Presentation Transcript

1. Chapter 7: Public OpinionAP Classes Sept. 27, 2013

2. Warm-up Exercise Form groups of 3. It’s 2017 and you’ve been hired to conduct a poll to see which presidential candidate is winning. Whom will you poll? How will you conduct the poll? What will you ask? (Come up with 3-5 questions.) Keep your poll. We will revisit later in class.
3. Public opinion and democracy The age-old question: Should leaders lead or follow? While ours do a bit of both, often there is a disconnect between public opinion and policies. Why?
4. Why the disconnect? In part it’s what the Framers wanted. Remember that they didn’t have a lot of confidence in “the people” to govern. They put in lots of checks on public opinion (separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, Bill of Rights, etc.). In part it’s b/c it’s often hard to know what the public’s opinion is on a given topic.
5. Determining Public Opinion: Polling "If democracy is supposed to be based on the will of the people, then somebody should go out and find out what that will is." Dr. George Gallup Gallup made his name in 1936 election. The Literary Digest poll (which used phone books and car registrations) showed 1,293,669 for Landon and972,897for FDR. Gallup used random sampling and predicted FDR.
6. Polling nuts and bolts Needed for a reliable poll (3% + margin of error): Random sample – any given voter has an equal chance of being polled. Large sample size (at least 1,065 people for populations > 500k (some say 1,500), which requires around 15,000 calls) Unbiased, clear questions
7. Other relevant terms “Tracking polls” The same poll given over an extended period of time. Done to measure changes in public opinion. See, e.g., http://www.gallup.com/home.aspxhttp://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspxhttp://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/)
8. Other relevant terms (cont.) “Straw poll” Not really a “poll” as we’re using that term; it is more just a nonbinding vote of a group of people. Example: Getting a show of hands at a political meeting. Often misleading; usually no attempt to be scientific; participants may be swayed by others. Most famous one may be the Ames Straw Poll (a good show of candidate strength in Iowa before its caucus)
9. Other relevant terms (cont.) “Push polls” Definitely not a “poll” as we’re using this term. Designed to influence the participant instead of gathering information from him/her. See Bush/McCain 2000 campaign in SC. A Bush campaign push poll: “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” The reality: McCain and his wife adopted a daughter from Bangladesh. The result: Bush won SC. Pass the Maalox, please.
10. Other relevant terms (cont.) “Sampling error” – often confused with “margin of error.” Don’t do that. Sampling error is the simply the difference between the results of two identical polls taken at the same time. Ex: One poll says 53% believe x and another says 47% do? The sampling error is 6%. Margin of error: For the Physics Team: It’s 1 divided by the square root of the number of people polled. So if you poll 100 people, the MOE is 1/10, or 10%. If you poll 10,000 people, the MOE would be 1/100, or 1%. Note the inverse relationship: the larger the sample, the smaller the MOE. For humans: “If a poll has a margin of error of 2.5 percent, that means that if you ran that poll 100 times — asking a different sample of people each time — the overall percentage of people who responded the same way would remain within 2.5 percent of your original result in at least 95 of those 100 polls.” (http://www.robertniles.com/stats/margin.shtml)
11. Some possible scopes for a poll like the ones you just prepared All eligible voters All eligible, registered voters All eligible, registered, and likely voters All of them thar voters in swing states All of them thar voters that are independent Etc.
12. So how did the class polls do? Did you use random sampling? Who is the sample? Was the sample size large enough? Were the polling techniques likely to affect the outcome? If so, how? Were the questions clear and unbiased? Did they lead the survey participant in any way?
13. Some possible ways to ask the question “If the election were held today, who would you vote for?” Problem: you don’t know depth of conviction or likelihood of voting “On a scale of 1-10, with ‘1’ being not at all confident and 10 being certain, how confident are you that will vote for _____ in the upcoming election?” “Which party do you think does a better job managing the economy?”
14. Additional resources A real poll: http://images.politico.com/global/2012/09/battlegroundpoll.html
15. There are LOTS of polls See, e.g., http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx http://pewresearch.org http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html One guy stood out last election cycle: Nate Silver. He called 50 out of 50 states. Uses an aggregation method. Wanna know more? Check out his site: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/pollster%20ratings
16. Questions raised by polls Are they in fact reliable? Is the wording biased in some way? Class exercise: Write three versions of a question about people’s view of global warming – one neutral, one designed to elicit negative response and one to elicit positive. Ethical issue: should pollsters have to disclose the person/party for whom they are polling?
17. More questions Do people – understand the question? See, e.g., http://www.gallup.com/poll/157589/distrust-media-hits-new-high.aspx How can a general question elicit meaningful data about a complicated subject (e.g., Obamacare, immigration)? have a meaningful choice of answers? What do terms like “somewhat” or “most of the time” mean? answer truthfully? Want to impress the poll-taker? Embarrassed at having no opinion? have views that are consistent, both internally and over time? See, e.g., Presidential approval ratings http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-presapp0605-31.html Also, we often are internally inconsistent. For instance, many people like the idea of small gov’t but love the reality of their benefits. Many are ideological conservatives but operational liberals.
