CHAPTER 7
Public Opinion


LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1.
What is “public opinion” and how do we measure it?
2.
What role did the Framers of the Constitution think public opinion should play in making
public policy?
3.
What is “political socialization” and how does it work?
4.
What is “political ideology” and how does it matter for what elites and the mass
public believe?
5.
How much does public opinion in America vary by age and other characteristics?
6.
People self-label as “liberal,” “moderate,” or “conservative,” but are there more refined
ways of describing and classifying citizens’ political views?
SUMMARY OVERVIEW
Public opinion refers to how people think or feel about particular things.
The Founding Fathers believed that most average citizens lacked the time, information,
energy, interest, and experience to decide on public policy.
There are two very good reasons why government policy often appears to be at odds with
public opinion:
1.
The Framers of the Constitution did not try to create a government that would do from
day-to-day “what the people want.”
2.
It is not easy to know what the public thinks.
If properly conducted, a survey of public opinion can capture the opinions of 300 million
citizens by interviewing as few as 1,500 of them. However, no poll, whatever it asks and
however it is worded, can provide us with a reasonably accurate measure of how people think
or feel unless the persons polled are a random sample of the entire population.
Some people care more about certain issues than other people do (opinion saliency). Studies
also tell us that people with certain characteristics in common sometimes hold certain
political beliefs in common. Political socialization matters. Scholars have long believed—and
rightly so—that people acquired their political views from their families. However, genetic
background also explains some of our political ideology, though rather little of our party
affiliation. Genes play a big role in basic political beliefs; the other half comes from our
individual life experiences. Political beliefs are not the same as party affiliation. The ability
of the family to inculcate a strong sense of party identification has declined in recent years.
One way in which the family forms and transmits political beliefs is by its religious
tradition—religious differences make for political differences. Religious influences on public
© 2015 Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in
part.
46
Chapter 7: Public Opinion
opinion are pronounced with respect to social issues, but they matter less on most
other issues.
Opinions about politics and government vary not only across but also within given religious
traditions. The gender gap is the difference in political views between men and women. The
way in which political opinions are formed helps explain the cleavages that exist among these
opinions and why these cleavages do not follow any single political principle but instead
overlap and crosscut in bewildering complexity. Today, there are crosscutting cleavages
based on race, ethnicity, religion, region, and education, in addition to those created by
income and occupation.
Research also has made clear that mass and elite opinions differ. Elite is a term used by
social scientists to refer to people who have a disproportionate amount of some valued
resource. Political elites know more about politics than the rest of us and they also think
differently about it. The government attends more to elite views than to popular views, at
least on many matters. Elites influence public opinion in at least two important ways:
(1) those in or having access to the media raise and frame political issues, and (2) elites state
the norms by which issues should be settled. Americans speak of “social class” with
embarrassment. However, public opinion and voting have been less determined by class in
the United States than in Europe, and the extent of class cleavage has declined in the last few
decades. The voting patterns of different social classes also have become somewhat more
similar. There are sharp differences between white and black attitudes on many public policy
questions. Latinos are now the largest minority group in America. In addition, it is widely
believed that geographic region affects political attitudes.
Up to now, the words liberal and conservative have been used as though everyone agrees on what
they mean and as if they accurately describe general sets of political beliefs held by large
segments of the population; however, they are as vague as they are indispensable. Political
ideology is measured in two ways: (1) by seeing how frequently people use broad political
categories to describe their own views, or to justify their preferences for various candidates and
policies; and (2) by seeing to what extent the policy preferences of a citizen are consistent over
time, or are based at any one time on consistent principles.

CHAPTER OUTLINE
I.
Public Opinion and Democracy
II.
What Is Public Opinion?
III.
IV.
A.
How Polling Works
B.
How Opinions Differ
Political Socialization
A.
The Family
B.
Religion
C.
The Gender Gap
Cleavages in Public Opinion
A.
Social Class
B.
Race and Ethnicity
© 2015 Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in
part.
Chapter 7: Public Opinion
C.
V.
VI.

