Chapter 6: The Politics of Public Opinion

Public opinion

collection of popular view on a person, event, or idea; individual opinions ≠ the whole public

Political socialization

process of learning a political system’s norms through others/institutions; starts young

Agents of political socialization

family, religious leaders, teachers, friends, coworkers, etc.

Political ideology

attitude/beliefs shaping views on political theory and policy; shifts slowly, usually only via major life events

Political polarization

ideologies becoming strictly tied to party alignment; makes compromises harder

Overt content

media clearly presenting one side

Covert content

media claiming neutrality while actually slanted

Guns vs. Butter debate

scarce budget forces a choice between military and social spending, pushing citizens into opposing camps

Political spectrum (left → right)

communism → socialism → liberalism → center → conservation → facism

Polling

asking a population questions, collecting/analyzing the data

Straw poll

informal poll, no rigorous methodology

Scientific poll steps

identify topic → identify population/sample → prepare/validate questions → contact respondents → collect enough usable responses → analyze → report

Random sample

equal chance of selection for everyone

Representative sample

mirrors the population’s demographics; bigger isn’t much better past this point

Leading question

worded to push a desire answer

Push poll

deliberately uses leading questions to spread biased campaign messaging

Margin of error

how far poll results may be from true opinion; lower = more predictive; a lead smaller than the margin is “too close to call”

Candidate A: 52

Candidate B: 48% ±5% margin

too close to call

Common polling problems

respondent knowledge gaps, social pressure, sample errors, wrong technology, manipulation, analysis error, high margin of error

The cellphone problem

numbers not tied to geography; younger people screen calls/prefer texting → harder to get a representative sample

Dewey defeats Truman (1948)

flawed polling led to a confidently wrong prediction; shows polling process error matter

Social desirability bias

live-interviewer polls showed opposition, computer/robo-polls showed support; people answer differently to a human vs. a machine

Factors shaping personal opinion

attitudes, beliefs, socialization, identity, life experience, geography, family/friends, education, resources, political elites, media

Horse-race coverage

constant coverage of candidate standings that exaggerates closeness and shapes voter behavior

Bandwagon effect

heavy coverage candidate causes them to be presumed the winner

Diffuse support

widespread belief the country/legal system is legitimate, even when approval of specific leaders dips

Branch approval

supreme court generally has the highest approval; presidential approval tends to start high and decline; congressional approval swings with its 2-year cycle, generally 20-50%

Congressional approval spike

jumped above 80% only after 9/11 (2001)