18. More questions raised by polls Is there a “bandwagon” effect? Do they influence elections? May discourage voters from voting Exit polls have presented problems in the past (see NBC’s call for Reagan in 1980 at 5:15 West Coast time; release of Florida exit polls) Is election coverage more about the horse race than the issues?
19. 20 Questions Who did the poll? Who paid for the poll and why was it done? How many people were interviewed for the survey? How were those people chosen? What area (nation, state, or region) or what group (teachers,lawyers, Democratic voters, etc.) were these people chosen from? Are the results based on the answers of all the people interviewed? Who should have been interviewed and was not? Or do response rates matter? When was the poll done? How were the interviews conducted? What about polls on the Internet or World Wide Web? In what order were the questions asked? What about "push polls?" What other polls have been done on this topic? Do they say the same thing? If they are different, why are they different? What about exit polls? What else needs to be included in the report of the poll? So I've asked all the questions. The answers sound good. Should we report the results? Who’s on first? What other kinds of factors can skew poll results? What questions were asked? What is the sampling error for the poll results?
20. What do polls say about Americans? We don’t know much about politics. And we’re pretty cynical about our politicians. But we’re pretty good at knowing (a) what our basic values are and (b) using limited information to decide which candidate best reflects our views. So how do we form our views?
21. Factors that influence political attitudes Remember “political socialization”? The process by which people acquire their political views. Book distinguishes – political ideology (i.e., a coherent set of beliefs about politics and public policy) strong genetic component (see next slide) from party affiliation Family the #1 influence, but not as strong as it once was. Through the family, political views are passed on.
22. Check out Wattenberg book for chart on identical v. nonidentical twins’ views on lots of subjects.
23. Impact on parties Fewer people are identifying with parties. Thus, while family influence on partisanship remain relevant, it’s becoming less of a factor. Age-related differences affect views. Younger people more liberal generally, less partisan. See http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/section-2-demographics-and-american-values/6-7-12-31/ and Table 1, p. 10 at http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2009/05/pdf/political_ideology_youth.pdf
24. Age differencesSource: Pew Research Centerhttp://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/section-2-demographics-and-american-values/
25. Other differences Religion While Americans may be religious, most question the role of religion in politics. Religious differences result in complicated politics. Opinions vary across religions. Catholics, e.g., have voted as follows:
26. Catholic vote
27. Gender gap Gender The “gender gap”: the difference in political views between men and women. There are more women, and a higher % of them vote, and a majority of them vote Democratic. Current race: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_162-57485071/mitt-romney-could-face-huge-hurdle-with-women-voters-in-swing-states/
28. Gender gap (cont.)
29. What else divides us? Class? Sorta. Most of us think we’re middle class. We lack the distinctions found in some other countries, although there are broad generalizations that can be made. Rich = Republican Less rich = Democrat But it’s largely non-economic issues that split us along liberal/conservative lines.
30. How does “class” affect political participation?
31. Race and Ethnicity Blacks mainly Ds, although this may be changing with younger blacks. Some issues: Affirmative action Bias in the criminal justice system Less inclined toward military intervention Latinos (a broad term, that) also mainly D, but not as solidly as blacks So many different groups that it’s almost useless to generalize
32. Race/ethnicity (cont.)
33. Region The South seems to be thought of as a distinct region as much as any other in the U.S. Some traditional points of distinction: Conservative on social issues Accommodating to businesses Once yellow dog Democrats; now safe states for Republican presidential candidates
34. Ideology Do people use broad ideologies (i.e., a consistent set of beliefs about what policies the gov’t should pursue) to justify conduct? Some do, but most don’t. Study:* Do People Think in Ideological Terms? Ideologues (12%) – Yes. They connect opinions/beliefs to policy positions of candidates. Group Benefits (42%) – No. They will vote for whichever candidate will best benefit the group(s) the voter belongs to. Nature of the Times (24%) – No. A party’s success or failure hinges on whether we’re in good or bad times. No issue content (22%) – No. They vote for personality, best smile, etc. *The American Voter, 1950. An update in 1988 suggested that ideologues have increased (18%).
35. The class’s ideology http://www.people-press.org/typology/quiz/
36. The role of “elites” First, what are they? Just those people with a disproportionate share of some valued resource -- $, power, etc. An elite – holds reasonably consistent ideologies. They hang with other like-minded elites. frames political issues. offers “norms” for settling disputes. But they often contradict each other, and they can’t shape issues that are rooted in personal experience.
37. Do we need polls when we have the “elites”? First, what’s significant about them for purposes of governing? Book: the gov’t attends to the elites’ views more than popular views b/c elites know more and have consistent views. So should polls focus more on elites?