Studies of mass political attitudes and behavior before the 1950s
have been limited by a lack of high-quality, individual-level data.
Fortunately, data from public opinion polls conducted during the
late New Deal and World War II periods are available, although the
many difficulties of working with these data have left them largely
untouched for over 60 years. We compiled and produced readily usable
computer files for over 400 public opinion polls undertaken between
1936 and 1945 by the four major survey organizations active during
that period. We also developed a series of weights to ameliorate the
problems introduced by the quota-sampling procedures employed at the
time. The corrected data files and weights were released in May
2011. In this article, we briefly discuss the data and weighting
procedures and then present selected time series determined using
questions that were repeated on 10 or more surveys. The time series
provide considerable leverage for understanding the dynamics of
public opinion in one of the most volatile—and pivotal—eras in
American history.