Chapter 7 Public Opinion What is Public Opinion

Chapter 7 Public Opinion

What is Public Opinion? How people think or feel about particular things. students in 1940 found that, while a small group of cutinizes knew lots about government the vast majority knew next that to nothing about government and had many nations even on much publicity matters that affect them directly. Later students suggested that, while most citizens are poorly informed about Most citizens are poorly informed about government and cave little about most public policy issue they are sonless pretty good at using limited info to figure out what policies parties or candidates most nearly reflect their values or favor their and the acting. How polling works If properly conducted a poll can capture the opinion of 250 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 he results of random samples taken at the same time Exit polls based on interviews conducted on elections day with random voters. How questions are different political socialization process but which personal and other back grounds traits are ones views about political and government. Research show that mass and elite opinion are different. Ø

Political Socialization: The Family n n The majority of young people identify with the 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. n Religion • A way in which the family forms and transmits political belief is by its religious tradition • Catholics basically mirror the general public in the extent to which they see school prayer as an effective way to shape young people’s values and behavior • Evangelicals differ widely with Jews and the non-religious on the question whether school prayer violates the constitution. n The Gender Gap • Difference in political views between men and women. • Men have become increasingly Republican since mid-labor's. n Schooling and Info • Research has shown that attending college had a big impact on their political attitudes. n

Political Ideology Political I ideology – a more or less consistent set of beliefs about what policies government fought pursue. Political scientist measure the extending to which political ideology in two ways. First by seeing how frequency people use broad political categories such s liberal conservative radical to describe their owns views or to justify their preference for various candidates and polices second, by seeing to what extent the policy preferences of citizen are consistent principles. Figure 7. 3 picture of ideological self identification surveys Typical find the moderates are the largest groups among American voters conservation second and liberal smallest (liberalism) an active national government that could inter view in the economy create social welfare programs and help certain groups such as organizing labor. 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.

ó Political Elites, Public Opinion, and Public Policy are very different in many ways and they are often intense antagonisms between two groups. The government had little interest in what it should do in south Africa or central America. At the time the government was preoccupied with these matters. The second elites state that norms by which issues should be settled. ( A norm is a stander of right or proper conduct). But by doing this they help determine the range of acceptable and un acceptable policy options. For example, elites have a long time That they had some views condemning racism and sexism will at least intimidate those ho are racism. They are even crosscutting cleavages based on race ethnicity, religion, and education in addition to those created by income and occupation.

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

Social Class n n Class cleavage has declines in the last few decades. During the 1950’s differences in political opinion are closely associated with occupation. In the 1960’s these views changed to reflect the views of the manual workers which is a more liberal view. 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 n n 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.