Public Opinion John N. Lee Florida State University Summer 2010 John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 1 / 20
What is it? Public Opinion Opinions held by private individuals that the government cares about. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 2 / 20
How do we measure it? Scientific Polling Tools, based on random samples used to measure public opinion. General steps to conducting good poll of public opinion. 1 Find a random sample. 2 Ask questions. 3 Tally the answers. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 3 / 20
Problems with Random Samples Impediments to a Random Sample 1 Samples consist of phoned individuals. 6% of the population does not have a phone. Cell phone users are typically omitted because it costs too much to use them to generate a simple random sample. 2 If you send people mail a lot of them will throw it away as junk. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 4 / 20
Problems with Polls Sometimes the questions are worded poorly. Here are some examples of bad questions... 1 Everyone supports the war in Iraq, what do you think? 2 Do you support the wasteful proposed subway? Some better questions... 1 Do you support the war in Iraq? 2 Do you support the proposed subway? John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 5 / 20
Framing Framing providing a context that affects the criteria citizens use to evaluate candidates, campaigns and political issues (KGK, 786). This is similar to what we just talked about (problems with polls). The media plays a roll in this. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 6 / 20
Media News Media the organizations that gather, package, and transmit the news through some proprietary communications technology (KGK, 654). Fairness Doctrine - Federal Communication Commission (FCC) policy requiring stations to devote time to public affairs and to do so in a fair way. This was ended in the 1980 s. What do we make of fox news, msnbc, or cnn? Media coverage (and its bias...if any) helps to frame issues in America. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 7 / 20
Margin of Error Easy to compute. Margin of Error = 0.98 n (1) If we compute the margin of error to be.05...this tells us that the margin of error for a poll is + or minus 5%. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 8 / 20
Margin of Error So let s look at an example. Say we have a sample size of 1000...what is our margin of error? Margin of Error = 0.98 1000 (2) Margin of Error = 0.98 31.62 (3) Margin of Error =.03 (4) So we say our estimate of opinion has margin of error of plus or minus 3%. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 9 / 20
Basics of Public Opinion Some argue that public opinion is an expression of underly attitudes. Attitude an organized and consistent manner of thinking, feeling, and reacting with regard to people, groups, social issues, or, more generally any event in one s environment (KGK). John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 10 / 20
Ideologies Some individuals possess sets of attitudes which are well organized and consistent (this is not true for everyone). Ideology elaborately organized set of political attitudes (e.g liberal and conservative). Some Notes: 1 Most individuals are not liberal or conservative (25% are in the middle, 25% are off the chart). 2 1 2 3 1 5 of Americans actually know what a conservative is. Americans use party identification to answer survey questions. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 11 / 20
Party Identification One s political ideology and party identification are not equivalent. Party Identification One s enduring attachment to a political party. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 12 / 20
Party Identification Where does one s Party Identification come from? 1 Parent s or the social environment you grew up in. 2 Past experience with political party. The book refers to these processes as Political Socialization. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 13 / 20
Are individuals informed? Should they be informed? Rational Ignorance Seeking political information is costly so people do not seek such information. Recall that to overcome the problem of Rational Ignorance individuals use Cognitive Shortcuts. Instead of seeking out all information they can assume that a candidate has liberal positions generally if said candidate is a democrat. But the question still remains, are people informed? John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 14 / 20
Informed Individuals Opinion Leaders A citizen who is highly attentive to and involved in politics or some related area and to whom other citizens turn for political information (KGK, 790). Issue Publics...subsets of the population who are better informed than everybody else about an issue (KGK, 484). Generally we expect that these people pay lower costs or receive benefits for garnering information. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 15 / 20
Public Opinion Does public opinion matter? If it matters we would expect two things... 1 Informed Citizens. 2 Citizens with consistent opinions. To look for these trends we can look in two places... 1 Individual opinion. 2 Aggregate opinion. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 16 / 20
Individual Level Public Opinion As it turns out individual level public opinion is... 1 not informed. 2 inconsistent. 3 subject to manipulation. Therefore we conclude that public opinion, at least based on individual level information, is not meaningful. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 17 / 20
Aggregate Level Public Opinion Aggregate Level Public Opinion the sum of all individual opinions. As it turns out Aggregate Level Public Opinion is stable. Why might this be? One argument suggests that uniformed individuals (a large proportion of the population) vote randomly. Since they vote randomly they divide evenly. In other words, given a choice between A and B uniformed individuals will pick A 1 2 of the time and B 1 2 of the time. While most individuals vote randomly, some individuals (opinion leaders and issue publics) vote deliberately and sway opinion one way or another. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 18 / 20
Aggregate Level Public Opinion Does the fact that in the aggregate, public opinion is stable mean that it is meaningful? Some argue that since it is cyclical and tends to a mean position that it does have meaning. Others argue that it is simply subject to manipulation either by PR campaigns or the media. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 19 / 20
Public Opinion About the System People generally support the United States political system but often proffer conflicting answers. In 1940, 97% of the US population believe in freedom of speech...but 76% support bans on Fascist/Communist information. In 1990 s, 87% of the US population say regulations on the books you can read are bad...but 50% say books advocating revolution are bad...in 2007 50% say such bans should extend to terrorist literature. So people generally support the constitutional system unless there are special circumstances. John N. Lee (Florida State University) Public Opinion Summer 2010 20 / 20