News Items

June 11, 2008

To understand how citizens are communicating with their Members of Congress and what motivates them to do so, CMF partnered with Zogby International to conduct a nationwide survey of citizens to address their methods, reasons, and expectations with regard to their communications with Capitol Hill.

The resulting report, Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement, discusses the results of this research with over 10,000 citizens. It is the companion to the 2005 CMF report detailing congressional staff views of the increasing volumes of constituent mail.

Key findings from the report include:

• Almost half of adult Americans contacted Congress in the last five years to support, oppose or learn more about issues of interest to them.
• The majority of people surveyed do not believe Congress is interested in what they have to say, but they want Members' to keep them informed of their views and activities and of the policy issues being debated in Washington.
• Those who had contacted Congress tended to be more politically active in other ways than those who had not.
• The Internet has become the primary source for learning about and communicating with Congress.
• A majority of people who contacted Congress had been asked to do so by a third party - primarily through interest groups - and they place a high value on the role of advocacy campaigns in our democracy.

For a copy of the report go to: http://www.cmfweb.org/index.phpoption=com_content&task=view&id=64&Itemid=50