What is public opinion?

1
What is public opinion?

• The aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs
  about certain issues or officials.
• They are considered the most reliable indicator
  of what the public is thinking.

2
Is Public Opinion Stable?

• Depending on the issue, public opinion is more or
  less stable.
• In the realm of foreign policy, public opinion is
  less stable, especially on issues like war.
• On domestic issues, public opinion is more
  stable, especially on social issues like abortion.

3
Why Is It Important to Poll the Public?

• In a democracy, public opinion is part of the
  input side of the governmental process.
• Inputs are the way in which citizens in a
  democracy tell their elected officials what they
  want from government. They include
• Voting
• Campaigning
• Contacting Elected Officials
• Protests

4
Does Public Opinion Matter?

• Presidents are often the subject of public
  opinion polls.
• Presidents with higher degrees of public support
  as measured by public opinion polls are able to
  use that support to leverage Congress to act in
  support of their agendas.
• Example President George W. Bush
• Post 9-11 approval high Passage of USA PATRIOT
  ACT
• Post Katrina approval low Defeat of Immigration
  Reform Act

5
What is Most Commonly Measured with Public
Opinion Polls?

• Efficacy
• The extent to which people believe their actions
  affect the course of government
• Political Trust
• The extent to which people believe the government
  acts in their best interests
• Note that polls have show that both have been
  declining over the past 50 years, but patriotism
  has not decline.

6
The Use of Polls Historically

• Scientific public opinion polls are a modern
  invention.
• The use of unscientific polls included
• Elite Polls
• Measuring the opinion of those members of society
  in elite classes only
• Straw Polls
• Ballot polls by nineteenth-century newspapers to
  predict the outcome of elections.

7
Scientific Polls

• Method of polling that provides a fairly precise
  reading of public opinion by using random
  sampling.
• Random Sample Poll
• Method of selection that gives everyone who might
  be selected to participate in a poll an equal
  chance to be included.
• Most popular is the Gallup Poll

8
How Do Scientific Polls Work?

• Scientific polls rely on a representative sample
  of the group being polled.
• Each person in the group has the same chance of
  being selected.
• Most nation-wide scientific polls include a
  minimum of 1000 people

9
How Are Samples Collected?

• There are a variety of methods, including
• In person interviews
• Weaknesses
• Time-consuming
• Expensive
• Difficult to be truly random
• Random dial telephone calls
• Weaknesses
• Some people dont have phones
• Hard to get a read on what people are thinking
  over the phone
• Cell phones

10
Samples Continued

• Call-in polls
• Weaknesses
• Not random
• Only those people who see the number can call
• Those who feel strongly about the poll are most
  likely to reply
• Internet polls
• Weaknesses
• Not random
• Only those people who visit the site will take
  the poll
• Those who feel strongly about the poll are most
  likely to reply

11
Samples Continued

• Letter polls
• Weaknesses
• Low response rate
• Those who feel strongly about the poll are most
  likely to reply

12
Which Type of Sample is the Most Reliable?

• Random-dial telephone calls
• Truly random
• Instant response
• Best return rate

13
Presidential Election Polls

• Tracking Polls
• Polls that seek to gauge changes of opinion of
  the same sample size over a period of time,
  common during the closing months of presidential
  elections.
• Exit Polls
• Polls that survey a sample of voters immediately
  after exiting the voting booth to predict the
  outcome of the election before the ballots are
  officially counted.
• Note Both are used to try to predict the outcome
  of elections before they take place.

14
Other Types of Polls

• Push Polls
• Polls that are designed to manipulate the
  opinions of those being polled.
• Push polls are not scientific.
• They are often put out by a candidates campaign
  or a special interest group.
• They often seem like objective public opinion
  polls, but include misleading information about
  the candidates opponent or the interest groups
  opposition.

15
Errors in Polling

• Confidence Intervals
• Statistical range, with a given probability, that
  takes random error into account
• Sampling Error (aka Margin of Error)
• Measure of the accuracy of a public opinion poll
  reported as a percentage.

16
Errors Continued

• Question wording
• The way in which a question is worded can greatly
  influence the answers given.
• Limited Respondent Options
• Giving participants in the sample only the choice
  of two or 3 answers, like yes, no or I dont
  know.
• Non-attitudes
• Sources of error in public opinion polls in which
  individuals feel obliged to give opinions when
  they are unaware of the issue or have no opinions
  about it.

