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American Government. Chapter 6 Public Opinion and Political Socialization. Public Opinion. What is it? The aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs shared by some portion of the adult population Consensus versus Divided Opinion (p.194)
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American Government Chapter 6 Public Opinion and Political Socialization
Public Opinion • What is it? • The aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs shared by some portion of the adult population • Consensus versus Divided Opinion (p.194) • Can you think of any examples of issues where there is a general consensus? What about divided opinion?
Political Socialization • Do you remember the term political socialization? What are its main sources? • What about the Internet? How can people become socialized by the Internet now?
Political Preferences and Voting Behavior • Many factors influence how you vote on election day: • Education • Income • Religion • Race • Gender • Geographic region
Measuring Public Opinion • Opinion Poll- a method of systematically questioning a small, selected sample of respondents who are deemed representative of the total population • How might Polls be useful? • What about Sampling Error? (the difference between a sample’s result and the true result if the entire population had been interviewed) • Any other issues with opinion polls? (telephone problems, no cell phones yet, internet polling)
Political Trust • The degree to which individuals express trust in the government • See Figure 6-5 on p. 213 • See Table 6-3 on p. 214