Race and gender are changing the political landscape of the United States, according to an extensive new survey. A team of political scientists from UC Santa Barbara, the University of New Mexico, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Notre Dame recently announced results from the most comprehensive multiracial, multi-office national survey to date.

The Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project surveyed more than 1,300 black, Latino, Asian, and American Indian elected officials at state and local levels.

Principal investigators include Pei-te Lien, UCSB professor of political science; Christine Marie Sierra, professor of political science at the University of New Mexico; Carol Hardy-Fanta, director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston; and Dianne M. Pinderhughes, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.

They constructed a national database of some 10,000 public officials in federal and selected state and local office. Survey respondents from this database included 1,354 officials, slightly more than half of whom were African American, over one-third Latino/a, 7 percent Asian American, and 2 percent American Indian. Seventy-two percent of those public officials who were successfully contacted agreed to participate in the survey.

Among other topics, respondents discussed their positions on issues such as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education policy, abortion rights, and immigration. Other findings are available on the Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project Web site <www.gmcl.org>.

Findings include the following:

Women elected officials of color follow a national trend—61 percent have college degrees compared to 56 percent of men.

More than four times as many teachers who are elected officials strongly oppose the No Child Left Behind Act than those who strongly favor it. The survey also revealed strong opposition to NCLB among school board members (59 percent). The strongest opposition to the act is among state legislators of color.

Asian women officials at 93 percent showed the strongest support for the right to an abortion, followed by black women officials at 86 percent.

More women, 63 percent, than men, 54 percent, agreed with the statement, “By law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a private decision to be made with her physician.”