CHAPTER 6: PUBLIC OPINION AND POLITICAL ACTION
AP GOVERNMENT
 America was founded on the principle of
tolerating diversity and individualism, and it
remains one of the most diverse countries in
the world today.
 Most Americans view this diversity as one of
the most appealing aspects of their society
 The study of American public opinion aims to
understand the distribution of the
population’s belief about politics and policy
issues.
 Because there are many groups with a great
variety of opinions in the United States, this is
an especially complex task.
 That is not to say that public opinion would
be easy to study even if America were a
homogeneous society; measuring public
opinion involves painstaking interviewing
procedures and careful wording of questions.
 Further complicating the task is the fact that
the people are often not well informed about
the issues.
 The least informed are also the least likely to
participate in the political process, a
phenomenon that creates imbalances in who
takes part in political action.
 For American government to work efficiently
and effectively, the diversity of the American
public and its opinions must be faithfully
channeled through the political process.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
 One way of looking at the American public is
through demography-the science of human
populations.
 The most valuable tool for understanding
demographic changes in America is the
census.
 The U.S. Constitution requires that the
government conduct an “actual
enumeration” of the population every ten
years. The first census was conducted in
1790.
 The Census Bureau tries to conduct the most
accurate count of the population humanly
feasible.
 After the 1990 Census, it was found that
minority groups were disproportionately
undercounted. As they were suspicious of
government and less willing to cooperate
with census workers.
 In order to correct for such an undercount in
2000, the Clinton Administration approved a
plan to scientifically estimate the census
count.
THE IMMIGRANT SOCIETY
 The United States has always been a nation
of immigrants.
 Today, federal law allows up to 800,000 new
immigrants to be legally admitted to the
country every year.
 There have been 3 great waves of
immigration to the U.S.:
 Late 19th century = Northwestern Europeans
 Late 19th and early 20th Centuries: Southern and
Eastern Europeans
 In recent decades = Hispanics
 Immigrants bring with them their aspirations,
as well as their own political beliefs.
 Throughout American history, such groups
have fostered a great appreciation for
individualism in American public policy by
their wish to be free of government control.
The American Melting Pot
 With its long history of immigration, the
United States has often been called a melting
pot. This phrase refers to a mixture of
cultures, ideas, and peoples.
 As the third wave of immigration continues,
policymakers have begun to speak of a
minority majority, meaning that America will
eventually cease to have a White, generally
Anglo-Saxon majority.
 The 2000 Census data found an all-time low
in the percentage of non-Hispanic White
Americans-just over 69% of the population.
 African-Americans made up 10-12% of the
population, Hispanics13%, Asians4%, and
Native Americans slightly less than 1%.
 Until recently, the largest minority group in
the country has been the African-American
population.
 About 22% of African-Americans live below
the poverty line, compared to about 9% of
Whites.
 Despite this disadvantage, African-Americans
have recently been exercising a good deal of
power.
 The familiar problems of African-Americans
sometimes obscure the problems of other
minority groups such as Hispanics.
 An issue of particular concern to the Hispanic
community is what to do about the problem
of illegal immigration.
 The Simpson-Mazzoli Act, named after its
congressional sponsors, requires that
employers document the citizenship of their
employees.
 Civil and criminal penalties can be assessed
against employers who knowingly employ
undocumented immigrants.
 This law has raised concern among leaders of
immigrant groups, who worry that employers
may simply decline to hire members of such
groups rather than take any chances.
 Many believe that the provisions of the
Simpson-Mazzoli Act have proved to be
inadequate in stopping illegal immigration
from Mexico.
 One proposed solution has been very
controversial in recent years involves denying
all benefits from government programs to
people who cannot prove that they are legal
residents of the United States.
 Unlike Hispanics who have come to America
to escape poverty, the recent influx of Asians
has been driven by a new class of professional
workers looking for greater opportunity.
 Asian Americans have often been called the
super achievers of the minority majority
 Whereas Asian Americans are the best off of
America’s minority groups, by far the worst
off is the one indigenous minority, known
today as Native Americans.
 Americans live in an increasingly multicultural
and multilingual society.
 Yet, regardless of ethnic background most
Americans share a common political culturean overall set of values widely shared within a
society.
 The emergence of the minority majority is
just one of several major demographic
changes that have altered the face of
American politics.
The Regional Shift
 For most of American history, the most
populous states were concentrated in the
states north of the Mason-Dixon line and east
of the Mississippi River.
