Public Opinion and Values

de Tocqueville, Page and Shapiro, Pickus, Bullock and Huber, Coppock

What evidence does de Tocqueville say points to an American culture of equality?

1. Poverty and exile meant early settlers had equal social status

2. Law of equal partition of property prevented the formation of aristocracy

3. Almost everyone learned basic law, history, and literacy

4. Direct democracy through town meetings, widespread suffrage, and trial by jury

How does de Tocqueville describe the value differences that shaped the Northern vs. Southern colonies?

North was settled by educated, middle-class families with intellectual and moral motivations, naturally aligning with democratic principles. Hard work was honorable, fostering civic cooperation and prosperity.

South was settled by fortune-seekers and criminals exiled to the colonies, lacking intellect and morals. The introduction of slavery associated work with servitude, creating a lazy and prideful aristocratic culture.

What evidence does de Tocqueville use to illustrate the American values of freedom of speech and of religion?

Freedom of religion: There is a separation of church and state (clergy doesn’t hold public offices), and churches promote civil freedom and equality under God. You could be free to practice different versions of Christianity.

Freedom of speech: There are no government restrictions on printing or public debate, and elected officials cater to majority opinion rather than defy it

How does de Tocqueville say the value of democracy is embedded into America?

Local self-governance in New England, freedom of speech and religion give people sovereignty, citizens willingly support laws and public order because they recognize it protects their personal property and liberty

How do Page and Shapiro respond to the anxiety that ordinary citizens can’t govern effectively because individual voters are uninformed and volatile?

They distinguish individual opinion from collective opinion, arguing that if an individual’s observed response is composed of their "true" underlying preference plus random error, averaging millions of responses across the electorate isolates the true central tendency of the society, leaving a collective opinion that responds sensibly to changing events and information.

What three things do Page and Shapiro say define rational collective policy preferences?

1. Grounded in fundamental values (ex: peace, fairness)

2. Are nuanced between policies rather than lumping policies together

3. React predictably and sensibly when new facts emerge or circumstances change

What was Page and Shapiro’s empirical test?

They analyzed over 50 years of identical survey questions to investigate whether aggregate opinion fluctuates wildly.

What did Page and Shapiro find about how stable collective opinion is?

1. Over months to a few years, the vast majority of policy preferences show no significant movement

2. Collective opinion changes gradually over decades, such as rising support for civil rights

3. Rapid, sharp reversals almost always trace back to major external shocks like military invasions and economic recessions

What did Page and Shapiro find that the public thinks of domestic policy?

They want a mixed economy with a social safety net, supporting government funding for healthcare, education, environmental protection, and infrastructure, balanced against skepticism of high taxation and overreaching bureaucracy.

What did Page and Shapiro find that the public thinks of foreign policy?

It supports international engagement and defense spending when clear external threats exist, but is wary of military interventions that drag on with high domestic costs and few clear objectives.

What does Page and Shapiro blame as the culprit of failing democratic policy?

Elite manipulation. Political leaders and media outlets consistently distort facts and conceal data. Because collective rationality is only as sound as the information it feeds on, it is typically the fault of information flow when collective opinion behaves unpredictably.

What are the two conflicting arguments for what criteria makes a “true American” in Pickus?

1. National identity is primarily defined by adherence to shared political rules: democracy, equal opportunity, and individual liberty

Evidence: Survey responses across parties overwhelmingly agree that being American requires respecting these values

2. Public sentiment relies on race, English-language dominance, and Anglo-Protestant cultural conformity to determine who is “truly American”

Evidence: Stark partisan, generational, and racial polarization in public opinion data about whether someone must speak English or share Christian traditions

In Pickus, what did Hamilton and Jefferson warn about a fractured public, and how does modern political psychology support them?

Jefferson said newcomers without democratic ideals would make the public “incoherent and distracted” and Hamilton said the stability of the republic requires “the energy of a common national sentiment.” When citizens perceive their community as fragmented, generalized trust, civic participation, and support for redistributive policies tend to drop.

