Chapter 7 Public Opinion

What is Public Opinion? How people think or feel about particular things. Study found that students in 1940: while a small group of citizens knew a lot about government the vast majority knew next to nothing about government and even on political policy that affected them directly. Later studies suggested that, while most citizens are poorly informed about government and care little about most public policy issue Most people do back parties or candidates that most closely reflect their values or favor their behavior.

What is Public Opinion? How polling works If properly conducted a poll can capture the opinion of 317 million citizen by interviewing as few as 1,500 of them random sample The method of selecting from a population in which each person has his own equal probability of being selected Sampling error The different between the results of random samples taken at the same time Exit poll polls based on interviews conducted on elections day with random voters.

Political Socialization: The Family The majority of young people identify with their parents political party. 91% of children know the presidential preference of their parents 71% of children know their parent’s party identification 9% identified with the party opposite to that of their parents Children are more independent of their parents in policy preference than party identification.

Political Socialization: The Family The Gender Gap Difference in political views between men and women. Men have become increasingly Republican since mid-80’s. Schooling Research has shown that attending college had a big impact on their political attitudes.

Political Ideology Political Ideology – a consistent set of beliefs about what policies government should pursue. Political scientist measure the existing political ideology in two ways . First by the frequency people use broad political categories such as liberal or conservative or to justify their preference for various candidates and polices second, by seeing to what extent the policy preferences of citizen are consistent principles.

Political Ideology Figure 7.3 picture of ideological self identification surveys Typical finds that moderates are the largest groups among American voters conservatives are second and liberal smallest Liberalism: believe in an active national government that could intervene in the economy, create social welfare programs and help certain groups Conservatism favored a free market rather that a regulated one, state rights over national supremacy in economic affairs 3 questions economy, civil rights and political conduct.

Cleavages in Public Opinion The way political opinions are formed helps explain the cleavages that exist among different opinions. People with different social class have different political views.

Social Class Class cleavage has declines in the last few decades. During the 1950’s differences in political opinion were closely associated with occupation. In the 1960’s these views changed to reflect a more liberal view across occupations. Many of the issues that now lead us to choose which party to support and that determine whether we think of ourselves as liberal or conservative are noneconomic issues.

Race and Ethnicity In some ways racial differences are of central importance. There’s a cleavage in opinion among black leaders and the black general public same goes for whites. Latino public opinion has been considered small, disproportionably oriented toward immigration, and relatively silent on the influence of gender. There virtually no data on Asian public opinion.