 Over the last 60 years, much of America’s
population growth has been centered in the
West and South.
 Demographic changes are associated with
political changes. States gain or lose
representation as their population changes,
and thus power shifts as well.
 This reapportionment process occurs once a
decade, after every census.
 After each census, the 435 seats in the House
of Representatives are reallocated to the
states on the basis of population changes.
 Thus, as California has grown throughout this
century, its representation in the House has
increased from just 7 in 1900 to 53 as of 2002.
 New York, on the other hand, has lost about
one-third of its delegation over the last 50
years.
The Graying of America
 Florida, one of the three megastates, has
grown in large part as a result of its
attractiveness to senior citizens.
 Nationwide, the fastest growing age group in
America is composed of citizens over 65.
 Not only are people living longer as a result of
medical advances, but the birthrate has
dropped substantially.
 By the year 2020, as the post-World War II
baby boom generation reaches citizen status,
there will be just two working Americans for
every person over the age of 65, which will
put tremendous pressure on the Social
Security System.
 There is a political message in these numbers:
People who have been promised benefits
expect to collect them, especially benefits for
which they have made monthly
contributions.
 Thus both political parties have long treated
Social Security benefits as sacrosanct.
How Americans Learn About Politics:
Political Socialization
 As the most experienced segment of the
population, the elderly have undergone the
most political socialization.
 Political socialization is “the process through
which an individual acquires his or her
particular political orientations-his or her
knowledge, feelings, and evaluations
regarding his or her political world.”
 As people become more socialized with age,
their political orientations grow firmer.
 Governments aim their socialization efforts
largely at the young, not the elderly.
 Authoritarian regimes are particularly
concerned with indoctrinating their citizens
at an early age.
The Process of Political
Socialization
 Socialization is a much more subtle process in
the United States.
 Only a small p0rtion f Americans’ political
learning is formal.
 Civics or government classes in high school
teach citizens some of the nuts and bolts of
government-how many senators each state
has, what presidents do, and so on.
 Americans do most of their political learning
without teachers or classes.
 Informal learning is really much more
important than formal, in-class learning
about politics.
 Most informal socialization is almost
accidental. Words like pick up, absorb, and
acquire perhaps best describe the informal
side of socialization.
 The family, the media, and the schools all
serve as important agents of socialization.
The Family
 The family’s role in socialization is central
because of its monopoly on two crucial
resources in the early years: time and
emotional commitment.
 The powerful influence of the family is not
easily undermined.
 Most students in an American government
class like to think of themselves as
independent thinkers, especially when it
comes to politics.
 Yet one can predict how the majority of
young people will vote simply by knowing the
political leanings of the parents.
 As children approach adult status, some
degree of adolescent rebellion against
parents and their beliefs often takes place.
 Moving out of the family nest and into
adulthood, the offspring did become
somewhat less like their parents politically,
however.
The Mass Media
 The mass media are the “new parent”
according to many observers. Average gradeschool children spend more time each week
watching TV than they spend at school.
 TV now displaces parents as the chief source
of information as children get older.
 Unfortunately, today’s generation of young
adults is significantly less likely to watch
television news and read newspapers than
their elders.
 Many studies have attributed the relative lack
of political knowledge of today’s youth to
their media consumption, or more
appropriately, to their lack of it.
School
 Political socialization is as important to a
government as it is to an individual.
 This is one reason why governments often
use schools to promote national loyalty, and
support for its basic values.
 In most schools, the day begins with the
Pledge of Allegiance.
 Governments throughout the world use
schools to attempt to raise children
committed to the basic values of the system.
 American children have been successfully
educated about the virtues of capitalism and
democracy.
 In the hands of an unscrupulous government,
educational socialization can sometimes be a
dangerous tool.
 Today, education is often the issue that
people cite as the most important to them,
and there is no doubt that educational policy
matters a great deal.
 Schooling is perhaps the most obvious
intrusion of government into Americans’
socialization.
 Education exerts a profound influence on a
variety of political attitudes and behavior.
Better educated citizens are more likely to
vote in elections, they exhibit more
knowledge about politics and public policy,
and they are more tolerant of opposing (even
radical) opinions.
 The payoffs of schooling extend beyond
better jobs and better pay. Educated citizens
also more closely approximate the model of a
democratic citizen.
Political Learning Over a Lifetime
 Politics is a lifelong activity. Aging increases
political participation, as well as strength of
party attachment.
