Chapter 4

political culture

political culture

The widely shared beliefs, values, and norms about how citizens relate to governments and to one another.

American core values

1. liberty/freedom

2. representative government/popular sovereignty

3. equality/equal opportunity

4. individualism

5. civic duty

political socialization

the process by which citizens acquire their political identity

contributing factors to political socialization

family, school, peers, media, religion, gender, social class, race, region, generation

Public Opinion

the distribution of individual preferences or evaluations of a given issue, candidate, or institution within a specific population.

opinion polls

interviews or surveys with samples of citizens that are used to estimate the feelings and beliefs of the entire population.

benchmark polls

find a “baseline” to then compare changes over time

tracking polls

surveys the same people over time to measure change

exit polls

surveys voters as they exit an election polling location

what is sampling?

selecting a group to represent a larger population

what is a random sample?

each person in the nation must have an equal probability of being selected

what are methods of finding your sample?

random sampling, stratified sampling, cluster sampling

what is sampling error?

difference between the results of different random samples taken

what can influence reliability of a poll?

sample size, who was in the sample, how the info was collected, question wording

political ideologies

A coherent set of beliefs about politics, public policy, and public purpose/Helps give meaning to political events, polices, and personalities

what party is liberal?

democrats

what party is conservative?

republicans

key liberal beliefs

reproductive rights, ease discrimination, gun control, defendant rights, tax the rich, spend on social programs, economic regulation, small military, big government

key conservative beliefs

pro-life, blind to race, gun rights, tougher laws, tradition, morals, religion, low taxes, more military, free economy,