Poli 100 Exam 2

Public Opinion

opinions held by private individuals that government finds important to listen to, held by voters and potential voters

Ex of how time and change impact political opinions

“What do you think about wearing a mask over your nose and

mouth?” – irrelevant in Feb. 2020, relevant soon after

Why Should we Care about Public Opinion?

Popular sovereignty – govt derives its authority from the people.

• Theorists suggest that a minimal criterion for democracy is that

government is responsive to the will of the people

How to respond to public opinion?

Two models: delegate or trustee model

Delegate Model

a representative should listen to constituents,

record their views, and follow constituents’ opinions

Trustee Model

use constituents’ opinions and consider and then formulate and acts upon own opinion.

Concern about citizen competence

• cant identify vice president

• no understanding of economics/budgeting

• cant identify policy positions

1960 American Voter also found

- response instability -- opinions change seemingly at random

from one point in time to another

• Lack of constraint -- Opinion on one policy is unrelated to

opinion on another policy

• people don’t understand terms like liberal or conservative

and are “innocent of ideology”

Nonattitudes

a lack of opinion on an issue but is expressed

via public opinion polls .

V.O. Key (1966) The Responsible Voter – “Voters are

not fools”

• Maybe we don’t need the details, just need to reward or punish leaders based on the job they’ve done while in office (retrospective voting)

• Evaluation of incumbent performance at the ballot box

  • Ask yourself, “Are you better off now than you were 4

  years ago?”

Bartels-retrospective voting counter point

voters don’t meet low bar of retrospective voting

-They can’t correctly assess national conditions

-- They punish/reward incumbents for things beyond

their control. Such as?

Shark attacks! (Election of 1916) Droughts! Football

wins by the local college weekend before election

• election outcomes are predicted by national economic condition

Rational Ignorance

Voting is costly and takes place under conditions of imperfect information

• People are therefore rationally ignorant – costs of being

informed outweigh the benefits

The Reasoning Voter

• Rationally free ride off the

  efforts of others, following the

  cues/heuristics given by people we

  consider informed and whose

  biases we know.

• Learn whose attitudes reliably

  match ours then look to see

  what they say/do

Examples of political cues people rely on?

1. party label

• 2. opinions of others, endorsements

• 3. Traits of the candidate and his/her supporters

• 4. competence, character

Bartels’ warning

Not all heuristics lead us to the “rational decision” and not all of them seem equally useful or valid\

ex: trump’s tweet on cinco de mayo

Where do political opinions/predispositions come from?

Socialization – the process of learning underlying beliefs and values (most consequential of these are party identification and ideology)

Agents of socialization –information from late teens to early twenties is particularly

important (18-26 are the formative years)

• 1. the family

• 2. social groups

• 3. schools, peers

• 4. religious beliefs, morality

• 5. material interests

6. media/ social media

• 7. regional influence

• 8. political events – especially what was going on during your

formative years

• 9. genetic predispositions? Individual determinants like biology,

personality, and genetics

Is the US a liberal or conservative country?

It Depends

• Symbolically Conservative

• Operationally Liberal

Distribution of Public Opinion Tends to Remain Stable over time

John Zallar: RAS Model

Most important model of public opinion

Receive – All the political information that people are exposed to

(that they receive)

• Accept – The subset of information that people keep (Accept) into

their brains

• Sample – The answer people give to a public opinion question

represents a sample from all the information in their brains.

Forms of Political participation

1.Voting

2.Writing letters to office holders or news media

3.Attending rallies and protests

4.Going to meetings for political organizations

5.Donating money

6.Wearing a button/bumper sticker

US is low on voting, despite high levels of education.

Why?

• 1) Costs of voting are higher here

• 2) Election system is different from most of the world

• 3) Parties are, as a consequence of the election system, weaker

Things that lower the voting costs

1. Education – provides knowledge

2. Income – provides flexibility

3. Age – provides experience

4. People who are part of social groups – they are easier to mobilize

Social Characteristics that make a smaller

difference in voter turnout

1. Women vote slightly more than men

2. Some racial/ethnic minorities vote less than whites – immigrant groups

a. Like with less age, less experience

b. Also potential language barriers

Who votes in low level elections or primaries

General rule: The smaller the electorate, the greater the upper-class bias

(wealthier, older)

Primaries may push candidates to the extremes of the ideological

distribution because primary voters are more extreme

• US turnout is middle of the pack, considerably lower than many

democracies

In US most federl elections are _________

• uncompetitive

  • Senate voting by a state now almost always follows how the state

  votes for President. And the majority states vote for the same party

  for president in every election

Presidential elections over the last 20+ years have been incredibly ________

• close

• in both electoral college and popular vote

the electoral college

• Each state gets electors = the number of congressional representatives

• allocated by a Winner Take All method (except maine and nebraska)

• Total of 538 electoral votes – need 270 (a majority) or House decides

Critiques of the EC

• Can lose pop vote but win election

• favor Republicans b/c of small state

  dominance

• election can be decided by house

• Lack of political equality

• Makes all but the battleground states irrelevant which depresses turnout

• Hurts broad-based third party development

Battlegrounds states- election usually comes down to them

• Pennsylvania

  • North Carolina

  • Georgia

  • Michigan

  • Wisconsin

  • Nevada

  • Arizona

  • Maybe 5 to 10% of voters total essentially decide elections

Arguments in favor of the Electoral College

• It is how it has always been.

