Public Opinion

Welch ch. 4

 Objectives

•    What is Public Opinion?

•    Measuring Public Opinion

•    Political Knowledge

•    Public Opinion

 What is Public Opinion?

•    Politicians make extensive use of polls

•   Pandering to the public?

•   Responsiveness?

 What is Public Opinion?

•    Public opinion - the collection of individual opinions towards issues or objects of general interest

•    Political socialization - process of learning opinions about issues and objects

•    Agents of political socialization - sources of information for political socialization

 Measuring Public Opinion

•     Straw polls

•    "Literary Digest"

Measuring Public Opinion

•    Scientific Surveys

•   When done properly,scientific polls are fairly accurate

•   Mathematical principles of probability

Measuring Public Opinion

•     Scientific Surveys

•    Probability sampling - every member of a population has an equal probability of being selected in a sample

•    Sample size - if the sample is large enough (at least 500), then there is a good probability that the sample is representative

•    There is always a chance that a sample will not be representative

Measuring Public Opinion

•     Scientific Surveys

•    The  range of the survey findings is the margin of error

•    A sample of 1000 will have a margin of error (sampling error) of about+-3%

•    Thus, if 60 % approve of the job the president is doing, the percentage could be as high as 63% and as low as 57%.

Measuring Public Opinion

•     Scientific Surveys

•    Implications

•   Findings are statistically insignificant if they are not outside of the margin of error and statistically significant if they are outside.

Measuring Public Opinion

•     Scientific Surveys

•    Implications

•   Results are a "snapshot"

•   Some may try to manipulate polls ("You Are There"&p. 88)

Political Knowledge

•     How much does the public know about government and politics?

•    Vice president

•    Speaker of the House

•    U.S. Representative

•    U.S. Senators

•    Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Political Knowledge

•     People have other concerns

•     Is this a problem for democracy?

 Public Opinion

•     Ideology - highly organized and coherent set of opinions

•     Liberalism - government has a responsibility to assist individuals, groups,and communities that are economically disadvantaged

 Public Opinion

•     Liberalism

•    Government assistance for the poor, working and middle class

•    Supports government policies to expand health care, improve education

•    Supportive of abortion rights, against death penalty

 Public Opinion

•     Conservatism - individuals are responsible for their own well-being. Government does not have a responsibility to assist individuals, groups,and communities that are economically disadvantaged

•    Marketplace economics over government in addressing public policies (healthcare, education)

•    Moralistic - opposed to abortion rights, favor prayer in schools

•    Favor death penalty

•    Restrictions on organized labor

Public Opinion

•     How ideological are Americans?

•     Most Americans are not very ideological

•     Most political elites are more ideological than the mass public

 Objectives

•     What is Public Opinion?

•     Measuring Public Opinion

•     Political Knowledge

•     Public Opinion