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Chapter 8 section 2 “Measuring Public

Opinion”

Measuring Public Opinion

Found through key indicatorsVoting, lobbying, books, pamphlets, magazine

and newspaper articles, editorial comments in the press and on radio television, and the Internet, paid advertising letters to editors and public officials

Information critical in the American political system

Elections

Votes are cast for the various candidates are regularly taken as evidence of the people’s approval or rejection of the stands taken by people or their party

Victorious candidates regularly claim to have received a mandate to carry out their campaign promises

Mandate: the instructions or commands a constituency gives to its elected officials.

Election results are seldom an accurate measure of public opinion

Only useful indicators of public opinion

Interest Groups

Private organizations whose members share certain views and objectives and who work to shape the making and the content of public policy.

Chief means by which public opinion is made known

Present their views lobbyists, letters, telephone calls, and emails

The Media

The media is a gauge for assessing public opinion

“mirrors” as well as “molders” of opinionViews expressed in the media are fairly good

indicators of public opinionNot accurate mirrors of public opinion

Personal Contacts

Most public officials have frequent and wide-ranging contacts

Purpose: try to read the public’s mindMembers of Congress receive mail, emails,

and phone calls every dayTry to “keep in touch with folks back home”Many can find “the voice of the people” with

these contacts accurately

Public Opinion Polls

Devices that attempt to collect information by asking people questions.

Straw Votes

Earlier polling efforts were polls that sought to read the public’s mind simply by asking the same question of a large number of people.

Radio talk-show hosts pose questions that listeners can respond to by telephone, and television personalities regularly invite responses by email

Highly unreliable-rests on the mistaken assumption that a relatively large number of responses will provide

Emphasizes the quantity rather than the quality of a sample

Ex: Mishap with the election 1936 election with Literary Digest

Scientific Polling

Mid-1930s: Early pollsters as George Gallup and Elmo Roper.

Today: more than 1,000 national and regional polling organizations. (mostly commercial work)

Gallup Organization and the Pew Research Center for People and the Press

News-gathering polls to report public attitudes on matters of current interest

The Polling Process

Complex process5 steps

1) define the universe to be surveyed 2) construct a sample 3) prepare valid questions 4) select and control how the poll will be taken 5) analyze and report their findings to the public

Defining the Universe

Means the whole population that the poll aims to measure.

A group whose opinions the poll will seek to discover

Ex: all voters in Chicago, every high school student in Texas.

Constructing a Sample

Very small (30 members of a high school class)

The best way to discover what that entire universe thinks about some matter would be to question all of its members

Each universe is so large that it would be impossible to interview all of its members

Sample: a representative slice of the total universe

Most pollsters draw random samples (composed of randomly selected people, and so it is one in which all the members of its universe stand an equal chance of being interviewed)

Major national polls regularly use samples composed of some 1,500 or so people to represent the nation’s adult population

Mathematic law of probabilityIf the sample is of sufficient size and is

properly selected at random from the entire universe, that law of probability says that the result will be accurate to within a small and predictable margin of error

A less complicated, but less reliable, sampling method call quota sample (deliberately constructed to reflect the major characteristics of a given universe.)

Most of the people in the sample will belong to more than one of the categories used to build the sample.(Major reason why such samples are less reliable than random samples)

Asking Well-Drawn Questions

The way questions are asked is critically important to the reliability of any poll.

Try to avoid “loaded” emotionally charged words and terms that are difficult to understand

Avoid questions that are worded in a way that tends to shape answers.

Interviewing

How pollsters communicate with respondents can also affect accuracy.

Today, pollsters do their work by telephone, with a sample selected by random digit dialing.

One technique should be used not a combination

Very sensitive point in the process (interviewer can influence a respondent's replies and so affect the validity of a poll)

Analyzing Findings

Polls measure people’s attitudes.Must analyze and report the resultsComputers and other electronic hardware

handle the dataPollsters use technologies to tabulate and

interpret their data, draw their conclusions, and then publish their findings.

Evaluating Polls

Pollsters know that they have difficulty measuring the intensity, stability, and relevance of the opinions they report.

“Bandwagon effect” some voters wanting to be with the winner, jump on the bandwagon of the candidate who is ahead in the polls

Reliable guides to public thought

Limits on the Impact

Public opinion is the major, but by no means the only, force at work to influence public policy in this country.

The doctrines of separation of powers and of checks and balances, and the constitutional guarantees of civil rights and liberties are intended to protect minority interests against the excesses of majority views and actions

Polls are NOT elections, nor substitutes for electionsDemocracy is all about making careful choices among

leaders and their positions on public issues, and among the actions that may flow from those choices.