American Government
Public Opinion
Public Opinion
Public opinion is an important topic in American politics
• Since we define ourselves as a democratic society, what the
people want matters --they are the ultimate source of
governmental legitimacy
• On the other hand, the founders explicitly and extensively
sought to limit the impact of public opinion on politics in the
U.S.
• As we've noticed earlier, numerous checks on majority rule:
founders feared that majority could -- and probably would -act unwisely
• Founders were more interested in fulfilling the goals outlined in
the preamble to the Constitution.
• Therefore, they created a system in which public opinion could
translate itself into public policy, but not one in which it
necessarily would translate itself into public policy.
3 Facts about Public Opinion
Important Facts to Know
1. Public opinion may conflict with other
important values (Madison's old majority
faction problem)
• Most notably, public opinion may conflict
with fundamental, constitutionally protected
rights
• potentially -- and sporadically -- a serious
problem
• in actuality, though, our political culture is mild
Public Opinion is Hard to Figure
2. Public opinion is very difficult to interpret
• Often there is no one "public", rather many
publics many people in the public are:
• uninformed
• unconstrained -- want mutually exclusive things
• As a result, while several preferences are
stable, many are fickle
• stable: peace, prosperity
• fickle: energy, environment, nuclear freeze
• N.B. ... stable on ideals; fickle on
implementation/details
Public Opinion is Hard…
• Public Opinion Polls are sensitive to the
wording of questions and, therefore,
easily manipulated
• options/tradeoffs -- taxes for deficit
• order of alternatives
• loaded questions
• so called "astroturf" campaigns
• result = we must be careful when
asked to evaluate options based on
what "the public" feels.
Public Opinion & Elites
3. Public opinion is mediated by political
elites
• not everyone's opinion has the same
political weight
• opinion of more politically active people
is more politically important
• political elites drive the wheel of
politics
Origins of Public Opinion
• Family
• party ID is inherited
• issue positions are generally not transmitted
• Reference groups
• churches -- different traditions and social bases
• Jews: persecuted; generally liberal views on both social and
economic matters
• Catholics: lower SES class often, some persecution, group
focus; economically liberal, socially conservative
• Protestants: dominant group, personal focus; more
conservative on both economic and social issues
• Other groups -- we are a nation of joiners
The Biology of Politics
Biological factors in Public Opinion
• Gender gap
• -because they bear a greater responsibility
for bearing/raising children, women tend
to be more interested in and liberal on
issues concerning social welfare
• Age
• younger people tend to be more liberal
• less invested in the system
• more flexible (old dogs and all that)
Socioeconomic Factors in Public Opinion
Economic class
• wealthy have more
• human nature to think it is deserved
• favor policies that let them keep their well-deserved wealth
--- much invested in the system
Education
• generally, education leads to more liberal views (liberal
arts)
• A great example of cross-cutting cleavages, however.
• -income tends to rise with education
• -therefore, cross pressures
• Examples of “Big Tent”
• GOP composed of Wall Street types, farmers, blue collar
Reaganites, Bible thumpers;
• Democrats composed of poor, limosine liberals, labor, prochoice, Catholics
Cleavages in Comparative Perspective
Contrast with fragmented societies like
Northern Ireland
• -Catholics: poorer, Celtic, nationalist
• -Prots: richer, Anglo-Saxon, loyalist
• -result = on-going, intractable violence
Ideology & Public Opinion
Liberal vs. Conservative can be confusing
• Classically
• liberals = proponents of limited government
• conservatives = opponents of French Revolution
• socially conservative -- believed in a larger role for government -protect the traditional social fabric
• Changed in the U.S. during the Progressive Era (1890-1910)
and the New Deal (1930s)
• FDR described his efforts to have federal government take a larger
responsibility for social welfare as "liberal"
• conservatives opposed this --- called for smaller government
• Formed the basis for the so-called "New Deal Realignment"
• Democrats became the party of larger government
• Republicans became the party of smaller government
U.S. Politics: Centrist
Important to note --- in US, ideology is bounded
• both liberals and conservatives hail from classical
liberal roots - split between them is small
• even the most virulent liberals in the US believe in a
basically free market
• -few anarchists
• -few revolutionary Maoists
• even the most virulent conservatives believe in
basic human rights, civil liberties, equality
• -few monarchists
• -few theocrats
• -few Nazis
Polling Defined
• Opinion polls are surveys of public opinion
using sampling.
• Polls are usually designed to represent the
opinions of a population by asking a small
number of people a series of questions and
then extrapolating the answers to the larger
group.
• Day after day polls dealing with questions
about public affairs and private business are
being conducted throughout the United
States.
• Opinion polling has also spread to England,
Canada, Australia, Sweden, and France.
Polling: History & Perspective
• Polls are used by businesses, government,
universities, and host of other organizations
to answer a variety of questions.