 Young adults (those 19 through 25) lack
experience with politics. Because political
behavior is to some degree learned behavior,
there is some learning yet to do.
 Political participation rises steadily with age
until the infirmities of old age make it harder
to participate.
 Strength of party identification also increases
as one grows older and often develops a
pattern for usually voting for one party or
another.
Measuring Public Opinion and Political
Information
How Polls Are Conducted
 Public opinion polling is a relatively new
science. It was first developed by a man
named George Gallup. The firm that Gallup
founded spread throughout the democratic
world.
 Polls rely on a sample of the population-a
relatively small proportion of people who are
chosen to represent the whole.
 In public opinion polling, a sample of about
1,000 to 1,500 people can accurately
represent the “universe” of potential voters.
 The key to the accuracy of opinion polls is the
technique of random sampling, which
operates on the principle that everyone
should have an equal probability of being
selected as part of the sample.
 Your chance of being asked to be in the poll
should therefore be as good as that of anyone
else.
 The science of polling involves estimation; a
sample can represent the population with
only a certain degree of confidence. The level
of confidence is known as the sampling error,
which depends on the size of the sample.
 The more people interviewed in a poll, the
more confident one can be of the results. A
typical poll of about 1,500 to 2,000
respondents has a sampling error of about
plus or minus three percent.
 In order to obtain results that will usually be
within the sampling error, researchers must
follow proper sampling techniques. In
perhaps the most infamous survey ever, a
1936 Literary digest poll underestimated the
vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt by 19%,
erroneously predicting a win for Republican
Alf Landon.
 Accurate representation, not the number of
responses, is the most important feature of a
public opinion survey. As polling techniques
have advanced over the last 60 years, typical
sample sizes have been getting smaller, not
larger.
 The newest computer and telephone
technology has made surveying less
expensive and more commonplace.
 Today, most polling is done on the telephone
with samples selected through random-digit
dialing. Calls are placed to phone numbers
within randomly chosen exchanges around
the country.
 In this manner, both listed and unlisted
numbers are reached at a cost of about onefifth that of person-to-person interviewing.
 There are disadvantages , however. Some
people do not have a telephone and some
people are less willing to participate on the
phone rather than person to person.
 In this era of cell phones, many pollsters are
starting to worry whether this methodology
will continue to work much longer.
The Role of Polls in American
Democracy
 Polls help political candidates detect public
preferences. Supporters of polling insist that
it is a tool for democracy.
 With it, policymakers, can keep in touch with
changing opinions on the issues.
 No longer do politicians have to wait until the
next election to see whether the public
approves or disapproves of the government’s
course.
 If the poll results suddenly turn, then
government officials can make corresponding
midcourse corrections.
 Critics of polling say it makes politicians more
concerned with following than leading.
 Polls can also weaken democracy by
distorting the election process.
 Polls are often accused of creating a
bandwagon effect. The term bandwagon
refers to voters who support a candidate
merely because they see that others are
doing so.
 Polls play to the media’s interest in who’s
ahead in the race. The issues of presidential
campaigns have sometimes been drowned
out by a steady flood of poll results.
 Probably the most widely criticized type of
poll is the election-day exit poll. For this type
of poll, voting places are randomly selected
around the country.
 Workers are then sent to these places and
told to ask every tenth person how they
voted. The results are accumulated toward
the end of the day, enabling the television
networks to project the outcomes of all but
very close races before the polls even close.
 In the presidential elections of 1980, 1984,
1988,, and 1996, the networks declared a
national winner while millions on the West
Coast still had hours to vote.
 Critics have charged that this practice
discourages many people from voting and
thereby affects the outcome of some local
and state races.
 In 2000, the exit polls received much of the
blame for the media’s inaccurate calls of the
Florida results on election night.
 In 2000, inaccurate reports and estimates of
the actual votes threw off the networks
prognostications.
 The chances of this kind of error recurring is
relatively small. The networks have made a
number of changes in their procedures for
predicting winners that should result in
slower but more reliable predictions in the
future.
 Perhaps the most pervasive criticism of
polling is that by altering the wording of a
question, pollsters can usually get the results
they want.
 Sometimes subtle changes in a question
wording can produce dramatic differences.
 It is therefore important to evaluate carefully
how questions are posed when reading public
opinion data.
 Polling sounds scientific with its talk of
random samples and sampling error; it is easy
to take results for solid fact. But being an
informed consumer of polls requires more
than just a nuts-and-bolts knowledge of how
they are conducted.