• Protects geographic diversity – concern for “flyover” country

• Defends small state interests

• [But why do they deserve special protection?]

• Recounts would be a nightmare

Do Campaigns Matter?

two parts: choice and chance

• chance generally matters more

-fundementals matter more

Choices in elections

Choice – choices the media make as to who and what to cover and choices the candidate makes

• Candidate message, blunders, ads, electoral college strategy, where to visit,

“game changers.”

Chance (aka Fundamentals) in presidential

elections

Political scientists think chance (fundamentals – the circumstances

candidates find themselves in and over which they have little control)

matters far more than choice

• Chance = the hand you’re dealt

• Despite the chaos, preferences are remarkably stable in general

elections for president.

What are some fundamentals? (pres elections)

1. Social/group identities and partisanship

2. The health of the economy and war

3. Incumbency –

• 4. Duration of party control

• 5. Political climate – anti-Washington

• 6. coronavirus

Fundamentals below the presidential level:

Congress

Economic conditions also affect congressional outcomes – poor economy leads voters to punish representatives of the president’s party

• Incumbency advantage

• Midterm loss

Why midterm loss?

1. change in composition of the electorate – “surge and decline”;

• 2. people are angry at midterms, feel dissatisfied by president and party

When does a campaign matter?

At lower level races

• Includes primary elections

• For undecided voters who aren’t attached to a party

How do campaigns matter?

1. reinforce party loyalty – boost enthusiasm

• 2. persuasion –

• 3. priming –

• 4. mobilization

Gallup’s Gift to Democracy: How we measure

public opinion

• Opinion polls determine people’s collective will and improve the “efficiency of democracy”

• Polls “level the playing field”

• Elections and other methods are poor way of registering public opinion.

Random probability sample

Should conduct a simple random sample of the population you

are interested in -- each individual should have the same, non-

zero probability of being selected.

• Random probability samples require only 1200-1500

  respondents to get a fairly accurate picture of public opinion

Selection bias

-occurs when the sample differs in systematic: ways from the population and opinions you are interested in are correlated with these differences

Self-selection bias

ANY type of voluntary response survey suffers from potential bias due to

greater intensity of respondents

Nonresponse bias

the answers of those who choose to participate in a randomly selected survey differ from those who decline to participate

Question Wording

How a question is worded can elicit

dramatically different responses.

This illustrates something called

framing

Framing

situations in which different ways of posing, or “framing” a policy issue produce distinctly different public responses

• Gun control vs. gun violence, abortion, mask wearing, taxes

political parties

groups of autonomous people who band together to

make nominations and try to gain elected office and who have

some policy goals

• widely despised by founders; not mentioned in constiution

How do interest groups and parties differ

1) they nominate people for

office, 2) they take a much broader focus

Why parties?

• they are expedient!

• 1. institutions created by the Constitution make the payoffs good

• 2. Parties serve the needs of ambitious politicians who need a brand to help them get votes and to pass legislation

Positive functions of parties

1. Simplify voting

2. Recruit and screen candidates – nominate cands

3. Organize campaigns & mobilize the electorate

4. Coordinate action/get government moving

5. Articulate & aggregate interests

6. Organize coalitions

7. Provide for accountability

Three part conception of parties

1. party in government – office holders

• 2. party in the electorate – ordinary people

• 3. party as an organization – committee chairs, activists, and

volunteers

1st Component Party in government

parties organize government action; influence how people in office cooperate with each other

• Parties select leaders that control action in Congress

• Being in the majority party means everything these days

Causes of Polarization in Congress

1. Party Realignment

2. Primary Elections

3. Conditional Party Government

• Not much preference difference within the party

• Large preference difference between the parties

2nd Component – Party in the Electorate

1. Party identification is a psychological attachment to a party. Born into a party like you’re born into a religion.

• Transmitted via parents (socialization),

• serves as an informational shortcut

• Structures vote and public opinion

The Myth of the Independent Voter

When nudged, all but about 10-15 percent of Independents will

express closeness to a party

• “independent leaners” behave as closet partisans.

• very few voters are truly “up for grabs”; these voters (especially

in swing states) decide the presidential election.

3rd component- Party as an organization

• all the formal party leaders not actually in government

• National and state party officials,committee/fundraising chairs

• Also includes volunteers and activists

Tasks for party as organization

• Recruit candidates

• rules/platforms

• raise money

• mobilize voters -- provide voter data

• nominations

Why Not a Third (or More) Party?

