Gov: Public Opinion

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Content Objective:

Understand the influence of media coverage, political advertising, and public opinion polls in shaping public opinion.

Language Objectives:

• Understand, learn, and use new vocabulary that is introduced and taught directly through informational text and direct instruction.
• Identify and/or summarize main ideas, facts, supporting details, and opinions in an informational and/or practical selection.
• Read and synthesize information found in various parts of charts, tables, or diagrams to reach supported conclusions.

Learning Target:

Students will explain how individuals form their public opinion.

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Americans express their views on how this country should be led when they cast their ballots for president every four years. In the months leading up to the election, voters are bombarded with ads influencing public opinion about the candidates. Vast sums of money are spent on campaign ads in the hope of persuading voters to support one candidate over another.

The 1952 presidential campaign was the first to use the new medium of television extensively to reach voters. Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate, opted to buy time for eighteen half-hour speeches airing from 10:30 to 11:00 two nights a week. The lateness of the hour and the dull format of his speeches limited the audience tuning in.

Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican candidate embraced to use of twenty to thirty second spot ads. The campaign titled “Eisenhower Answers America,” featured the candidate answering a question posed by an ordinary citizen. The ads showed “Ike” as a plain speaker responding to real people’s concern. Eisenhower won a decisive victory with more than 55 percent of the votes cast.

Formation of Public Opinion

From the election results, one might conclude that the public’s view of using televised ads to sell candidates was generally positive. In reality, figuring out what the public thinks is not so easy. The American public consists of more than 3300 million individuals with their own personal beliefs, values, attitudes, and opinions.

The opinions you may have on political issues tend to be shaped by deeply held political beliefs and values. The formation of these beliefs and values begins early in life and continues throughout adulthood. Political scientists call this process political socialization. To “socialize” an individual means to teach that person to be a fit member of society. Political socialization involves learning about the values, beliefs, and processes that underlie a political system in order to participate in it effectively.

The process of political socialization is important. No democracy could survive if its citizens did not share some fundamental beliefs about how their government should operate. This process does not produce 300 million people who think exactly alike. Political socialization involves all of the experiences that lead us to view political issues the way we do. And those experiences are never the same from one person to the next.

Many agents, or forces, play a part in political socialization. These agents of socialization include family, school, religion, friends, and mass media.

Political Socialization is the process by which we gain our political identity. It begins early in childhood and continues throughout our lives. Many agents, or forces, play a part in political socialization. They include:

Family (Toddler). Families play a large role in our early socialization. Mostly high school seniors identify with same political party as their parents.

School (Young child). Schools teach us to love our country, respect the law, and value our rights. The more education Americans get, the more likely they are to participate in politics.

Religion (Older child). Religious teachings help shape political values. People may have more conservative or more liberal views based on their religious beliefs.

Peer Groups (Teenager). As we age, our friends and co-workers begin to influence our political views. So do the groups we join, such as labor unions and political parties.

Gender and Ethnicity (Young adult). Gender and ethnic identity affect our political loyalties. Men are more likely to vote Republican than women. Black voters are more likely than white voters to cast ballots for Democrats.

News Media (Mature adult). The news media influence what we pay attention to as adults. The effects of the media vary with our reading and viewing habits.

Historical events are another important factor. For example, children growing up in the 1950s tended to have a positive view of government. Those growing up in the 1960s, a time marked by political assassinations, urban riots and the Vietnam War, were more likely to view government with considerable distrust.

Shaping Public Opinion

Public opinion is defined as the sum of many individual opinions about a public person or issue. This definition assumes that we can find out what public opinion is on a given issue by asking a large number of people what they think and adding up their responses. With so many opinions floating around among so many Americans, how does public opinion come to be shaped? Consider these three answers:

Public opinion is shaped by special interest groups. Public opinion is less about what individuals think and more about what the special interest groups they belong to advocate. Many groups represent large numbers of people and are listened to when they speak out.

Public opinion is shaped by journalists, politicians, and other opinion makers. Most of us don’t have the time to become informed on every issue. Instead we look to influential opinion makers for information and advice. These opinion makers may be journalists, public officials, business leaders, or activists. Because they have access to the media, their opinions often become our opinions.

Public opinion is shaped by what politicians say it is. Politicians often talk about what the people think without evidence to back up their claims. They may sincerely believe they have their fingers on the pulse of the public. By claiming that the public agrees with them loudly enough, they hope to convince the American people that it must be true.

However public opinion takes shape, it is seldom a single view held by all Americans. Our country is too large and diverse for that to be true. It is more likely to be a range of views held by many different publics.

Public Opinion as Guide, Guard, and Glue

Public opinion serves our democratic system of government as guide, guard, and glue. Public opinion guides leaders as they make decisions about public policy. Whether conveyed through opinion polls, town hall meetings, letters, or emails, public opinion helps politicians know what their constituents are thinking. Politicians who ignore what the people care about do so at their own peril. When the next election rolls around, they risk being voted out of office.

