1. VOTER BEHAVIOR, PUBLIC OPINION, AND POLLS
Unit 2

2. 10/16 Warm Up No written warm-up today Place on your desk:
Blank sheet for your reading check
Your answers/notes
Bowling Alone reading (from last Thursday)

3. How much social capital do you have?
Give yourself 1 point for each of the following:
Regularly participate with political party/interest group
Attended a public meeting in the past year
Attended a political rally/event in the past year
Volunteer regularly
Regularly attend synagogue/temple/mosque/church
Know the names of one half of the people on your block
Play on a sports team
Can name our mayor, US representative, and US Senators
Member of a club/organization that meets regularly
Go out more than one night a weekend

4. Your Social Capital Score
Points
10-9 League Bowler extraordinaire
8-7 Social Capitalist
6-5 Civic Activist
4-3 In Training
2-0 Bowling Alone

5. Does possessing social capital matter? Why?

6. SOCIAL CAPITAL and CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Has the US witnessed a decline in civic engagement over the past 50 years? Why?

7. Voter Behavior
Why don’t people vote?

8. Active Citizenship
What are some ways to be politically active and participate in the political process?

9. Should non-citizens be allowed to vote?

10. Can one vote make a difference?
Power of One Vote
Can one vote make a difference?

11. Voter Behavior
What factors influence voters and they decisions they make when voting?

12. Voter Turnout
Explain the correlation between age, education, race, and voting turnout.

13. The Electorate (and non-voters)
25% attentive public—know and do something
35% non-voters—not really interested- political know-nothings—don’t want to know
40% Part-time citizens—selectively participate—not usually interested
Which group has the most power? Why?

14. 2016 Election Participation
63 million voted for Trump
65.9 million voted for Clinton
102.7 million no-shows
Consider the power of the electoral no- shows.

15. Ch. 7&8 Reading Check
Define public opinion.
Define coattail effect.
What are the goals/purpose of the Federal Election Commission (FEC)? (Ch. 7, #3)
How do family and education shape public opinion? (Ch. 8, #1)
How does mass media influence politics? (Ch. 8, #6)

16. Ch. 7&8 Reading Check Answers
Public opinion- attitudes held by a significant number of people on matters of government and politics
Coattail effect - when a strong candidate is running for office at the top of the ballot and it helps attract voters to the other candidates from that political party.
What are the goals/purpose of the Federal Election Commission (FEC)? The Federal Exchange Commission was created to administer laws about campaign finance. They require the disclosure of campaign finance data, place limits on contributions, place limits on expenditures, and provide some public funding.
How do family and education shape public opinion?  Families are agents of political socialization by influencing the experiences and relationships that children have, shaping their view of the world.  Schools teaching children the values of the American political system from their earliest experiences learning--training students to be good citizens.
How does the mass media influence politics?  The media presents people with political information through the news, radio and television programs, newspaper stories, etc that help shape the public agenda and electoral politics (allow candidates to appeal directly to the people through the media, and use the media to create a specific image for the candidate).

17. How much social capital do you have?
Give yourself 1 point for each of the following:
Regularly participate with political party/interest group
Attended a public meeting in the past year
Attended a political rally/event in the past year
Volunteer regularly
Regularly attend synagogue/temple/mosque/church
Know the names of one half of the people on your block
Play on a sports team
Can name our mayor, US representative, and US Senators
Member of a club/organization that meets regularly
Go out more than one night a weekend

18. Your Social Capital Points 10-9 League Bowler extraordinaire
8-7 Social Capitalist
6-5 Civic Activist
4-3 In Training
2-0 Bowling Alone

19. Civic Engagement
Essential Questions: What motivates people to be civically engaged and politically active?
What is social capital?
In what ways have civic engagement and social capital declined over the last 50 years? Why?
What are the consequences of the decline?
Are there modern methods, equitable to the ones Putnam mentioned, for engaging in the community?