17
How Do Individuals Acquire Their Political
Opinions

• Socialization
• Impact and influence of ones social environment
  on the views and attitudes one carries in life, a
  primary source of political attitudes.
• Parents, friends, media, community, etc.

18
Other Factors Affecting Socialization

• Generational Effects
• Effects on opinion from the era in which one
  lives.
• Self-Interest
• Concern for ones own advantage and well-being.
• Rationality
• Acting in a way that is consistent with ones
  self-interest.

19
The Role of Elites in Public Opinion

• Elites
• Group of people who may lead public opinion, such
  as journalists, politicians, and policy makers.
• Elite Theory
• Idea that public opinion is shaped by discourse
  among elites and is a top-to-bottom process.

20
The Shape of Public Opinion

• What roles do party identification and ideology
  play in shaping public opinion?
• Party Identification
• Attachment or allegiance to a political party
  partisanship.
• Conservatives are those people who tend to
  identify themselves with the Republican Party
• Liberals are those people who tend to identify
  themselves with Democratic Party
• Independents are those people who do no feel a
  sense of identification with either of the two
  major political parties.

21
Shaping Public Opinion Continued

• Party identification shapes political ideology.
• Political Ideology
• Set of consistent political beliefs.
• The way in which we view politics is then seen
  through a perceptual lens shaped by the set of
  political beliefs.
• Perceptual Lens
• Ideological framework that shapes the way
  partisans view the political world and process
  information.

22
Is Public Opinion Informed?

• The public is generally uniformed about key
  aspects of government.
• Only 10 percent of the public knows the name of
  the Speaker of the House.
• Only about a third can name one U.S. Supreme
  Court justice.
• Only about half of Americans know which party
  controls Congress
• Fewer than half know the name of their own
  congressional representative.

23
Does This Mean Public Opinion is Uninformed?

• Political Saliency
• Indication of importance and relevance of an
  issue to an individual.
• Voters ARE relatively well-informed on issues
  that matter to them.
• The public can learn about issues if they are
  made salient through the media.

24
Voter Shortcuts

• Low Information Rationality
• Idea that people do not need to have lots of
  information to make good decisions.
• Party Labels
• Using party labels to make decisions allows
  citizens to make choices with a high degree of
  reliability without having a high degree of
  knowledge on the issues.

25
What is Polarization?

• Polarization
• Condition in which differences between parties
  and/or the public are so stark that disagreement
  breaks out, fueling attacks and controversy.

26
Is Congress Polarized?

• Since 1975, Congress has become more polarized.
• A look at the DW Nominate Scores , which are a
  record of individual and roll-call votes in
  Congress starting with the 1st Congress, shows
  that members of Congress are voting more
  frequently with their party members than they
  have in the past.

27
Is American Public Opinion Polarized?

• Are Americans Polarized?
• On the surface, it may appear as though Americans
  are polarized. The red state/blue state divide
  looks evident on any map. But political
  scientists like Morris Fiorina argue that America
  is not nearly as polarized as the map might
  tell us.
• Fiorina and other scholars argue that Americans
  are by and large centrist and the divide is
  more rural vs. urban than red state vs. blue
  state.

28
Group Differences

• How does membership in a group affect a persons
  public opinion?
• Socio-economic status
• Combined measure of occupation, education,
  income, wealth, and relative social standing or
  lifestyle.
• Age
• Religion
• Race and Ethnicity
• Education
• Gender Gap
• Differences in the political attitudes and
  behavior of men and women.

29
Public Opinion and Public Policy

• Does public opinion affect public policy?
• American support for a policy often has an impact
  on the success of that policy.
• Rally-around-the-flag effect
• Surge of public support for the president in
  times of international crisis.

30
Focus Questions

• How does public opinion influence public policy?
• In what ways are elected officials responsive to
  public opinion? How responsive should they be?
• Is every citizens voice equal, or are some
  people more influential? Why?
• How well does polling capture public opinion?
  Should polls direct public policy?
• Does public opinion provide a gateway or a gate
  to democracy?