• The first known example of an opinion poll
was a local straw vote conducted by The
Harrisburg Pennsylvanian in 1824, showing
Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams
by 335 votes to 169 in the contest for the
United States Presidency.
• This poll was unscientific – as were all
attempts to systematically identify public
opinion then.
• A scientific poll must be representative.
The Onset of Modern Polling
• In 1916, the Literary Digest embarked on a national
survey (partly as a circulation-raising exercise) and
correctly predicted Woodrow Wilson's election as
President. Mailing out millions of postcards and simply
counting the returns, the Digest correctly called the
following four presidential elections.
• In 1936, however, the Digest conducted another poll. Its
2.3 million "voters" constituted a huge sample; however
they were generally more affluent Americans who tended
to have Republican sympathies.
• The Literary Digest did nothing to correct this bias. The
week before election day, it reported that Alf Landon was
far more popular than Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• At the same time, George Gallup conducted a far smaller,
but more scientifically-based survey, in which he polled a
demographically representative sample. Gallup correctly
predicted Roosevelt's landslide victory
Polling in Politics
Functions of Polls in Politics
• Used by candidates to determine strategy
• Used by interest groups to decide who to
support and with how much resources
• Used by election observers to track the
‘horse race’
• Used by leaders to determine will of the
people (ex. Newt Gingrich and the Contract
With America)
• It is also useful where leaders want to
‘manipulate’ public opinion (though to the
extent that they do this is often difficult to
determine)
Modern Media & Poll Proliferation
What to Know about a Poll
• 1. Who paid for the poll?
• 2. What does the poll’s sponsor have to gain by
particular results?
• 3. What were the exact questions?
• 4. How and when was the poll administered?
• 5. How many people were polled?
• 6. Who analyzed or interpreted the poll?
Polling Nuts & Bolts: Sampling
• Polls require taking samples from populations. In
the case of, say, a Newsweek poll from the 2004
Presidential election, the population of interest is
the population of people who will vote.
• Since it is impractical to poll everyone who will vote,
pollsters take smaller samples that are intended to
be representative, that is, a random sample of the
population.
• It is possible that pollsters happen to sample 1,013
voters who happen to vote for Bush when in fact the
population is split, but this is very, very unlikely
given that the sample is representative.
• A good sample MUST be a representative sample
and it must be a random sample.
Internet Polling: Non-Scientific
Polling: A Concrete Example
• Recall our example from the 2004
Presidential Race.
• According to an October 2, 2004 survey by
Newsweek, 42 % of registered voters would
vote for John Kerry/John Edwards if the
election were held then.
• 46% would vote for George W. Bush/Dick
Cheney, and 2 % would vote for Ralph
Nader/Peter Camejo.
• The size of the sample is 1,013, and the
reported margin of error is ±4 %. The 99 %
level of confidence was used to determine
the bound.
Poll Results
Candidate
Choices
Bush/Cheney
% Will Vote for
candidate in
2004 election
42%
Kerry/Edwards 46%
Nader
2%
N = 1013
MoE: 4%
Poll Results w/ Bounds
Candidate
Choices
% Will Vote for Bounds on
candidate in
Estimates
2004 election
Bush/Cheney
42%
38 – 46%
Kerry/Edwards 46%
42 – 50%
Nader
2%
0 – 6%
N = 1013
MoE: 4%
Interpreting Polls with Bounds
• Who is ahead in this race, according to
the poll?
• Because the bounds of the two
estimates for Bush & Kerry overlap,
this is a “statistical tie.”
• It is possible, given the margin of error
and the results, that either Bush or
Kerry may have been ahead.
• Nader, however, is definitely behind.
Sample Size & Margin of Error
• The size of the bound (or the margin of
error) is directly tied to the size of the
sample.
• The larger the sample, the smaller the
bound, the more confident we are in
the estimate.
Sample Size & Margin of Error
Sample Size & Estimates
Candidate
Choices
% Will Vote for Bounds on
candidate in
Estimates
2004 election
Bush/Cheney
42%
41 – 43%
Kerry/Edwards 46%
45 – 47%
Nader
2%
1 – 3%
N = 6,243
MoE: 1%
Choosing your Sample
• The relationship between the sample size
and the margin of error is NOT 1:1.
• Diminishing returns are obtained as the size
of the sample increases.
• Hence you need an ever larger and larger
increase in your sample to get the same
reduction in the margin of error.
• Most pollsters strike a balance between cost
of the sample and reduction in the margin of
error, resulting in commonly used sample
sizes of 1,000 to 2,000.
Problems in Polling: Response Bias
• Not all error in polling is statistical.
• Survey results may be affected by response bias, where the
answers given by respondents do not reflect their true beliefs.
• This may be deliberately engineered by unscrupulous pollsters
in a push poll, but more often is a result of the detailed
wording or ordering of questions.
