 64 61 62 59 64 62 65 60 56 55 59 59 57 60 ** 58 ** 53 ** 54
Republican Candidate 62 60 59 57 58 57 59 54 58 57 57 58 58 58 ** 56 ** 52 ** 54
Both Dem. & Rep. Cands 59 57 58 56 57 56 58 55 54 56 56 55 56 56 ** 55 ** 51 ** 52
Incumbent Candidate 68 65 65 62 66 65 66 61 60 60 61 62 60 65 ** 60 ** 47 ** 59
Challenger Candidate 53 52 54 50 22 49 53 50 52 50 53 52 53 51 ** 58 ** 56 ** 49

Table 8A.1.
Source: VCF0906,VCF0907,VCF1017,VCF0908,VCF0909 in the ANES Cumulative Data File dataset, weighted with VCF0009z
Link to see data by mode (2012, 2016)

Percent among demographic groups who responded:

Democratic Candidate
Republican Candidate
Both Dem. & Rep. Cands
Incumbent Candidate
Challenger Candidate

Note:

This uses the 0-100 thermometer scores.
The score for 'Both Dem. & Rep. Cands' is produced by adding the
Republican and Democratic Congressional candidate thermometer ratings
and then dividing the sum by 2.
All results are rounded to the nearest integer.

2012 data are for the combined (face-to-face and internet) sample.

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