Civics | Penn Today

NBC News exit poll on Super Tuesday: Our methodology

Stephanie Perry and Elizabeth Schreier of the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies and Joelle Gross of the School of Arts & Sciences share their methodology for the NBC News Super Tuesday exit polls.

Ranked ‘avoid’: Ranked choice voting increases ballot errors

A study from Penn found that votes in ranked-choice races are nearly 10 times more likely to be rejected due to an improper mark than votes in non-ranked choice races.

Sandra Day O’Connor and the promise of civic education

Jonathan Zimmerman of the Graduate School of Education writes that teaching schoolchildren about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship might be the only way to heal our polarized society.

Red brick exterior of Fox-Fels Hall on Penn campus, a Georgian style mansion with green shutters and white trim.

What’s That? Fox-Fels Hall

‘The mansion’ is home to the Fels Institute of Government, Penn's graduate school for public policy and public management.

Signs for and against Ohio's Issue 1 are in a lawn covered in fall leaves in front of a church

Election night takeaways

Political scientist Marc Meredith and PORES director Stephanie Perry, who both worked on NBC’s Decision Desk on Election Night with more than a dozen Penn undergrads, share their thoughts on what Tuesday’s results could mean for 2024.

A centimeter-scale quadruped leverages curved-crease origami

A healthy turnout for an off-year, mayoral election

Penn Leads the Vote was on hand at the Houston Hall polling location, one of several polling places on campus where voters made their voices heard for the 2023 general election.

Jill Biden helps debut modern version of “Schoolhouse Rock”

A 2022 survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that less than half of U.S. adults could name all three branches of government.

The United States map with the preamble of the Constitution written across it.

Many don’t know key facts about U.S. Constitution, Annenberg civics study finds

Many Americans do not know what rights are protected under the First Amendment and a substantial number cannot name all three branches of government, according to the 2023 Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson on civics education and bridging political divides

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center discusses the importance of civics education as a tool to bridge political divides.

Journalism is a public good and should be publicly funded

Victor Pickard of the Annenberg School for Communication explains that the “positive” interpretation of the First Amendment focuses on government’s affirmative role to help guarantee the public access to a “diverse and informative media system.”

Filters