• Respondents may deliberately try to manipulate the outcome
of a poll by e.g. advocating a more extreme position than they
actually hold in order to boost their side of the argument or
give rapid and ill-considered answers in order to hasten the
end of their questioning.
• Respondents may also feel under social pressure not to give an
unpopular answer. If the results of surveys are widely
publicized this effect may be magnified - the so-called spiral of
silence.
Response Bias: Problems on Our End
• Observer Effects – poll changes attitude or
behavior
• Presence of an observer – polls can be taken on a
telephone, in person (door to door), etc.
Problems – ex. a white man asking a black man
about his racial attitudes. A woman asking a
man about his position on sexual behavior.
• Taking poll changes attitude
• Ex. Nielsen poll – you’re a Celebrity Death Match
/ WWF kind of guy, but during the poll suddenly
you are a PBS / CNN kind of guy.
• Timing
• Question Wording
Response Bias: Timing
• Doing a poll on Sept. 12th, 2001 on
immigration or feelings about Arabs
• Daytime/Nighttime
• Most polls are taken from 6pm – 10pm…thus
short term effects (news program on poverty)
can have effects on the responses
• What if we took polls at 1pm in the afternoon?
• Thermometer scores – correlation with
actual temperature outside (giving higher
thermometer scores in the summer)
Response Bias: Question Wording
• It is well established that the wording of the
questions, the order in which they are asked
and the number and form of alternative
answers offered can influence results of
polls. Thus comparisons between polls often
boil down to the wording of the question.
• One way in which pollsters attempt to
minimize this effect is to ask the same set of
questions over time, in order to track
changes in opinion.
Push Polling & Question Wording
• A push poll is a political campaign technique
in which an individual or organization
attempts to influence or alter the view of
respondents under the guise of conducting a
poll. Push polls are generally viewed as a
form of negative campaigning.
• The mildest forms of push polling are
designed merely to remind voters of a
particular issue.
• For instance, a push poll might ask respondents
to rank candidates based on their support of
abortion in order to get voters thinking about
that issue.
Push Polling & Astro-Turf Campaigns
• The main advantage of push polls is that they are an
effective way of maligning an opponent ("pushing" voters
away) while avoiding responsibility for the distorted or
false information used in the push poll. They are risky for
the same reason: if credible evidence emerges that the
polls were ordered by a campaign, it would do serious
damage to that campaign.
• Push polls are also used by interest groups to generate
the appearance of grassroots support for their positions.
Hence they may ask respondents questions designed to
illicit the preferred responses:
• Pro-Choice Push Poll Question: Do you believe women should have
a right to privacy?
• Pro-Life Push Poll Question: Do you approve of the laws permitting
abortion on demand, resulting in the murder of 1.5 million babies
a year?
Question Wording Example 1956:
Subtle ‘Push” polling
The U.S. should keep soldiers
overseas where they can help
countries that oppose communism.
Agree Strongly
49%
Agree
24%
Neutral
10%
Disagree
7%
Disagree Strongly
10%
Question Wording Example 1964: Subtle
“push” polling
Some people think that we should sit
down and talk to the leaders of the
communist countries and try to settle
our differences while others think we
should refuse to have anything to do
with them, what do you think?
Should Talk
62%
Depends on Situation
15%
Should Refuse to Talk 13%
Response Bias: Problems on Their End
• Neutral effects – people ‘tend’ to choose the middle category.
• folks tend to go for that middle category no matter what their
actual feelings are.
• Because they don’t want to appear extreme
• Because they don’t know
• Avoidance of honesty – people will lie (use terminological
inexactitudes) when being polled.
• They don’t want to admit they don’t vote
• They don’t want to admit they are bigots…etc.
• Non-Attitudes – people will choose a choice even when they
don’t have an opinion on either of them
• Who would you rather have as president?
•
•
•
•
•
Beavis
Butthead
Eric Carman
Frylock
Master Shake
Respondent Problems: Neutral Effect Example
QUESTION:
--------Where would you place YOURSELF on this scale, or haven't
you thought much about this?
VALID CODES:
-----------01. Extremely liberal
02. Liberal
03. Slightly liberal
04. Moderate; middle lf the road
05. Slightly conservative
06. Conservative
07. Extremely conservative
Neutral Effects: Helping to Solve them
PRE-ELECTION SURVEY:
IF R'S PARTY PREFERENCE IS INDEPENDENT, NO PREFERENCE,
OTHER:
QUESTION:
--------Do you think of yourself as CLOSER to the Republican
Party or to the Democratic party?
VALID CODES:
-----------1. Closer to Republican
3. Neither {VOL}
5. Closer to Democratic
Avoiding Honesty: Helping to Solve them
• The age old age question problem.
• How do you ask it:
• What is your age?
• What is your date of birth?