 You should think about whether the
questions are fair and unbiased before
making too much of the results.
 The good-or the harm-that polls do depends
on how well the data are collected and how
thoughtfully the data are interpreted.
What Polls Reveal About Americans’
Political Information
 If public opinion analysts agree about
anything, it is that the level of public
knowledge about politics is dismally low.
 No amount of Jeffersonian faith in the
wisdom of the common people can erase the
fact that Americans are not well informed
about politics.
 Despite the apparent glut of information
provided by the media, Americans do not
remember much about what they are
exposed to through the media.
 The “paradox of mass politics,” says Russell
Neuman, is that the American political
system works as well as it does given the
discomforting lack of public knowledge about
politics. Part of the reason for this
phenomenon is that people may not know
the ins and outs of policy questions or the
actors on the political stage, but they know
what basic values they want upheld.
The Decline of Trust in Government
 The American public has become increasingly
dissatisfied with government over the last
four decades.
 In the late 1950s and early 1960s about three
quarters of the American public said they
trusted the government.
 Following the 1964 election, however,
researchers started to see a drop in public
trust in government.
 First Vietnam and then Watergate shook the
people’s confidence in the federal
government.
 The economic troubles of the Carter years
and the Iran hostage crisis helped continue
the slide; by 1980, only a quarter of the public
thought the government could be trusted
most of the time or always.
 Since 1980, trust in government has grown
and lessened depending on the political
situation.
 Some analysts have noted that a healthy
dose of public cynicism helps to keep
politicians on their toes.
 Others, however, note that a democracy is
based on the consent of the governed and
that a lack of public trust in the government is
a reflection of their belief that the system is
not serving them well.
 Widespread political cynicism about
government apparently only applies to
“normal” times; it has not eroded Americans’
fundamental faith in our democracy.
What Americans Value: Political
Ideologies
 A coherent set of values and beliefs about
public policy is a political ideology.
 Liberal ideology supports a wide scope for
the central government, often involving
policies that aim to promote equality.
 Conservative ideology supports a less active
scope of government that gives freer reign to
the private sector.
Who are Liberals and Conservatives?
 Overall, more Americans consistently choose
the ideological label of conservative over
liberal.
 The predominance of conservative thinking in
America is one of the most important reasons
for the relatively restrained scope of
government activities compared to most
European nations.
 There are some groups that are more liberal
than others, and thus would generally like to
see government do more.
 Among people under the age of 30, there are
just as many liberals as conservatives. The
younger the individual, the less likely that
person is to be a conservative. The fact that
younger people are also less likely to vote
means that conservatives are
overrepresented at the polls.
 In general, groups with political clout tend to
be more conservative than groups whose
members have often been shut out from the
halls of political power. This is because
excluded groups have often looked to the
government to rectify the inequalities they
have faced. It should come as little surprise
then that African-Americans are more liberal
than the national average.
 Similarly, Hispanics also are less conservative
than Whites, and if this pattern continues the
influx of many more Hispanics into the
electorate will move the country in a slightly
liberal direction.
 Women are not a minority group, making up
54% of the population, but they have been
politically and economically disadvantaged.
Compared to me, women are more likely to
support spending on social services and to
oppose the higher levels of military spending,
which conservatives typically advocate.
 These issues concerning the priorities of
government rather than the issue of
abortion-on which men and women actually
differ very little-lead women to be
significantly less conservative than men. This
ideological difference between men and
women has led to the gender gap, which
refers to the regular pattern by which women
are more likely to support Democratic
candidates.
 The gender gap is a relatively new predictor
of ideological positions, dating back only to
1980 when Ronald Reagan was first elected.
 A much more traditional source of division
between liberals and conservatives has been
financial status, or what is often known as
social class. But now the relationship
between family income and ideology is now
relatively weak. As a result, social class has
become much less predictive of political
behavior than it used to be.
 The role of religion in influencing political
ideology has also changed greatly in recent
years. Catholics and Jews, as minority groups
who struggled for equality, have long been
more liberal than Protestants.
 Today, Jews remain by far the most liberal
demographic group in the country.
 The ideological gap between Catholics and
Protestants is now smaller than the gender
gap.
 Ideology is now determined more by
religiosity-that is, the degree to which
religion is important in one’s life-than by
religious denomination.
 What is now known as the Christian Right
consists of Catholics and Protestants who
consider themselves fundamentalists or
“born-again.”
 The influx of new policy issues dealing with
matters of morality and traditional family
values has recently tied this aspect of
religious beliefs to political ideology.
