Measuring Public Opinion.

Different types of polls:

Benchmark Polls

• Used by a campaign before declaring candidacy.

• Find out what the public thinks about the campaign.

• Whether or not the candidates should run for office.

Tracking Polls

• Taken over time to track an issue or see the support of a candidate during the period.

Entrance and Exit polls

• Outside polling places on election day to predict election results.

Presidential Approval Rating

• Measures what people think of the president’s job performance.

• Ratings fluctuate during a presidential administration, and different factors can cause them to increase or decrease.

  • Increase: Good Economy, Foreign Crisis (Handled well)

  • Decrease: War handled badly

Issues with polls:

• Use of loaded language

  • Public opinion can be significantly influenced by the framing of questions and the emotional tone of the media coverage.

• Order and phrasing of the question

• Sampling bias:

  • The selection of participants can lead to unrepresentative results if certain demographics are over or underrepresented.

• Framing:

  • Posing questions in such a way that a certain perspective is emphasized

• Push Polling:

  • Provide negative information about the opponent and then take a poll.

  • Forces people towards a certain outcome.

• Opinion Saliency:

  • Caring or not caring issues

Scientific Polling

• Random Sampling:

  • Every person has the same chance of getting selected.

• Stratified Sampling:

  • Different demographics are represented correctly in the sample.

• Representative Sampling:

  • Everybody should be reflected in the poll.

  • This helps to ensure that the results accurately represent the views of the entire population.

Bradley Effect

• A phenomenon where voters provide false or misleading information about their voting intentions due to social desirability bias, particularly in elections involving candidates from minority groups.