Public Opinion in the American Political System
- # Public Opinion in a Democracy
- [[Public opinion]] refers to the preferences of the general public on political matters
- aggregate sum of opinions--"majority rule"
- The [[U.S. Constitution]] established political institutions designed to mitigate the rapid shifts in public opinion and instead develop a deliberative policymaking system based on [[Checks and Balances]] and [[Separation of powers]]
- Condorcet's jury theorem argues that the more votes are more likely to have "correct" results than fewer votes
- Politicians vary in terms of how much time and effort they devote to analyzing these polls
- [[Delegate Model]]-style representatives cater to public opinion even when the aggregate opinions of their constituents deviate from their own
- [[Trustee Model]]-style representatives pursue their own convictions and vote in accordance with their conscience, which may or may not align with the views of whom they represent
- A [[representative democracy]] should approximate what the nation as a whole would choose to consider a given matter
- # Public Opinion and Collective Dilemmas
- When politicians win their campaigns and begin serving in government, they are responsible for translating the interests of their districts into public policies
- they are tasked with assessing the opinions of all constituents who reside in their districts
- may result in [[principal-agent]] problems
- the American public is largely uninformed on political matters which creates confusion for the politicians elected to represent the public’s interests
- political elites are serving as agents of multiple principals who are not able to communicate their opinions in a clear and concise manner
- # Measuring Public Opinion
- Measurements of public opinion have improved over time, which have eased the burden on political elites who care to learn the preferences of the masses.
- ## Polling
- ### Evolution
- Early efforts to study public opinion relied on metrics from news magazines and other outlets that polled their readers, viewers, and listeners, by conducting informal [[straw polls]] that demonstrated the opinions of some group of people that is unrepresentative of the general public
- While unrepresentative, some straw polls accurately predicted election outcomes
- Example: the [[Literary Digest]], accurately predicted election outcomes until the 1936 election between incumbent [[President Franklin Delano Roosevelt]] and his opponent, [[Alfred Landon]]
- The magazine collected responses from its readers during the [[Great Depression]]. Importantly, automobile owners subscribed to this magazine, and during the Great Depression, many families struggled to keep food on the table, much less make premium car payments. Thus, the sample of respondents to this straw poll were particularly unrepresentative of the general public
- This inaccuracy inspired improvements to public opinion measurement
- ### Improvements
- Since the 1940s, public opinion polls have relied on random probability samples in order to capture a subset of public opinion that mirrors the preference of the general public
- Scholars regard surveys as an overall effective method to measuring public opinion and survey methodology has become more sophisticated over time
- pollsters collect opinions from a random subset of the population and aim to collect samples that mirror the demographic profile of the population
- In the past, survey response collection relied on [[random digit dialing]], in which a polling firm would randomly dial about 2,000 people in the country to collect information
- because subsets of the population did not have access to a landline, the samples did not represent the general population as lower income Americans were systematically excluded
- Currently, pollsters rely on the internet to reach the American public
- some groups still are without access, which threatens the validity of a study’s findings
- When samples do not reflect the population, they are biased, as the results from the poll do not convey accurately the views of the general population
- ### Alternatives
- Alternatives to surveys exist and may prove more appropriate based on context
- Interviews, focus groups, and opportunities to observe casual conversations provide more in-depth opportunities for scholars to learn about the preferences of the general public
- respondents can deliberate extensively about the questions at hand, so researchers can retrieve more nuanced information about their views
- Newer methods designed to improve our understanding of public opinion include:
- conducting images of respondents’ brains via MRIs
- collecting genetic information about respondents
- conducting experiments to observe how people respond to various stimuli in a political environment
- ## Survey
- help to gauge where majority support lies and how intensely citizens across the spectrum hold their views
- ### Survey Anatomy
- Variables are the exclusive options that capture a range of opinions on an issue
-
- # [[Political Socialization]]
- how members of the public learn and develop political opinions over time
- [[agents of socialization]] are the various factors that shape how individuals process their surroundings and respond to political information.
- Schools serve as important socialization agents, especially during a child’s early education
- issues of potentially broad concern but that have yet to reach the public arena are considered latent
- ## [[Partisanship]]
- one of the most important political socialization trends is [[political party]] affiliation or [[Partisanship]]
- party identity serves as the best predictor of vote choice
- parents serve as the most influential agent of socialization in shaping their children’s partisanship-- two-thirds of adults report belonging to the same political party their parents support
- ## [[Ideology]]
- competing definitions of political ideology exist, but is generally accepted to be defined as a connection of interrelated preferences about how the political world “should look” in an ideal sense
- according to Philip Converse (1964) [[ideological constraint]] is the persistence of issue positions over time (i.e. a coherent set of political beliefs regarding various types of political issues)
- while most people remain stable partisans over time, the majority of individuals in the American political system possess little understanding of political ideology.
- observed that people supported liberal issue positions in one wave of the survey, but those same people endorsed conservative positions on the same issues in a successive wave of the survey
- Linked closely to political ideology are the topics of:
- [[political knowledge]]
- the average political knowledge of Americans is low, but the effect of this level of knowledge is debatable
- some scholars argue that the trend indicates that the public is not capable of processing more complex policy debates.
- [[party cues]]
- due to the increase of political polarization, party cues (e.g. the “D” or “R” next to a candidate’s name) have become a crutch for less-informed voters.
- party cues allow voters to select candidates from their preferred party without spending time and devoting cognitive effort to learning the intricacies associated with each candidate and their policy platforms
- provide a helpful political heuristic, or cognitive shortcut, that help voters navigate the political environment despite their lack of formal political knowledge.
- [[group interests]]
- Individuals belong to social groups based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and other demographic factors; these groups may also provide helpful information to voters as they navigate the political environment
- Converse (1964) argued that citizens process political information based on the groups to which they belong rather than a constrained political belief system or ideology
- voters may express higher levels of knowledge related to issues that directly affect their groups.
- # Elite Manipulation of Public Opinion
- Political elites in office and in the media use the public’s lack of political knowledge to their advantage.
- ## [[Framing]]
- Complex political issues contain multiple dimensions that may not appear in discourse surrounding these concerns, Political elites have the power to frame the conversations around an issue by highlighting a particular dimension of the issue at the expense of others in order to move public opinion in a particular direction
- ## [[Priming]]
- the ability of elites to make a certain consideration about an issue accessible in one’s short-term memory
- allows political elites to manipulate the considerations at the forefront of the public’s mind during critical moments in American politics
- the order in which the public learns political information affects the opinions they develop about factors
- Voters with a moderate awareness of politics are most susceptible to elite manipulation attempts, as they do consume political news, but they do not have preexisting considerations in their minds to refute the considerations primed by political elites
- The public is less polarized than Congress
- this governmental polarization may be caused by:
- nature of debate and the choices put before congress
- institutional factors
- the election process
- # Individual opinion
- Dependent upon three factors:
- ## Preferences
- generally rooted in self-interest-- wants and values
- characterized by intensity-- some people want things more than others
- Economic self-interest is the most salient\
- personal philosophies about morality, justice, and ethics
- reflect established social norms
- Near-universal American values:
- democracy
- equal opportunity
- the government is best that governs least
- social groups
- socialization-- the process through which groups affect our preferences and perspectives
- ## Beliefs
- what people know, how they understand the world and the consequences of their actions
- #### Ideology
- ## Choices
- force people to make tradeoffs between one value or interest with another