20. Social Capital
Refers to “features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (67)

21. Civic Engagement Civic Virtue Civic Engagement
Qualities associated with the effective functioning of civil/political order preserving its values and principles
Personal devotion to the success of the community
Virtues:
Contribution, courage, humility
Integrity, justice, perseverance
Respect, responsibility, self-governance
Civic Engagement
Making a difference in the civic life of the community through political and non- political processes
Moral and civic dimensions

22. Civic Engagement Civic Duty Civic Responsibility Taxes Jury duty
Obeying laws
Serving in the military if drafted
Civic Responsibility
Voting
Volunteering for military service
Running for office
Participating in politics

23. Declining Social Capital
Rank the following:
1 = most responsible for the decline in social capital
5 = least responsible for the decline in social capital
Technology: Internet and Cell Phones
Pace of life
Family structure
Suburbanization, sprawl, and mobility
Wealth and economic competition

24. Social Capital and Politics
How does social capital affect political systems?
How does trust relate to democracy?
Fact: The more money you have, the more likely you are to vote.

25. NC Primary Turnout for Non-presidential election
Voter Turnout
2016 General Election
2016 Primary Election
137.5 Million Americans voted (61.4%)
8.4 % Non-citizen
1,456,032 Prison
2,254,727 Probation
508,576 Parole
3,249,802 Total Ineligible Felons
4,739,596 Overseas Eligible
similar turnout in 2012
63.6% in 2008
57.6 million Americans voted (28.5 %)
Includes primaries, not caucuses
31% of NC voters
7.2 million people eligible in NC
NC Primary Turnout for Non-presidential election
% (1,028,600 ballots cast out of 6.5 million registered voters)

26. Why don’t people vote?
Brainstorm reasons why with your team

27. NONVOTERS “Cannot-Voters” – unable to vote aren’t allowed to
sick or disabled
travelling, out of town
*Some simply choose not to
Other reasons people don’t vote?

28. VOTER BEHAVIOR
Political socialization - the process by which people gain their political attitudes or opinions.
Factors influencing voters
Sociological factors: income, occupation, education, gender (gender gap), age, religion, ethnic background, geography, family/friend groups
Psychological factors: party identification, (straight-ticket and split-ticket voting), candidates and issues
How do candidates use these to get people to vote for them?

29. Exit Ticket
How can we increase the political participation and voter turnout in our communities? How do we get people engaged in what’s happening in our towns, state, and nation?

30. 10/19 WARM-UP
What factor is most influential in shaping public opinion?
How is public opinion measured?

31. How is public opinion measured?
Work with your team to fill in your handout on measuring public opinion, types of polls, and the potential problems with polling.
When you finish with the packet of information/notes, switch notes with another team who has the section you need. (Types of Polls or Problems)
If you finish before we are ready to discuss the information together,
Work on your current event
Discuss your Party Project with your teams (i.e.: What needs to be done.)
Study for your Unit 2 test next week.
Read Ch. 9

32. Do elected politicians represent their constituents, or do they work for the greater good?
How do politicians know what the voters want?
Poll - a survey given to a group of people to measure their opinion

33. MEASURING PUBLIC OPINION
Sources of information: elections, interest groups, the media, personal contacts
Polling process: Defining the universe, constructing a sample, preparing valid questions, interviewing, analyzing and reporting findings

34. WAYS TO ASSESS PUBLIC OPINION
Person on the street interviews
Constituent mail received by policy makers
Public opinion polls
Focus groups

35. PROBLEMS
Heisenberg effect — presence of research creates event. ie, ask a question, create opinion on it.
Members of public often have no opinion about an issue, but develop an opinion as soon when asked a question
Examples of opinion being created when someone is asked a question
Survey findings on complex issues or issues that are not highly visible are suspect because most people do not have opinions on them. In the case of most respondents, the question created an opinion where there was none.
Do you approve of the Federal Reserve Board’s policy of lowering taxes? Response categories: Yes/No. Factually, the Federal Reserve Board cannot raise or lower taxes. The question misled respondents and created an opinion where there is no factual reason to have one. When someone who had no prior opinion was asked a question and gave an opinion, the so-called “opinion” quickly disappears.

