Download Public Opinion

The Definition
• Bentham
• Utilitarianism
• Public opinion should lead to a government that rules
in a way that brings the greatest happiness to the
greatest number
• Difficulty in defining public opinion
• Does “public” really have an opinion?
• Are we actively interested?
• Politically relevant opinions held by ordinary
citizens that they express openly
Struggles with Public Opinion
• People have conflicting opinions
• Sometimes our opinions conflict with reality
• So do we have to be informed to have a
reasonable opinion?
How Do We Measure It?
• Polls are the most basic
• Use a sample to measure attitudes of a population
• Laws of probability
• Marbles
• Must have random selection based on probability samples
• Size of sample matters…not size of population
• Sampling error
• 1,000 individuals in sample has sampling error of +/- 3 percent
• Problems with polls
• Hard to have a population
• We don’t all have phones, for example
• Nonopinions
• Social desirability bias
• Interviewer effects
Political Socialization
• Process by which we acquire political opinions, beliefs,
and values
• Occurs throughout life but most impacted by childhood
learning
• Effect is cumulative
• Agents:
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Family
Schools
Media
Peers
Leaders and Institutions
Churches
How We Think Politically
• Cultural
• Ideological
• Conservative, liberal, libertarian, populist
• Divided between economic and social policies
• Group
• Religion, class, region, race/ethnicity, gender, age
• But there are crosscutting cleavages at times
• Party identification
But Does it Influence Policy?
• Some say that politicians are
insensitive...others find the opposite effect
• Certain issues have their own effects
• i.e. Social Security
• Some issues are too divisive to be satisfied
• The question of whether government cares
enough about public opinion is normative
For Tuesday
• Patterson Chapter 7
• Connell: What are the basics Connell says a website
needs? His article was from 1998…what is he missing
that we know about in 2010?
• Maor: What does the Maor article teach us about
handling campaign speeches? What do you find
interesting? Surprising?