What does Perea say in Pickus about how elites have instilled out-group hostility as a political tactic?

Elites have historically framed immigrant language and cultural retention as a threat to national unity (ex: German language bans during WWI and Cold War loyalty tests), leading public opinion to favor restrictive border policies.

According to Pickus, how do some politicians use border control rhetoric to deflect broader public scrutiny?

• Blaming immigrants for strains on economy allows elites to avoid scrutiny over fiscal decisions, underfunding of public services, tax cuts for billionaires, and private behavior

• Divides working class along ethnic and racial lines, preventing labor unions and demands for higher wages

According to Pickus, how do some politicians use border control rhetoric to preserve state authority?

• By controlling its territory and who enters it, the state keeps its perceived legitimacy among citizens

• If access to finite public goods like unemployment insurance and subsidized education is unlimited, public willingness to pay taxes to fund those programs tends to decline

In Pickus, how do some politicians benefit from high immigration and try to push for it?

• Immigrants provide essential labor, keeping costs low and preventing worker shortages

• Immigration offsets declining birth rates and replenishes the tax base

• Political elites who expect immigrants and their descendants to vote for their party have an incentive to let them in

What core puzzle does Huber try to solve in his article?

Democrats and Republicans consistently offer different statements about objective, verifiable facts.

What two competing views in Huber’s article try to explain why partisans respond differently about facts?

1. Partisanship acts as a screen during information gathering and processing, and respondents genuinely believe what they say. Thus, voters are misinformed and unable to objectively judge incumbent performance.

2. Answering a survey provides a low-cost chance for partisans to “cheer” for their team, as guessing has no penalty, and survey responses are not fully sincere. People also simply may not know the answer and default to party loyalty.

What were Huber’s experiments?

One experiment was conducted giving people monetary incentives for correct answers, which saw a 60% decrease in partisan gap, and another giving people monetary incentives for choosing “don’t know,” resulting in an 80% decrease in partisan gap.

What is the key takeaway from Huber’s experiments?

The apparent gap in factual beliefs between Democrats and Republicans is largely due to expressive responding, or party cheerleading, rather than separate realities. Most importantly, people often recognize their own factual ignorance.

How might Huber’s findings extend to non-factual questions or surveys about political attitude?

Reported attitudes might overstate true polarization because answering inaccurately has a low penalty and high expressive utility. Increases in polarization over time (ex: during campaigns) may reflect increased salience of cheerleading rather than shifts in actual beliefs.

What is the “Shy Trump Supporter” hypothesis?

Pre-election polls underestimated Trump’s support in 2016 because voters were embarrassed to admit backing him due to his rhetoric on race and gender. ie., social desirability effect

What is a list experiment?

One group gets a list of statements, and another group gets an identical list with one additional sensitive statement.

Participants only report the number of statements they agree with, eliminating social desirability effect.

Subtracting the difference between the two groups gives us the proportion of people who agree with the sensitive statement.

How did researchers use a list experiment to disprove the shy Trump supporter hypothesis?

They directly asked people whether they support Trump and did a list experiment with the sensitive statement being whether they support Trump, and found no statistically significant difference in Trump support between conditions.

What is the key takeaway from the Shy Trump Supporter study?

Pollsters need to focus on improving methodological flaws instead of whether or not respondents are lying. These include assuming which voters will turnout on election day, demographic representation of the electorate, and raw disclosure of data.

How might turnout models, weighting, and transparency of polls negatively affect election forecasting?

A turnout model assesses the likelihood that someone votes, and if it miscalculates, it will misrepresent what votes are actually cast.

Pollsters weight sample responses up or down to reflect the demographic breakdown of the electorate. Pollsters who don’t weight certain responses enough or too much over or underestimate support.

Pollsters’ subjective beliefs and assumptions are often reported instead of raw responses and exact modeling steps. When forecasters aggregate polls without knowing these, errors compound.