36. PROBLEMS
Question bias - what you ask and how you ask it influences how interviewees respond.
Example: Did you vote? Response categories: yes, no. Many non-voters will answer yes because it is socially desirable to vote.
Example of a politically biased question: Given that Barack Obama is a socialist who wasn’t born in the United States and John McCain is a war hero who shares American’s values, who do you plan to vote for in November? This could encourage a voter who has no prior information or partisan leanings to vote for McCain over Obama

37. PROBLEMS
Interviewer bias - different types of people respond differently to people interviewing them.
Working class people answer an interviewer in a suit different than they answer one who is in jeans to try to show they know as much as the person in a suit.
Women answer female interviewers differently than they answer male interviewers, particularly on gender-based topics, such as abortion rights and the glass ceiling
Minority/racial groups are also influenced by whether an interviewer is white or belongs to one of their group.

38. PROBLEMS
Sampling error - There is a possibility that a pollster drew a bad survey. Surveys of 1,000 have a margin of error of 13/+3%. That means that 3 out of 1,000 samples do not accurately reflect public opinion.
“Snapshot problem” - Public opinion is always changing, not fixed. It responds to changes in conditions and events. A poll taken today may not reflect public opinion tomorrow.

39. DIFFERENT KINDS OF POLLS
Baseline polls:
Surveys of 1,000 or more Designed to assess knowledge voters on a large number of issues or candidates. It is usually a year or many months before the campaign season.
Typical questions are used to learn whether voters have ever heard of a candidate. The percentage with knowledge is usually very low, especially in the case of challengers for low-level offices.

40. DIFFERENT KINDS OF POLLS
Trend polls:
Surveys of 800 or less that have fewer questions.
They usually follow-up on areas of interest that are found in a baseline poll, such as specific issues that voters disagree on.
They are helpful to
assess the impact of the
advertising that
candidates have done.

41. DIFFERENT KINDS OF POLLS
Tracking polls:
Preceding types of polls are analogous to snapshots of public opinion. Tracking polls are more like moving pictures.
Tracking polls usually are taken during last two months of an election campaign.
The idea is to see how public opinion responds to campaign activities. Typically people are sampled per night. There are three-night waves.
The expectation is that by adding and dropping respondents, pollsters will be able to see changes in public opinion take place in response to campaign activities.
That is, if 200 are surveyed per night. The first night the sample will have 200 people, the second night it will have 400 people, and the third night it will have 600 people. When the fourth night arrives 200 more people are surveyed and the people surveyed on the first night are dropped, resulting in a sample of 600 people. Every night another 200 people are surveyed and those whose data are four days old are dropped from the sample.

42. DIFFERENT KINDS OF POLLS
Exit polls:
Conducted at polling places on election-day to speculate about outcome and reasons for it.
Pick a set of voting precincts that pollsters believe have individuals who represent other precincts. Survey them as they leave the polling place at different times of the day.
Precincts and the voters in them that are interviewed are chosen in order get information from a sufficient number of voters of different population groups to assess the opinion of those groups and generalize to other places.

43. DIFFERENT KINDS OF POLLS
“Push Polls”:
Do not accurately measure public opinion
Push polls are a type of negative campaigning that do not intend to collect objective public opinion information.
They start out with a person asking questions as if a survey was being conducted. Then they quickly switch to a communication in which the interviewer provides negative information about one of the candidates.

44. DIFFERENT KINDS OF POLLS
Focus Groups:
Used to get in-depth reactions to campaign themes, messages, TV ads.
Usually 15 to 20 individuals participate. They are members of a target audience that are selected because they have certain characteristics that represent a campaign is trying to influence.
This type of public opinion study is useful in selecting or fine tuning campaign messages.
Examples: middle1class suburban women, conservative farmers. They are not scientific random sample Focus group participants are presented with various pieces of information about candidates, issues, or campaign advertisements and are asked their opinions about what they have viewed. Do they like or dislike them? Have suggestions for making the ads more appealing?

45. SAMPLE CIVICS POLL
What is good about it and what needs to be changed?

46. DESIGN A POLL
With a partner, you will design a poll that measures the opinion of your classmates on a specific issue that we pick as a class.
You need 5 unbiased questions to ask people.