• Concerns about wasting your vote or spoiling it (due to take all EC)

Duverger’s law

• countries with plurality electoral systems tend to have only two parties

• Strong tendency for

  • a) other parties not to

    stand for election under these conditions

  • b) people to vote strategically because they don’t want to “waste” their votes or “spoil” the election

Other reasons third

parties don’t do well

• Hard to get on the ballot – who makes the

  laws? State legislators. All of whom are

  Democrats or Republicans

• Hard to get funding – people won’t donate

  to candidates with little probability of

  getting elected

  • Don’t get taken seriously in the media,

  can’t get attention

  • All goes back to our electoral system

Third parties are _____

• rarely successful in winning office (unlike in other countries)

• Can be successful in putting issues on the agenda so don’t just

  measure by electoral success

  • If successful, ideas get absorbed in major party and third parties

  die off

Uncivil Agreement-Mason

Key reason for polarization is social identity

Increasingly, individuals’ partisanship is viewed as a social identity.

• Conversely, individuals’ other social identities increasingly line up with their

partisanship (Prius or Pickup book by Marc Hetherington).

• Unfortunately (but sometimes fortunately!), the formation of strongly-held,

group-based identities leads to strong emotional reactions

10-4: Democracy Hypocrisy

citizens support anti-democratic leaders and actions despite also supporting abstract

democratic principles

● Specifically: partisans are cool with it if it’s their side

● Phenomenon is thought to be tied to affective polarization

doom loop partisanship reading

• Main argument: Democracy hinges on the norms of fair play and accepting election outcomes

• “We can't have democracy without partisanship but when partisanship overwhelms everything, it becomes inceasingly difficult for democracy to function”

• Today: disappearing trust and electoral legitimacy, and growing inequalities

Mass media

Means of communication that are technologically

capable to most citizens

Traits of early newspapers

• expensive, slow

• partisan-controlled

• not independet

• advertised their candidates and attacked others

Rise of media independence - late 1800s

early 1900s

• production costs drop, tech

• charge less and more available for public

__________ replaces parties

• Adevertisers

• Businesses who wanted to advertise their products took the

  place of political parties in underwriting the costs of producing

  newspapers

• Golden age until 1920s

Limits to media power – early fears of hypodermic model in the 1940s were misguided. Why?

1. many Americans prefer entertainment to news and

• 2. many Americans are resistant to information in the media because of their partisan .

• -- They can either self-select media OR

• engage in motivated reasoning

Motivated reasoning

the (subconscious) bias toward a decision leans toward partisanship

Greater media effects in lower-level elections and those without partisan cue (such as presidential primaries).

How powerful are the media?

Not all-powerful!

• But also not “minimal effects”

• Instead -- subtle and indirect, but still important, effects

• 1. agenda setting

• 2. priming

• 3. framing

Agenda Setting

media’s ability to determine the importance the

public places on issues.

• “The press may not be successful in telling people what to think, but

they are stunningly successful in telling them what to think about.”

(Bernard Cohen 1972)

• Strong correlation between what news media choose to cover and

what people think is the “most important problem facing the nation”

Priming

by covering certain issues (agenda setting), those issues become more prominent in people’s minds.

• The more prominent/accessible an issue in people’s minds, the more heavily they weigh that issue when making evaluations.

priming examples

George H.W. Bush in 1992 -- the economy vs Gulf War.

• Hillary Clinton in 2016 -- her emails vs. her experience

• Donald Trump in 2020 – COVID crisis vs. economy the year before

• Joe Biden in 2024 – Age vs. legislative accomplishments

priming effect

the issues emphasized by the media become the same issues citizens use to evaluate political leaders

• Examples –1992 and the economy vs Gulf War. 2016 and

emails? Covid in 2020?

framing effect

• how the media presents or structures an issue, event, or topic, influencing how it is understood by the public.

• highlighting some aspects of an event or issue while ignoring others

more framing (wording) examples

• The issue of abortion – framed as “pro-choice” or “pro-life” –

  emphasizes different aspects of the same issue

  • The estate tax vs. the death tax

  • Gun violence vs. gun control

  • DOGE – cleaning up waste-fraud-and abuse that wastes

  taxpayer money or cutting programs that help ordinary people

Partisan media

1. employs one-sided frames

• 2. Devotes significantly less

time to stories negative to

their side

• 3. takes a derisive mocking

tone toward the other party

Does the media help polarize opinion?

Probably

• partisan cable news makes more extreme

• social media tend to start to dislike the other party

Smith 14-1: Social Media and Fake News

• trust in the “media” has been declining over time

• Due to social media: This has caused lower barriers to entry for content distribution—more

  susceptible to “fake news”

Fake news according to smith and why do they engage?

• intentionally and verifiably false, and could mislead readers

• Engage bc: Because they cannot distinguish the sources from traditional outlets

  • “Psychological utility”

• Fake news not as important as people think in 2016: low persuasive power and memorability

Smith 14-2 (Almost) everything in moderatiion

• Central question: are people in echo cambers?

• Mostt people do engage with a wide variety of news outlets.

  • Most people don’t consume a lot of news

• Only a relatively small percentage of people only listen to biased media sources