Measuring Public Opinion Polls, Poll Questions, Poll Accuracy

Today’s Agenda Objective: Students will analyze political cartoons, public opinion polls, and current national polls to understand the power of public opinion as well investigating the sway of polls. Essential Skill: To explicitly assess information and data.

Targeting the Electorate http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/campaign-targeting/ How are politicians targeting the electorate today in ways that will affect you? Do you think these methods are successful? Why or why not? Is it “right” for political parties and interest groups to be advertising directly to you?

Responding to Public Opinion Public opinion is the measure of shared opinions throughout a large portion of the population Public opinion can drive public policy There is no single, undivided, opinion of the masses, but rather many different public opinions Public opinions is shown through elections, voting, lobbying, social media, newspapers, TV, and various other mediums Our best measure of public opinion comes from polling Margin of Error: a statistic expressing the amount of random sampling error in a survey's results

Measuring Public Opinion You are going to work with the people in your desk groups on 3 different tasks Send a representative from your group up to get your first set of materials. When you are finished with one task, trade your materials in for the next set. Tasks Analyzing Political Cartoons Looking at Past Public Opinion Polls *When the first two are finished* Using the ipads to explore recent polls and methodology. Links at the top of my teacher page All packets will be collected

Reflect and Discuss What are the value of polls? Dangers? What is the power of public opinion? What did you find interesting? Should public opinion drive public policy? Why or why not?