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24 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Public Opinion
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+what the public thinks. + It is the aggregation, or collection, of individual attitudes and beliefs on one or more issues at any given time. |
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Significance of Public opinion |
Americans seem torn about the role of public opinion in government today. On the one hand, we want to believe that what we think matters, but on the other hand, we’d like to think that our elected officials are guided by unwavering standards and principles. |
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Public opinion polls |
scientific efforts to measure that opinion—to estimate what an entire group of people thinks about an issue by asking a smaller sample of the group for their opinions. |
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Polls |
+measure public attitude towards all sorts of things +used -correctly: powerful tool in shaping campaign strategy -biases: lead politicians to poor outcomes *example romeny |
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key values for an ideal citizen |
-knows how government works -is tolerant -participates in the system |
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Political socialization |
public opinion polls can be misleading and can effect campaign strategy -example: Romney |
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division in public |
1.self interest 2.partisanship & ideology (liberal/conservative democrat/republican) 3.education (the more education someone has they are more tolerant, active in the system, vote, informed in politics) 4.age 5.gender 6.race and ethnicity 7.religion 8.geographic region |
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partisan sorting |
average democrats and republics ideology are much further apart than before |
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marriage gap |
different opinion by those who are remarried/widowed vs. those who have never been married |
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random sample |
does not over represent any portion of the population and whose responses can therefore be safely generalized to the whole |
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sample bias |
sample not chosen scientifically and has too many people in it from one portion of the population |
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sample error |
number that indicates how reliable the polls is |
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types of polls |
1.national polls 2. campaign polls 3.tracking polls 4.exit polls 5. psuedo polls 6. push polls 7.survey experiments |
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national polls |
public opinion within a limited period of time |
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campaign polls |
polls during a campaign |
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tracking polls |
follows changes in attitude towards the candidate throughout ongoing set of interviews |
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exit polls |
short questionnaires administered often by news outlet to sample people
SIG: does not match up with final vote count, has effect on people who have not voted yet |
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PSEUDO Polls |
tell you only the opinions of that portion of the media outlet’s audience (self-selected in the first place by their choice of a particular outlet) who care enough to call in or click a mouse (self-selected in the second place by their willingness to expend effort). |
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PUSH polls |
false or highly negative information, often in a hypothetical form, and ask respondents to react to it |
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survey experiments |
to gauge and measure public opinion about elections or current events as to deepen our understanding of public attitudes, especially on controversial issues such as race, gender, and civil liberties, where respondents know what the socially acceptable answer to the survey questions is and so are less likely to disclose their true opinions. |
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rational ignorance |
leave political information gathering to others SIG: we are to busy with our lives to pay 100% attention |
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on-line processing |
opinion made on the while we live our busy lives |
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two-step flow of information |
we rely on opinion leaders who are like us but know more about politics |
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opinion leaders |
people who are like us but have more knowledge about a subject |
