Public Opinion + Elections Lecture Flashcards

What’s public opinion?

Attitudes that people have in their heads about leaders, institutions, and events

• Exists on individual and aggregate levels

What’s the equation of public opinion?

-Preferences plus beliefs plus choices equal opinion

-Preferences and beliefs come from the individual, while choices come from the person asking a particular question

How can the variance in choices affect how people respond?

When choices are more binary, things are more black and white

ex) -If given a neutral option, you can distinguish between those with a Republican politican preference who’d choose approve and those who’d likely choose disapprove since they’re sort of in the middle

What are individual opinions products of?

• personality, social characteristics, and interests

• Further shaped by institutional, political, governmental forces

• Self interest, values, social groups

What’s socialization?

 Basically assimilating to community preferences and norms through social interaction. This can be through family, education, work, social groups, etc

Most Americans share common opinions on what?

• most issues like equality of opportunity

-This can change depending on how questions are asked and where, and most Americans tend to have unstable issue preferences regarding policy issues

Why do most Americans have low levels of political info?

• Lack of interest

• Few devote time/attention/energy to understand issues

• Costs of gathering info can be high, benefits may be low

What’s the most common use of info shortcuts/heuristics?

Party identification, a perceptual screen we use to view politics (like ideology). An example is at ballot boxes where people see Democrat/Republican next to candidates’ names and choose based on that.

What’s ideology?

• a comprehensive way of understanding political/cultural situations

• A set of assumptions about the way the world and society work

What’s the liberal side focused on?

Supporting political and social reform from the govt, the role of government including economic intervention, and more vigorous efforts on behalf of marginalized groups

What’s the conservative side focused on?

 Supporting the social and economic status quo, is suspicious of policies which introduce new political/economic arrangements, and believes that a large powerful gov’t poses a threat to citizens’ freedoms

What are identity politics?

• Polarization of groups based on their social identities, structuring their ability to make claims on resources/opportunities

• Contestation over the rules of membership, content, and valuation or treatment of social categories

• Belief in relevance of identity to politics

Identity is both what?

Psychological and sociological

What are predictors of voter behavior?

• Race and identity politics

• Gender (voting) gap

What’s the gender gap?

• Pattern of voting reflecting differences between men and women

• Women more often vote Democratic, men are more often to vote Republican

What groups attempt to shape public opinion?

• Gov’t officials

• Interest groups

• The media

-All of these groups compete internally

How do gov’t officials try to shape public opinion?

• Through decrees, they are motivated by reelection, so when people vote, they can keep their jobs.

• An example is presidents going public, an indirect lobbying strategy that presidents use by pressuring the public to pressure Congress

How do interest groups try to shape public opinion?

• Tend to try to control paid media space, buying ads to influence the public.

• Groups with more money, institutional support, and skill do better in influencing public opinion generally (an example is attack ads, making the opposing candidate look bad) this is more popular with SuperPACs.

How do Americans learn about politics through the media?

This includes active learning (seeking out the news) and passive learning (the entertainment being watched includes political info)

What are methods of influence through the media?

• Agenda setting (raising the salience of issues, bringing particular problems to the floor)

• Priming (pre-step before the actual message, where the interest group/media prepares the media to take a particular side on an event/the mood of attack ads)

• Framing (when the actor influences how events/issues are interpreted)

How does public opinion influence politics?

• Electoral accountability

• Building coalitions

• Input in rule making and court cases

What’s a way to measure public opinion?

Polling, a scientific instrument for measuring attitudes, emerged in the 30s

What’s selection bias?

An error in which the sample isn’t representative of the population

How do institutions provide authority?

Through delegation

How does the PA problem persist when it comes to elections?

• Voters (the principals) use elections to select officials (the agents) to act on their behalf

What are the two issues with the PA problem in elections?

• Adverse Selection- How do we know we chose competent, good people?

• Moral Hazard- How do we know that agents are working in our interests?

What are the solutions to adverse selection?

• Economic performance, along with finding out what the state of the economy is under that person

• Unemployment rate, purchasing power parity, and general economic indicators can be used to solve adverse selection

• Electoral competition (may increase information, reducing these problems)

Who can vote in elections?

• Founding: White men, 20+ years; many states required property ownership

• Now: Universal suffrage, 18+ years

How many vote in presidential and midterm elections?

• Approximately 60% vote in presidential elections

• Approximately 45% vote in midterm elections

What does measuring turnout describe?

•  The number of voters over the eligible population. This can be voting in any format

Who can’t vote?

Children, non-citizens, people in prison, and ex-felons in many states

What are some other voting reqs?

• Citizens must register to vote, and registration laws vary by state

Some more info about voting

-As income increases, voter registration increases, more educated people are more likely to register to vote, and Hispanic/Latino people are less likely to vote than white people

-Asians and Latinos are more likely to have language barriers, which may explain why they register to vote less (Asians at 64.5 and Latinos at 61.1)

What are the two huge ballot systems?

The Secret Ballot and Australian Ballot

Secret Ballot

• Voters’ choices are secret

• Unless you reveal it to someone else, only you know which candidate you cast your ballot for

• The goal is to prevent vote buying and intimidation

Australian Ballot

• Lists the names for all candidates for all offices

• Replaces party ballots that only listed the candidates from a single party

• Voters select a candidate from the list

• Introduced in 1880

How did most people vote in 2020?

-Many people voted by absentee or mail-in ballots in 2020

What are primary elections administered by?

Political parties

Primary elections

The contest is within members of the same party, determining who nominees will be

General elections

General election is after the nominees are elected

Closed primaries

Closed primary means you already have to be registered

Open primaries

Open primary means you can vote in whichever primary you want

Caucus

Refers to the process by which nominees are chosen; you show up at a public place in the early evening, and reps from different campaigns are there. People walk to the candidate they prefer; there’s a count, and viable candidates advance to the next round; non-viable ones drop out.

Why are caucuses very uncommon now?

• TX used to use caucuses for party nominations, but now it’s very uncommon bc it’s time-consuming, has low turnout, and is somewhat biased.

• Mostly for choosing the primary candidates in presidential elections now

What’s more popular than caucuses?

-Elections are more popular, with a distinction between open and closed.

What kind of districts do legislative elections use?

Single member districts

What are some characteristics of single member districts?

• A geographic area that elects a single representative

• Overlapping congressional, state house, and state senate districts

• Districts within the state have approx. equal populations

Plurality rule

• Constant two-party system, single member districts tend to produce two-party systems (Duverger’s law)

• Highest vote getter wins

More info about single member districts

• Magnify the power of the winning groups

• Makes it difficult for small parties and minority groups to get legislative seats

• Some states use majority rule or ranked-choice voting

What does majority rule require?

Over 50% threshold

Ranked-choice voting

Rather than choosing one candidate and ranking your ordered preferences, this can disincentivize voting for the third-party votes since they vote for whatever is closest to their view and not exactly what they’re aligned with

Is voting fraud common?

No, very rare

How is election manipulation prevalent?

• Redistricting

• Requiring different rules for registration

• Attempting to bias the media

• Fake news spread by foreign gov’ts

What drives the enforcement of more voting reqs like photo ID laws?

Partisanship, to secure elections, and they affect marginalized groups the most