CHAPTER 10
PUBLIC OPINION
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
CHAPTER 10: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 Understand the theoretically important
role public opinion plays in American
democracy and the tactical function it
plays in the policy-making process
 Learn the different ways in which public
opinion may be expressed, including
public opinion polls, rallies and protests,
blogging, voting, and contributing time
and money to campaigns
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
CHAPTER 10: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 Distinguish between the different levels
of public opinion, from broad values and
beliefs, to partisan and ideological
orientations, to attitudes and opinions
on specific items
 Assess the mass public’s level of
knowledge about American politics and
the capacity of the public to contribute
to the political process
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
CHAPTER 10: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 Recognize that political socialization is
a lifelong process and know a number
of important factors (such as family,
schools, friends, religion) that contribute
to the development of political opinions
 Explain the differences between a
scientific poll and an unscientific poll
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
CHAPTER 10: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 Identify the criteria for asking unbiased
poll questions
 Assess the findings from a poll along
the dimensions of direction, intensity,
and continuity of public opinion
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THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF PRESIDENTIAL
POPULARITY: NOW & THEN
 NOW… In a Gallup Poll after the 9/11
attacks G.W. Bush registered the highest
approval ratings ever recorded by Gallup 90%
 By the time Bush was settling into his final
year in office—five years after the invasion
of Iraq—
 His approval ratings had reached a Gallup
Poll record low of 25%
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THEN… LYNDON JOHNSON
 In a Gallup Poll conducted shortly after
Johnson took the oath, after Kennedy’s
assassination—
 A near record 79% approved of his
performance, affording him
considerable presidential power
 The Vietnam War gradually brought it to
a low of 35% in his final year in office
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NOW AND THEN…
 A president’s authority to govern is, in part,
influenced by the polls
 When public support is high, a president
enjoys a great deal of persuasive power
 When support drops, may be reduced to a
lame duck with little or no power
 The significant role public opinion plays is as
old as American democracy itself
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CORBIS
AP PHOTO/GERALD HERBERT
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PUBLIC OPINION IN AMERICAN POLITICS
 Democracy (Greek roots - demos
kratos) means “rule by the people”
 Thus the opinions of the public take on
a particularly important role in
governing
 Political scientist V. O. Key Jr., defined
public opinion as “those opinions held
by private persons which government
finds it prudent to heed”
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
MANUEL BALCE
CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Protesters at an April 2006 rally in
Washington, D.C., calling for American
intervention to stop genocide in Darfur.
Protests are an important expression of
public opinion in the United States.
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
HOW IS PUBLIC OPINION EXPRESSED?
 Public opinion polls and voting
 Political rallies and protest rallies
 Money, time, and effort contributed to
candidates, interest groups, or political
action committees
 Radio and TV shows, Web sites, and
editorial pages
 Direct contact via email, mail, or phone
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
AMERICAN GOVERNMENT … IN
POPULAR PERSPECTIVE
 Shaping Public Opinion, One Blog at
a time:
 Typical blogs combine commentary,
opinions, data with images, links to
other blogs, Web pages, and other
media
 Those who read blogs for political
information do not always distinguish
between blogs and news
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AMERICAN GOVERNMENT … IN
POPULAR PERSPECTIVE
 Do you go to blogs to shape your own
political opinions? Why or why not?
 Do you tend to visit blogs that reinforce
your own biases and attitudes, or do
you look for blogs that challenge your
opinions?
 What does that say about the way that
blogs shape public opinion?
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
AMERICAN GOVERNMENT … IN
POPULAR PERSPECTIVE
 What can bloggers offer to coverage of
an ongoing political event, such as a
major party political convention, that
traditional journalists may have difficulty
capturing?
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THE LEVELS OF PUBLIC OPINION
 Public opinion exists at three basic
levels
1. The broad level of values and beliefs
2. An intermediate level of political orientations
3. The specific level of preferences about
particular topics
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VALUES AND BELIEFS
 Values: broad principles underlying the
American political culture to which most
citizens support and adhere
 Beliefs: facts derived from values that
people take for granted about the world
 Examples: liberty, equality,
individualism, and the rule of law
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POLITICAL ORIENTATIONS
 Translation of the values and beliefs
into a systematic way of assessing the
political environment
 Two ways in which Americans orient
themselves toward political issues
1. Partisanship
2. Political ideology
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HOW INFORMED IS PUBLIC OPINION?
 Contemporary studies indicate that the
American public is uninformed about politics
 Also, many surveys show the public’s level
of expressed interest in politics is quite low
 How much confidence should we have in
elections where the voters know little about
the candidates and the issues?
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
HOW DOES PUBLIC OPINION FORM?
