Chapter Seven
Public Opinion
Unit Objectives
• List the sources of our political attitudes and indicate
which are the most important.
• Explain why there are crosscutting cleavages between
liberals and conservatives in this country. Assess the
significance of race, ethnicity,
and gender in
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• Define political ideology and give reasons why most
Americans do not think ideologically. Summarize the
liberal and conservative positions on the economy,
civil rights, and political conduct.
• Discuss the basic elements of polling and explain how
polling reflects the attitudes of people generally.
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Theme A: Public Opinion Polling
What is Public Opinion?
• Public opinion: How people think or feel
about particular things
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• The opinions of active and knowledgeable
people carry more weight
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• Sample Polling Data on Iraq
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How Polling Works
• Pollsters need to pose reasonable
questions that are worded fairly
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• They have to ask
people
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which they have
some basis to form an
opinion
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Random Sampling
• Random sampling is necessary to insure a
reasonably accurate measure of how the
entire population thinks
or feels
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• For populationsare over
500,000, pollsters
need to make about 15,000 phone calls to
reach 1,065 respondents, insuring the poll
has a sampling error of only +/- 3%
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How Opinions Differ
• Opinion saliency: some people care more
about certain issues than other people do
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• Opinion stability:
theandsteadiness
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volatility of opinion
on an issue
• Opinion-policy congruence: the level of
correspondence between government
action and majority sentiment on an issue
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Theme A Discussion Questions
• All of the items listed are related to fears that polling
may manipulate electoral outcomes, even when it
provides incomplete or inaccurate information.
Explore each of these possibilities in greater detail.
Which do you consider the greater danger? Why?
and a opinion polling,
• Given the limitations
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compare and contrast
theto see
concerns
of the following
three poll consumers: elected politicians, journalists,
and voters.
• What ethical guidelines, if any, should constrain the
work of pollsters employed by the campaign
organizations of incumbent politicians? Of their
challengers? Explain the similarities and differences in
your responses.
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Theme B: Group Cleavages, Political Attitudes, and Political
Ideology
Political Socialization
• Political socialization: the process by which
personal and other background traits influence
one’s views about politics and government
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• Family: Party identification
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absorbed, although children become more
independent-thinking with time
• Religion: Families form and transmit political
beliefs through their religious tradition
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The Gender Gap
• Men have become increasingly Republican since
the mid-1960s
• Women have continued
to
identify
with
the
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since the early 1950s
• This reflects attitudinal differences between men
and women about the size of government, gun
control, social programs, and gay rights
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Table 7.3: The Gender Gap: Differences
in Political Views of Men and Women
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Education
• From 1920s through 1960s, studies
showed a college education had a
liberalizing effect,QuickTime™
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because of
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exposure to liberal
elites
• Contemporary college students’ opinions
are more complicated
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Table 5.3:
The
Changing
College
Student
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Figure 7.1: Generational Gaps on the
Issues
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Survey by Washington Post/Henry J. Kaiser Foundation/Harvard University, August 2-September 1, 2002, as reported in
Elizabeth Hamel et al., "Younger Voters," Public Perspective, May/June 2003, p. 11.
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Social Class
• Social class: ill-defined in U.S., though
recognized in specific cases (e.g., truck
drivers and investment
bankers)
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• Social class is less
important in the U.S.
than in Europe; the extent of cleavage has
declined in both places
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Race and Ethnicity
• Similarities and differences between blacks
and whites are complex, but there is some
evidence that theyQuickTime™
may
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• Latinos tend to areidentify
as Democrats,
though not as strongly as African
Americans
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Table 7.4: African American and White
Opinion
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Table 5.5: Changes in Racial Opinion
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Regional Differences
• White southerners were once more
conservative than other regions regarding
aid to minorities, legalizing
marijuana,
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school busing, areand
• Southerners are now significantly less
Democratic than they were for most of the
20th century
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Figure 5.1: Whites in the South Leaving the
Democrats
• Source: ICPSR National Election Studies,
Cumulative Data File, 1952-1996
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Political Ideology
• Political ideology: a more or less
consistent set of beliefs about what policies
government ought to pursue
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• The great majority
do not
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to see Americans
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think ideologically
• People may have strong predispositions
even if they do not satisfy the condition of
being “ideological”
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Figure 7.3: Ideological Self-Identification
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The American Enterprise (March/April 1993): 84, Robert S. Ericson and Kent L. Tedin, American
Public Opinion (New York: Longman, 2001), 101, citing surveys by CBS/New York Times.
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Liberals and Conservatives
• Economic policy: liberals favor jobs for all,
subsidized medical care and education,
increased taxation of the rich
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• Civil rights: liberals
favor
strong federal action to
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desegregate schools,
hiring opportunities for
minorities, and strict enforcement of civil rights
laws
• Public and political conduct: liberals are tolerant
of protest demonstrations, favor legalization of
marijuana, and emphasize protecting the rights of
the accused
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Table 7.6: How Liberals and
Conservatives Differ
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Liberals and Conservative
• Pure liberals: liberal on both economic and
personal conduct issues
• Pure conservatives:
conservative on both
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• Libertarians: conservative on economic
issues, liberal on personal conduct issues
• Populists: liberal on economic issues,
conservative on personal conduct issues
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Table 7.7: Policy Preferences of
Democratic and Republican Voters
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Political Elites
• Political elites: those who have a
disproportionate amount of some valued
resource
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• Elites influence public opinion by framing
issues and stating norms
• But elite influence only goes so far; they do
not define problems that are rooted in
personal experience
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Theme B Discussion Questions
• How is religion related to political attitudes? The text suggests that the
theologies of various religions have an important effect. Can you think of
other explanations for the correlation between religion and political
attitudes? For example, does it matter that, historically, Catholics tended to
be blue-collar workers in northern cities? That Jews were disproportionately
intellectuals? To what extent would
economic
self-interest explain why
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• The text contends that public opinion in the United States is split by many
cleavages. Yet historian Louis Hartz argues that Americans embrace the same
fundamental values. Alexis de Tocqueville concurs; he found that
“Americans were agreed upon the most essential points.” Does the text
exaggerate the degree of cleavage in public opinion? What major
disagreements exist in the United States today?
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Theme B Discussion Questions (cont.)
• What is a political elite? Do we have one unified elite, or are there different
elites with radically different views on policy? How have the political
attitudes of well-off Americans changed in recent years?
• How is race related to political attitudes? To what extent are the distinctive
political beliefs of Blacks explained
byand
thea socioeconomic position of
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Blacks as a group?
• New issues always have the possibility to create new cleavages, though it
may take some time before pollsters and political scientists note the
existence of these cleavages. For example, there may be a substantial
difference in opinion about gay marriage between homosexuals and
heterosexuals. Would we as a nation be better off to know about these
emerging cleavages, or should we continue to focus only on the opinions of
broad demographic categories of people, ignoring these differences among
them?
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