Public Opinion
Political Science I
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What is public opinion?
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Public Opinion
• The opinion or attitude of a significant
group of people about a matter concerning
public affairs
• “Public affairs include politics, public issues, and
the making of public policies—those events and
issues that concern the people at large”
(McClenaghan, 2009)
• Examples: political parties and candidates, taxes,
unemployment, foreign policy, etc.
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Public Opinion (continued)
• The “public” refers to a significant group of
people that share a view of a particular issue
that effects the people as a whole; there are
many different publics and many different
public opinions
• Some general characteristics of public opinions
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They are difficult to measure
They are learned
They change
They influence government decisions
They can overlap or conflict
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Public Opinion (continued)
• How opinions differ
• Opinion saliency – some people care more about
certain issues
• Opinion stability – opinions on some issues are
relatively steady, but can be more volatile on
others
• Opinion-policy congruence – public opinion and
public policy are in sync for some issues and out of
sync for others
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How is public opinion influenced?
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Influences on Public Opinion
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Political socialization
Political efficacy
Mass media
Peer groups
Opinion leaders
Historic events
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How is public opinion measured?
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Public Opinion Polls
• Public opinion polls – “devices that attempt
to collect information by asking people
questions” (McClenaghan, 2009)
• Straw votes
• Involve asking the same question to a large group of
people
• Are highly unreliable
• Do not ensure a reasonable cross-section of the entire
population
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Public Opinion Polls (continued)
• Scientific polling
• Began in the mid-1930s
• Has become highly sophisticated
• Is performed by commercial polling organizations,
of which two of the best known are
• Gallup Organization (the Gallup Poll)
• Pew Research Center for People and the Press
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Public Opinion Polls (continued)
• Scientific polling (continued)
• A number of the leading national polls are joint
efforts of major news-gathering and professional
polling organizations
• They report public attitudes on current issues (i.e.
support of the President or Congress)
• Is extremely complex but can be described in five
basic steps
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Basic Steps of Scientific Polling
• Define the universe to be surveyed
• Universe – entire population that the poll aims to measure
• Example: every high school student in Texas
• Construct a sample
• Most pollsters draw random samples
• Sample – a representative portion of the total universe
• Random sample – composed of randomly selected people so that all of the
members have an equal chance of being interviewed
• Most major national polls use samples with approximately 1,500
people to represent the nation’s adult population (over 200 million
people)
• The mathematical law of probability makes a sample an accurate
representation as long as the sample selected is
• A sufficient size and
• Properly selected at random from the entire universe
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Basic Steps of Scientific Polling
(continued)
• Prepare valid questions
• The wording of questions is critical to the
reliability of the poll
• Responsible pollsters avoid
• Questions that are emotionally “loaded”
• Questions that lead the participants to the desired
answer
• Terms that are difficult to understand
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Basic Steps of Scientific Polling
(continued)
• Select and control how the poll is taken
• A pollster’s method of communication can affect the
poll’s accuracy
• Face-to-face
• Telephone calls
• Is the most common method
• Utilizes random-digit dialing
• Mail
• An interviewer’s tone of voice and/or word emphasis
can affect the participants’ responses and a poll’s
validity
• Polling organizations try to hire and train their
interviewing staff very carefully
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Basic Steps of Scientific Polling
(continued)
• Analyze and report the findings to the
public
• Polls measure people’s attitudes
• Scientific polling organizations
• Collect huge amounts of raw data
• Use technologies to
• Calculate and interpret their data
• Draw conclusions
• Publish findings
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Evaluating Polls
• Weaknesses
• Pollsters acknowledge their difficulties measuring
• Intensity – the strength of the feeling with which an
opinion is held
• Stability (or fluidity) – the relative permanence of an
opinion
• Relevance (or pertinence) – how important a particular
opinion is to the person who holds it
• Critics say that pollsters shape the opinions they
are supposed to measure
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Evaluating Polls (continued)
• Strengths
• Scientific polls are the most useful tools for
measuring public opinion
• They are not precise, but they are reliable
• They help specify questions and stimulate
discussion of them
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Other Polling Methods
• Other methods are unreliable but may be
used to find key indicators
• Elections
• Are rarely an accurate measure of public opinion
• Are occasionally useful indicators of public opinion
• Personal Contacts
• Are a resource that public figures use to try and gauge
public opinion
• Some public officials can do this successfully, but many
are biased and only see what they want to see
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Other Polling Methods (continued)
• Interest Groups
• Are private organizations that work to shape public policy
to their objectives (i.e. pressure groups or special interest
groups)
• Provide a primary method to make a public opinion heard
• Apply pressure through
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Lobbyists
Letters
Telephone calls
Emails
Political campaigns
Other methods
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How does public opinion affect
public policy?
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Effects on Public Policy
• Public opinion has a powerful role in US
politics
• Framers of the Constitution wanted to
create a representative democracy that
would
• Give the people an active voice in government
(popular rule)
• Insulate the government from the whims of an illinformed public
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Effects on Public Policy (continued)
• The following aspects of our constitutional
government protect the minority interests
from the majority views and actions
• Separation of powers
• Checks and balances
• Civil rights and liberties
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Effects on Public Policy (continued)
• Public opinion is one influence on public
policy, along with
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Interest groups
Political parties
Mass media
Other institutions of government
Ideas of activists and public officials
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Resources
• McClenaghan, W. A. (2009). Magruder's
American Government, Pearson.
• Glencoe McGraw-Hill (2009), United States
Government: Democracy in Action, Glencoe
McGraw-Hill.
• Wilson, J. Q., Dilulio Jr., J. J., and Bose,
M. (2011). American Government Institutions
and Policies, Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
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