 Political socialization: life-long
process by which an individual acquires
values, beliefs, and opinions about
politics
 Primacy tendency: impressions and
information acquired while the individual
is younger tend to be most influential
and the longest lasting
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
HOW DOES PUBLIC OPINION FORM?
 Agents of political socialization
 Demographic factors – race, ethnicity,
gender, age and economic status
 Family, friends and peer groups
 Schools
 The media
 Religion
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
Actress and
comedian Tina Fey
made several
appearances on the
comedy show
Saturday Night Live
impersonating
Republican vice
presidential nominee
Sarah Palin and
serving to influence
how voters learned
about the candidate.
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
HOW IS PUBLIC OPINION MEASURED?
 Public opinion poll
 Measuring opinions of a large group of
people by:
 selecting a subset
 asking them questions, and
 generalizing the findings to the larger group
 What makes a poll “scientific”? How can
two polls be conducted on the same
topic and produce different findings?
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL POLLING
 Straw poll: gathers opinions of people
conveniently available in a particular
place
 Immediate predecessor to modern
scientific polling, and dates back to the
1824 presidential campaign
 Newspaper “counters” in public places
asked people who they were voting for
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AMERICAN GOVERNMENT . . . IN
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE:
 Polling Problems in Presidential
Elections:
 “Dewey Defeats Truman”? “Gore
defeats Bush”?
 Polls played an important role in the
predictions that caused considerable
confusion
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YOUR PERSPECTIVE . . . ON AMERICAN
POLITICS
 College Students Making Their
Voices Heard:
 Have you participated in a protest rally
or march on campus? If not, why not?
 Why do you think colleges and
universities tend to foster this form of
expression in particular?
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Protesters at the University of California express
concern over college tuition increases on March 4,
2012 (picture from the March 5, 2010, USA Today)
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SCIENTIFIC SAMPLING
 Uses probability theory as a guide to
selecting people from the population
who will comprise the sample
 Random selection of respondents in the
sample is key to achieving a scientific,
or representative, sample
 Each possible respondent has the
same chance of being selected
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UNSCIENTIFIC POLLS
 The sample of people interviewed is not
representative of any group beyond
those who register their opinion
 If the vast majority of people in a
population are given a chance of being
sampled, the poll is scientific
 If not, the sample represents nothing
beyond itself
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UNSCIENTIFIC POLLS
 Examples:
 Log-in polls
 SLOPs: self-selected listener opinion
polls
 CRAPs: computerized response
audience polling
 Intercept polls
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PSEUDO-POLLS
 Unscrupulous political campaigns and
political action committees (PACs)
 Disguising themselves as pollsters to
plant messages with voters and raise
funds instead of measuring public
opinion
 Examples: “Push polls,” “FRUGing,”
SUGing”
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SAMPLE SIZE
 The amount of error in the poll resulting
from interviewing a sample rather than
the whole population under study—
 Largely a function of sample size—
 The larger the sample size, the less
sampling error with the poll
 However, there is a law of diminishing
returns with increasing the sample size
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ASKING QUESTIONS ON POLLS
 The way a question is worded can have
a large impact on the type of answers
that are given by survey respondents
 Example
 “Does it seem possible or does it seem
impossible to you that the Nazi
extermination of the Jews never
happened?”
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ASKING QUESTIONS ON POLLS
 Constructing good poll questions:
1. Avoid double-negatives
2. Keep the question simple
3. Don’t include more than one question
4. Don’t use leading questions
5. Don’t expect honest answers to socially
unacceptable response questions
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INTERPRETING PUBLIC OPINION DATA
 Three important characteristics of public
opinion data:
1.
Direction
 Which preference a majority holds
2.
Intensity
 How strongly held is the opinion
3.
Continuity
 The “changeability,” of the opinion
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NOW & THEN: MAKING THE
CONNECTION
 As Presidents Johnson and G.W. Bush
quickly learned, public opinion can
change drastically
 Scientific opinion polls are a modern
phenomenon
 But the importance of public opinion
has always been central to the life of
American politics
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POLITICS INTERACTIVE!
 Tracking the Latest Public Opinion
Polls
 Use the following links to find out how
these organizations conduct polls and
how they measure presidential approval
 What are the different methodologies of
the pollsters, and how might they
contribute to different findings?
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
POLITICS INTERACTIVE!
 http://www.gallup.com
 http://www.rasmussenreports.com
 http://www.washingtonpost.com
 http://www.quinnipiac.edu
 www.cengage.com/dautrich/america
ngovernment/2e, find the link for
presidential approval ratings and how
polling organizations measure them and
their results
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A telephone interviewer for a
public opinion polling firm asks
a randomly selected voter
whom she will vote for in an
upcoming election.
BLUE JEAN IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES
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