Celinda Lake, Political Analyst

Celinda Lake is a leading analyst of how Americans, especially women, think about government and politics. She heads the firm of Lake, Snell, and Perry Associates, providing in-depth reality checks while polling for Democrats. How did she come to this?

"I was a teenage Republican in a family that debated politics at the dinner table -- Reagan vs. Rockefeller. My father was a judge of elections. In high school in Seattle I was active in student government and a winning debater. When the boys and girls were put on the same team, I was told that it would be wrong to beat a boy in competition. Then I was told not to run for President of the Student Council, that a girl should run for Secretary. That did it. I decided to go to a woman's college.

"I went to Smith College in Massachusetts as a supporter of the Vietnam War and encountered the antiwar protest and a wide open debate among women on every issue. I organized the very, very small Students for Nixon. When I went to Europe for my junior year to study International Relations, I met expatriates from the U.S., and I learned different points of view and began to compare political behavior. By the time I came home I knew I was a Democrat, and so I went to graduate school to study polling as a way to understand how and why people participate - or don't participate - in politics."

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