Chapter Five Public Opinion and Political Socialization.

Chapter Five

Public Opinion and Political

Socialization

Public Opinion and the Models of Democracy

• Public Opinion is the collective attitude of the citizens on a given issue or question.

• Statistical sampling theory does not claim that a sample exactly matches the population, only that it reflects the population with some predictable degree of accuracy.

Three Factors Determine the Accuracy of a Sample:

• How the sample is randomly selected

• The size of the sample—the larger the sample, the more accurately it represents the population

• The amount of variation in the population

Figure 5.1: Gallup Poll Accuracy

Public Opinion and the Models of Democracy (Cont’d)

• The majoritarian and pluralist models of democracy differ greatly in their assumptions about the role of public opinion in democratic government.

Majoritarian Model

• According to the classic majoritarian model, the government should do what a majority of the public wants.

Pluralist Model

• In contrast, pluralists argue that the public as a whole seldom demonstrates clear, consistent opinions on the day-to-day issues of government.

Distribution of Public Opinion

• Government must analyze the shape and the stability of the distribution of public opinion.

• Shape of the Distribution: the shape of the opinion distribution depicts the pattern of all the responses when counted and plotted.

Three Patterns of Distribution

• Skewed Distribution: An asymmetrical but generally bell-shaped distribution (of opinions); its mode, or most frequent response, lies off to one side.

Three Patterns of Distribution (Cont’d)

• Bimodal Distribution: A distribution (of opinions) that shows two responses being chosen about as frequently as each other.

Three Patterns of Distribution (Cont’d)

• Normal Distribution: A symmetrical bell-shaped distribution (of opinions) centered on a single mode, or most frequent response.

Figure 5.2: Three Distributions of Opinion

The Distribution of Public Opinion

• A distribution of opinions that shows little change over time is a stable distribution.

Political Socialization

• Political Socialization is the complex process by which people acquire their political values.

• Agents of Early Socialization include two fundamental principles that characterize early learning• Primacy principle—what is learned first is learned

best • Structuring principle—what is learned first structures

later learning. Agents that structure early socialization are the family, school and community and peers.

Political Socialization (Cont’d)

• Continuing Socialization includes newspaper and television news for the older American’s source of political news, while younger Americans are more likely to rely on radio, magazines or the Internet.

Figure 5.3: Socialization, Age, and Public Opinion

Social Groups and Political Values

• No two people are influenced by precisely the same socialization agents or in precisely the same way. People with similar backgrounds, however, do tend to develop similar political opinions.

Social Groups and Political Values (Cont’d)

• Examples used to demonstrate this included abortion and guaranteed employment.

• Perspectives applied to these issues included education, income, region, race and ethnicity, religion and gender.

Figure 5.4: Deviations of Group Opinion from National Opinion on Two Questions of Order and Equality

The Quality of Ideological Thinking in Public Opinion

• Studies of the public’s ideological thinking find that two themes run through people’s minds when they are asked to describe liberals and conservatives.

From Values to Ideology

• Liberals are associated with change and Conservatives with tradition.

• Liberals support intervention to promote economic equality while Conservatives favor less government intervention and more individual freedom in economic activities.

The Quality of Ideological Thinking in Public Opinion (Cont’d)

• Liberals are people who believe that government should promote equality, even if some freedom is lost in the process, but who oppose surrendering freedom to government-imposed order.

• Conservatives are people who place a higher value on freedom than on equality when the two conflict. Will restrict freedom when threatened with the loss of order.

• Ideological Types in the United States also include:

• Libertarians: People who favor freedom over both equality and order

• Communitarians: People who favor equality and order over freedom

Figure 5.5: Respondents Classified by Ideological Tendencies

The Process of Forming Political Opinions

• Political knowledge is not randomly distributed within our society. People with equivalent knowledge of public affairs and levels of conceptualization are equally likely to call themselves liberals or conservatives.

The Process of Forming Political Opinions (Cont’d)

• The self-interest principle—the implication that people choose what benefits them personally—plays an obvious role in how people form opinions on government policies.

• An opinion schema constitutes a network of organized knowledge and beliefs that guide a person’s processing of information regarding a particular subject.

• Public opinion on specific issues is molded by political leaders, journalists and policy experts.

• Politicians serve as cue-givers to members of the public.

• Issue framing is the manner in which a politician or interest group leader defines an issue when presenting it to others.

Chapter Five Public Opinion and Political Socialization.

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