 Those who identify themselves as born-again
Christians are currently the most conservative
demographic group.
 On the other hand, people who say they have
no religious affiliation are more liberal than
conservative.
Do People think in Ideological
Terms?
 The authors of the classic study” The
American Voter” examined how much people
rely on ideology to guide their political
thinking.
 They divided the public into four groups.
Their portrait was not flattering.
 Policy positions taken by parties or
candidates. Only 12% of the people showed
evidence of thinking in ideological terms and
thus were classified as ideologues. These
people could connect their opinions and
beliefs with broad policy positions taken by
parties or candidates.
 42% of Americans were classified as group
benefits voters. These people thought of
politics mainly in terms of the groups they
liked or disliked.
 24% of the population were nature of the
times voters. Their handle on politics was
limited to whether the times seemed good or
bad to them; they might link the party in
power with the country’s fortune or
misfortune.
 Finally, 22% of the voters were devoid of any
ideological or issue content in their political
evaluations. They were called the no issue
content group. Most of them simply voted
routinely for a party or judged the candidates
solely on their personalities.
 These findings do not mean that the vast
majority of the population does not have a
political ideology. Rather, for most people
the terms liberal and conservative are just not
as important as they are for the political elite
such as politicians, activists, journalists, and
the like.
 Thus, the authors of “The American Voter”
concluded that to speak of election results as
indicating a movement of the public either
left or right is not justified because most
voters do not think in such terms.
Furthermore, those who do are actually the
least likely to shift from one election to the
next.
How Americans Participate in
Politics
 Political participation encompasses the many
activities in which citizens engage to
influence the selection of political leaders or
the policies they pursue. Participation can be
overt or subtle. Political participation can be
violent or peaceful, organized or individual,
casual or consuming.
Conventional Participation
 Conventional participation includes many
widely accepted ways of influencing
government-voting, trying to persuade
others, ringing doorbells for a petition,
running for office, and so on. Unconventional
participation involves activities that are often
more dramatic, such as protesting, civil
disobedience, and even violence.
 Thus, although the decline of voter turnout is
a development Americans should be
concerned about, a broader look at political
participation reveals some positive
developments for participatory democracy.
Protest as Participation
 Protest is a form of political participation
designed to achieve policy changes through
dramatic and unconventional tactics. The
media’s willingness to cover the unusual can
make protests worthwhile, drawing attention
to a point of view that many Americans might
otherwise never encounter.
 Throughout American history, individuals and
groups have sometimes used civil
disobedience as a form of protest; that is,
they have broken a law consciously that they
thought was unjust.
 Sometimes political participation can be
violent. The history of violence in American
politics is a long one-not surprising for a
nation born in rebellion. Although supported
by few people, violence has been a means of
pressuring the government to change its
policies throughout American history.
Class, Inequality, and
Participation
 The rates of political participation are
unequal among Americans. Virtually every
study of political participation has come to
the conclusion that “citizens of higher social
economic status participate more in politics.
This generalization… holds true whether one
uses level of education, income, or
occupation as the measure of social status.”
 The participation differences between
African-Americans and Hispanics and the
national average are no longer enormous,
however. One reason for this relatively small
participation gap is that minorities have a
group consciousness that gives them an extra
incentive to vote.
 In fact, when African-Americans, Hispanics,
and Whites of equal income and education
are compared, the minorities participate
more in politics.
 In general, lower rates of political
participation among these minority groups
are linked with lower socioeconomic status.
 Who gets what in politics therefore depends
in part on who participates.
Understanding Public Opinion and
Political Action
 For much of the population, however,
questions about the scope of government
have consistently elicited no opinion at all.
 Once again, it seems that the public is not
nearly so concerned with political issues as
would be ideal in a democratic society.
 Although people today think the government
is too active, a plurality has consistently
called for more spending on such programs as
education, health care, aid to big cities,
protecting the environment, and fighting
crime.
 Many political scientists have looked at these
contradictory findings and concluded that
Americans are ideological conservatives but
operational liberals-meaning that they
oppose the idea of big government in
principle but favor it in practice.
 The fact that public opinion is often
contradictory in this respect contributes to
policy gridlock because it is hard for
politicians to know which aspect of the
public’s attitudes to respond to.
 It can be said that American citizens have
become well socialized to democracy. Thus,
even if they are only voting according to the
nature of the times, their voices are clearly
being heard-holding public officials
accountable for their actions.