Region
Political Ideology
A.
Mass Ideologies: A Topology
B.
Liberal and Conservative Elites
Political Elites, Public Opinion, and Public Policy
TEACHING TOOLS
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 1: WHAT IS “PUBLIC OPINION” AND HOW DO WE
MEASURE IT?
Critical Thinking Question
Explain public opinion and its importance in politics.
In-Class Activity
Discuss with the class how public opinion is measured.
Lecture Launcher
Ask the class how accurate they think public opinion is in regards to politics.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 2: WHAT ROLE DID THE FRAMERS OF THE
CONSTITUTION THINK PUBLIC OPINION SHOULD PLAY IN MAKING
PUBLIC POLICY?
Critical Thinking Question
Explain what the Framers of the Constitution thought the role of public opinion should be and
compare it to the role that public opinion plays today.
In-Class Activity
Have the class explain why the Framers of the Constitution thought public opinion should not
play a major role in politics.
Lecture Launcher
Pose the following to the class: Should public opinion be as important in politics as it is today?
© 2015 Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in
part.
47
48
Chapter 7: Public Opinion
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 3: WHAT IS “POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION” AND HOW
DOES IT WORK?
Critical Thinking Question
Describe the factors that influence political socialization.
In-Class Activity
Ask the class to describe the shifting thought on how political socialization is formed.
Lecture Launcher
Have the class define political socialization.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 4: WHAT IS “POLITICAL IDEOLOGY” AND HOW DOES
IT MATTER FOR WHAT ELITES AND THE MASS PUBLIC BELIEVE?
Critical Thinking Question
Describe the difference between how the elites and the mass public perceive political ideology.
In-Class Activity
Discuss how political ideologies are formed.
Lecture Launcher
Have the class define political ideology.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 5: HOW MUCH DOES PUBLIC OPINION IN AMERICA
VARY BY AGE AND OTHER CHARACTERISTICS?
Critical Thinking Question
Explain the factors that account for the differences in public opinion between age groups and
other characteristics.
In-Class Activity
Discuss the areas in which differences of opinions may be narrowing.
Lecture Launcher
Have the class identify what factors cause schisms in American public opinion.
© 2015 Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in
part.
Chapter 7: Public Opinion
49
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 6: PEOPLE SELF-LABEL AS “LIBERAL,” “MODERATE,”
OR “CONSERVATIVE,” BUT ARE THERE MORE REFINED WAYS OF
DESCRIBING AND CLASSIFYING CITIZENS’ POLITICAL VIEWS?
Critical Thinking Question
Explain the ways political views are described and classified.
In-Class Activity
Provide the updated Pew Research Center typology regarding self-labels. Have each student
determine their self-label, and then have the class discuss the different labels. (Students should
consider whether the labels are accurate, fair, offensive, etc.)
Lecture Launcher
Discuss the importance of self-labels and labeling in general where politics is concerned.

KEY TERMS
elite
People who have a disproportionate amount of some valued resource.
exit polls
Polls based on interviews conducted on election day with randomly
selected voters.
gender gap
Difference in political views between men and women.
norm
A standard of right or proper conduct.
political elites
Persons with a disproportionate share of political power.
political ideology
A more or less consistent set of beliefs about what policies
government ought to pursue.
political socialization Process by which background traits influence one’s political views.

poll
A survey of public opinion.
public opinion
How people think or feel about particular things.
random sample
Method of selecting from a population in which each person has an
equal probability of being selected.
sampling error
The difference between the results of random samples taken at the
same time.
WEB LINKS
CBS News/ New York Times poll:
Topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/newyorktimes-poll-watch/
Gallup opinion poll: www.gallup.com
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: www.people-press.org
Rasmussen Reports: www.rasmussenreports.com
© 2015 Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in
part.
50
Chapter 7: Public Opinion
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research: www.ropercenter.uconn.edu
Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll: topics.wsj.com/subject/W/wall-street-journal/nbc-newspolls/6052

INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES
Berinsky, Adam J. Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Shows how opinion polls can bias the
results and induce people with unpopular views to say “don’t know.”
Erikson, Robert S., and Kent L. Tedin. American Public Opinion. 5th ed. Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, 1995. An excellent (if dated) summary of how opinion is measured, what it
shows, and how it affects politics.
Jennings, M. Kent, and Richard G. Niemi. Generations and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1981. A study of persistence and change in the political views of young
adults and their parents.
__________. The Political Character of Adolescence: The Influence of Families and Schools.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. A study of political attitudes among
high school students.
Key, V. O., Jr. The Responsible Electorate. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. An
argument, with evidence, that American voters are not fools.
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., et al. The American Voter Revisited. Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press, 2008. A careful comparison of how voters in the early 2000s compare to
those in the mid-1950s.
Lipset, Seymour Martin. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1959. An exploration of the relationship between society, opinion, and
democracy in America and abroad.
Moe, Terry M. Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press, 2001. A masterful study of how public opinion matters to education
policy, suggesting that most people, with only slight information, form reasonable views.
Nie, Norman H., Sidney Verba, and John R. Petrocik. The Changing American Voter. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1976. Traces shifts in American voter attitudes since 1960.
Weissberg, Robert. Polling, Policy, and Public Opinion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
A critique of what we think we know from opinion polling, showing the many ways in
which polls can give us misleading answers.
Zaller, John. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1992. A pathbreaking study of how the public forms an opinion,
illustrating the ways in which elite views help shape mass views.
© 2015 Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in
part.