Chapter Six:
Public Opinion
and Political
Socialization
Copyright
© 2016
Cengage
Learning.
Copyright
© 2016
Cengage
Learning.
All rights
reserved.
All rights reserved.
1
1. Define public opinion, consensus opinion, and divided
opinion, and discuss major sources of political
socialization, including the family, schools, the media,
and political events.
2. Identify the effects of various influences on voting
behavior including education, income, religion,
race/ethnicity, gender, and geography.
3. Describe the characteristics of a scientific opinion poll,
and list some of the problems pollsters face in
obtaining accurate results.
4. Consider the effect that public opinion may have on the
political process.
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• Consensus and Divided Opinion
• Forming Public Opinion: Political
Socialization
• The family
• Education as a source of political socialization
• Peers and peer group influence
• Opinion leaders’ influence
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Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Landov
Public opinion can be strongly divided.
Why is that so with health care reform legislation?
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Question: Do you think
that Russia’s actions in
Ukraine are or are not a
violation of international
law?
Source: CNN/ORC Poll, Mar. 7-9, 2014
Do you think Russia’s
President Putin cared
whether the annexation of
Crimea was a violation of
international law? Why or
why not?
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Source: CNN/ORC Poll, Mar. 7-9, 2014
Question: Do you think it
is likely or not likely that
there will be a new cold
war between the United
States and Russia in the
next few years?
Why would the United States
be reluctant to become
militarily involved in Ukraine?
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Alex Wong/Getty Images
A Maryland voter and her daughter in 2012. Hurricane
Sandy disrupted early voting in that state. What kinds
of voters tend to turn out even in very bad weather?
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• The Media and Public Opinion
• The popularity of the media
• The impact of the new media
• Fairness Doctrine
• Political Events and Public Opinion
• Historical events
• The political mood
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Michael Kovac/Getty Images for the Elton John AIDS Foundation
Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life,
speaks to a conference on AIDS in Washington, D.C.
Is Warren an opinion leader?
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Shutterstock/Kobby Dagan
Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg marches with his
employees in San Francisco’s
Gay Pride Parade.
How are leaders of the new
media different from leaders of
the old?
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• Party Identification and Demographic
Influences
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Educational achievement
Economic status
Religious denomination
Religious commitment and beliefs
Race and ethnicity
The Hispanic vote
The gender gap
Geographic region
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Mario Tama/Getty Images
Some sections of the U.S. have high levels of
poverty, such as in Owsley County, Kentucky, where
this auto mechanic lives. How does family income
influence feelings about government?
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Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Arab American activists promote
voter registration
in Dearborn, Michigan, a city
with a substantial Arab
American population.
What kinds of issues might
sway the “Arab vote”?
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Source: Center for American Women and Politics
• Election-Specific Factors
• Perception of the candidates
• Issue preferences
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AP Photo/Scott Sonner
Women supporting Barack Obama demonstrate outside
of a Mitt Romney campaign event in 2012.
What factors might create the “gender gap”?
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• The History of Opinion Polls
• Sampling Techniques
• The principle of randomness
• The statistical nature of polling
• Sampling error
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AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh
Nate Silver is an
unabashed “numbers
geek” who correctly
predicted most elections in
2012. His Fivethirtyeight
blog has moved from the
New York Times to ESPN.
In what ways do politics
resemble sports?
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• The Difficult of Obtaining Accurate Results
• Weighting the sample
• House effects
• How accurate are the results?
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Sources: The Gallup Poll Monthly, November 1992; Time, November 21, 1994; The Wall Street Journal, November 6, 1996; and authors’ updates.
This chart compares the percentage of the vote
received by the winning presidential candidate with
Gallup’s final prediction. Is Gallup still the “gold
standard” among poll takers? Why or why not?
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The eleven polls on
this chart were
conducted immediately
before the elections.
Two polling firms had
ties to a political party.
Why might Obama
have done better than
many pollsters
predicted?
Sources: FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics blogs.
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• Additional Problems with Polls
• Poll questions
• Unscientific and fraudulent polls
• Push polls
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AP Photo/Byron Rollins
President Harry Truman holds up the front page of the Chicago Daily
Tribune issue that predicted his defeat on the basis of a Gallup poll. Truman,
of course, defeated Dewey. The Gallup poll was completed more than a
week before the election, so it missed a shift by undecided voters to
Truman. Why would a newspaper today be unlikely to make such an
inaccurate prediction and put it on newsstands?
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• Technology and Opinion Polls
• The advent of telephone polling
• Telephone polling problems
• The cell phone problem
• Enter internet polling
• How representative is the Internet?
• “Nonpolls” on the internet
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AP Photo/The Free Lance-Star, Robert A. Martin
College Republicans work the polls in Virginia.
How might young Republicans view issues
differently from older ones?
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• Political Culture and Public Opinion
• Political culture and support for our political
system
• Political trust
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Source: Gallup polls, 1979 through 2014.
Question: In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with
the way things are going in the United States at this time?
Satisfaction hit a minor peak of 33 percent on Election Day
2012, the highest number in several years before or since.
Why might satisfaction have been greater on that day?
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Source: Gallup polls over time.
Question: I am going to read a list of institutions in American
society. Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself,
have in each one: a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little?
Why might the Supreme Court and public
schools be at least moderately popular?
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• Public Opinion about Government
• Confidence in other institutions
• The most important problems
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• Public Opinion and Policymaking
• Setting limits on government action
• The public versus the policymakers
• The limits of polling
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• A Policy Example: Contraception
Insurance
• The controversy
• The Supreme Court takes up the issue
• Public opinion and the controversy
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1. How important is personal contact in
gaining support for a candidate?
2. Do you feel your individual vote counts?
Why or why not?
3. Who or what most influences your voting
behavior? Do you vote like your family
does?
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