Public opinion also serves as guard against hasty or poorly understood decisions. In 1993, President Clinton proposed a complete restructuring of the national health care system. As public confusion about his proposed reforms mounted, the plan lost steam. Without public support, it never made it to the floor of Congress for debate.

Public opinion serves as a kind of glue in a diverse society like ours. Widespread agreement on basic political beliefs holds our society together, even in times of intense partisan conflict.

Measuring Public Opinion

The evolution of opinion polling from straw polls to scientific sampling. A straw poll is an informal survey of opinion conducted by a show of hands or some other means of counting preferences. In the 1936 election, Literary Digest used straw polls to predict the winner. The magazine mailed out more than 10 million ballots and predicted Alfred Landon the winner over Franklin Roosevelt based on the over 2 million ballots that were returned. The editors didn’t take into account that their sample was biased. Most of the ballots went to wealthy people who tended to vote Republican.

A young pollster named George Gallup disagreed with Literary Digest’s prediction. Gallup chose Roosevelt as the winner and publicly challenged newspapers and magazines to show the two polls side by side. The result was a triumph for Gallup with Roosevelt winning by a landslide.

The secret of Gallup’s success was his careful use of scientific sampling. Sampling is the process of selecting a small group of people who are representative of the whole population. His success marked the birth of the modern opinion poll.

Polling Process

Polling organizations follow the same methods pioneered by Gallup, though with a few improvements. The first step is to identify the population to be surveyed. The target population might be all adults, members of a political party, a specific age group, or people living in one community.

Most polling is done by telephone. Phoning people randomly ensures a representative sample of people are interviewed. In a random sample every individual has a chance of being selected. The number of people surveyed ranges from 500 to 1,500. Internet surveys are also widely used.

MOE = margin of error – 25 points

Opinions gathered in the survey are summed up and reported in terms of the percent choosing each response, Most polls also report a margin of error stated as plus or minus (+) some number of percentage points. The margin of error indicates how accurately the sample surveyed reflects the views of the target population. If the margin of error is small, the results reported are close to the opinions of the population.

Polling to Measure Public Sentiment

George Gallup saw public opinion polls as the equivalent of the town meeting. He said, politicians should view poll results as a mandate from the people. Public officials could no longer ignore voter sentiment by claiming that public opinion was unknowable.

Today, opinion polls are used as means of gathering information about public sentiment. Businesses use polls to measure consumers’ attitude about their product. Groups of all sorts use polls to find out what their members are concerned about.

News organizations commission polls to measure the views of the American people on major issues of the day. For example, one regularly repeated opinion poll, asks people to respond to this open-ended question: What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today? As expected, the results change over time as new issues arise and capture the interest of the public.

Seventy percent of the 1,024 adults surveyed did support the mandatory controls. Would such a result change the mind of a lawmaker opposed to restrictions is hard to know. But a legislator who agreed with the majority view might be encouraged by the poll to press harder for new emission controls.

Presidents and other public officials use polls to measure how well they are doing in the eyes of the voters. They use the results to help them develop policies that they hope the public will support. In addition, the news media report regularly on the rise and fall of presidential approval ratings.

Polling in Political Campaigns

There are three special kinds of polls that are widely used during elections. A long and detailed benchmark poll is used by prospective candidates to test the waters before beginning a campaign. Candidates use information from such polls to identify which messages to emphasize in their campaigns and which to avoid.

Tracking polls are conducted during a campaign to measure support for a candidate on a day-by-day basis. Pollsters survey groups of likely voters each night to find out how their views have been affected by the political events of that day. Each day’s poll is a snapshot of the electorate’s views. Taken together, tracking polls can reveal trends and shifts in attitudes over time.

Exit polls are used by campaigns and the news media to predict the winners on election day, long before the polls close. An exit poll is a survey of voters taken at polling places just after they have cast their ballots. Because ballots are cast in secret, exit polling is the only way we have of finding out how different age or ethnic groups voted and why.

Misuse of Polling

Polls are used more to shape than to measure public opinion. Elected officials and special interest groups sometimes claim to be assessing public opinion by sending out mail surveys. The questions in these surveys are often rigged to generate highly favorable results for the sponsor of the poll.

Television and radio shows use call-in, text message, and internet straw polls to report public opinion. In 1992, on the basis of a call-in poll, it was reported that 53 percent of Americans felt “worse off than four years ago.” A scientific poll showed that 32 percent felt worse off. This damaged George H.W. Bush approval rating and was too late to repair the damage.

Push polls are phone surveys made close to election days on behalf of a candidate. When pollsters call, they sound like they want your views on the election. But their real purpose is to push you away from voting for their opponent by spreading damaging information. They’re trying to raise last-minute doubts. The American Association for Public Opinion Research has declared push polls to be an unethical campaign practice.

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Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the students and speakers of our government classes and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of this website, institution, or organization. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual.