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Public Opinion

Public Opinion. Public Opinion. Often gaps between what govt. does and what people want Constitution not designed for what people want day to day, but rather long term Framers didn’t want or expect one public Factions would protect liberty!

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Public Opinion

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  1. Public Opinion

  2. Public Opinion • Often gaps between what govt. does and what people want • Constitution not designed for what people want day to day, but rather long term • Framers didn’t want or expect one public • Factions would protect liberty! Also, it’s not always easy to know what the public thinks.

  3. Public Opinion • What is public opinion? • How people think or feel about certain things • Poll = survey of public opinion • Business first started systematically measuring public opinion, and politics followed closely • People don’t spend a great deal of time thinking about politics =high levels of public ignorance • Despite this, Americans are pretty good at using cues; when given basic information the average citizen can use it fairly effectively

  4. Polling • How does polling work? • Need to ask reasonable, fairly worded questions • Have to ask people about things for which they have some basis to form an opinion • Random sampling necessary • Have to be aware of sampling error (difference b/t results of 2 surveys) • For populations over 500,000 pollsters need to make about 15,000 phone call to reach 1065 respondents, ensuring the poll has a sampling error of only +/- 3% -increasingly difficult to get (why?) • Reliability harmed by low response rates

  5. The Chicago Daily Tribune predicted Truman’s defeat based on a Gallup poll; the poll was conducted about a week before the election, and missed a shift by undecided voters toward Truman.

  6. Polling • How do opinions differ? • OPINION SALIENCY: some people care more about certain issues than other people do • OPINION STABILITY: the steadiness or volatility of opinion on an issue • OPINION-POLICY CONGRUENCE: the level of correspondence between government actions and majority sentiment on an issue

  7. Political Socialization • Political socialization influences opinion -children tend to share parents opinion -variances associated with race, class, gender, religion, etc. -BUT people with similarities do not necessarily think or vote the same way • Mass and elite opinions differ -Elites tend to know more about politics -tend to be more consistent in their opinions

  8. Did you know…. • That 30% of people asked to participate in opinion polls refuse? • That public opinion pollsters typically measure national sentiment among the roughly 200 million adult Americans by interviewing only about 1500 people? • That a straw poll conducted by patrons of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris has an almost unbroken record of predicting the outcome of U.S. presidential elections? • That in its “Cess Poll,” an Iowa radio station assesses voters’ preferences for presidential primary candidates by reading a candidate’s name over the air, asking supporters of that candidate to flush their toilets, and measuring the resulting drop in water pressure?

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