1. Public Opinion and Polling Flashcards

Flashcards on Public Opinion and Polling

Public Opinion

The views held by private citizens that governments find it politically necessary to consider, especially around elections.

Empirical Natural Sciences

Fields like biology or psychology that rely on observable, measurable data; political behavior borrows methods from these to study citizens.

Surveys

Randomized questionnaires and are often considered the gold standard of measurement for capturing a representative snapshot of public opinion.

Representative Sample

A sample that accurately reflects the population, ensuring equal chances for all to be included.

Comprehensive Sample

A sample that includes all relevant subgroups of the population to ensure full coverage.

Biased Sample

A sample that doesn’t accurately represent the population, due to over- or under-representation of certain groups.

Behavioral Revolution

The shift in political science (1930s-1950s) focusing on studying political behavior using scientific methods, such as surveys.

Consistency

The tendency for individuals or groups to maintain the same beliefs or positions over time.

Predictability

The ability to predict other beliefs or actions based on a person’s initial stance or ideology.

Nonresponse Error

A problem in survey research when certain types of people are less likely to respond, leading to unrepresentative results.

Coverage Error

When parts of the population are excluded from the sampling frame (e.g., people without landlines), limiting representativeness.

Elites

Politically active individuals—such as politicians or intellectuals—who tend to have stable, consistent, and ideologically coherent attitudes.

Inconsistent

When a person’s survey responses change across time or conflict with each other, indicating lack of stable attitudes.

Unpredictable

When a person’s views on one issue don’t help forecast their views on other issues, suggesting a lack of ideological structure.

Nonattitudes

The concept that the general public may not have stable or coherent political beliefs, as shown by inconsistent survey responses.

Aggregate Partisanship

The distribution, or percentage, of the electorate that identifies with each of the political parties.

Aggregate Public Opinion

In a democracy, the sum of all individual opinions.

Ambivalence

A state of mind produced when particular issues evoke attitudes and beliefs that pull in opposite directions.

Attitude

An organized and consistent manner of thinking and feeling about people, groups, social issues, or any event in one’s environment.

Cognitive Shortcut

A mental device allowing citizens to make complex decisions based on a small amount of information; same as heuristic.

Conservative

In the US, a proponent of a political ideology that favors small or limited government, an unfettered free market, self-reliance, and traditional social norms.

Core Values

Moral beliefs held by citizens that underlie their attitudes toward political and other issues; stable and resistant to change.

Framing

Providing a context that affects the criteria citizens use to evaluate candidates, campaigns, and political issues.

Issue Publics

Groups of citizens who are more attentive to particular areas of public policy than average citizens because such groups have some special stake in the issues.

Liberal

In the US, a proponent of a political ideology that favors extensive government action to redress social and economic inequalities and tolerates social behaviors that conservatives view as deviant.

Measurement Error

Uncertainties in public opinion responses to polls that arise from the imperfect connection between the wording of survey questions and the terms in which people understand and think about political objects.

Opinion Leader

A citizen who is highly attentive to and involved in politics or some related area and to whom other citizens turn for political information and cues.

Political Socialization

The process by which citizens acquire their political beliefs and values.

Public Opinion

Those opinions held by private persons which governments find it prudent to heed.

Scientific Polling

Tool developed in the twentieth century for systematically investigating the opinions of ordinary people, based on random samples.