For my American Government students.

1. Public Opinion
Prepared for 1101: Introduction to American Government at Baruch College
Source: Mostly American Government: Power and Purpose [14th Edition]
Author: David Firester

2. What is Public Opinion?
“Citizens’ attitudes about political issues, leaders, institutions and events”
(p. 379)
This definition applies to both the individual and aggregate levels of
analysis.

3. Individual Public Opinion
• Influential Factors:
• Preferences (e.g., economic self-interest)
• Beliefs (e.g., social or moral values)
• Party identification (partisan leaning)
• Ideology (conservative, liberal, libertarian, etc.)

4. Individual Public Opinion
• Influential Factors (continued):
• Social group membership (e.g., religious institutions, schools, municipalities, ethnicities,
etc.)
• Physical location (urban, rural, regional locale, etc.)
• New source preferences (and their algorithmic ability to target you)

5. Does Having an Opinion Require Full
Information?
• Not exactly, but there is a cost associated with incomplete information
• One’s “trusted sources” may provide cues that comport with a
particularly skewed perspective through:
• Agenda-setting
• Framing
• Priming

6. What Do Scholars Purport to Know?
• Walter Lippmann: given the difficulty of acquiring full information on
every topic, there is a tendency to rely on the wisdom of elites, who are
engaged in an opinion-shaping effort.
• Philip Converse: the average American appears to know little about
current events or the basic facts of American government.
• John Zaller: makes a similar case to Lippmann and Converse, focusing
on the elite-mass cueing aspect.

7. What Do Scholars Purport to Know?
• Heuristics, or mental shortcuts, are a means for the layperson to make
judgments/decisions. Not all scholars agree as to the independent
variables that cause opinions to remain constant or change.
• Some scholars have argued opinions are formed by ideology
• Some scholars have argued it is one’s affect
• Some scholars have found it is partisan orientation in the form of party brand
association

8. Aggregate Public Opinion
Although it may be difficult, yet not impossible, to gauge public opinion,
there are some methods that seem to work.
• Public Opinion Polls - using a small sample of the population in order to
generalize about the larger population’s sentiments; this is done by:
• Exit polls – involves giving a questionnaire to people who just voted
• Random digit dialing – contacting people by phone in a random fashion
• Surveys – can be done by exit polling, or random digit dialing, but also online

9. Why Might Polling Go Horribly Wrong?
• Selection bias – choosing a class of respondents that is unlikely to represent
the population at large
• Sampling error – the sample size might be too small (see page 416 for
examples)
• Measurement error – questions might be worded in such a way as to be too
vague
• Misreporting the facts – I’ll talk about this in the next lecture regarding the
2016 election

10. Does Public Opinion Matter?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGNIcdfveko
The Year 2013:
https://vimeo.com/114503764
The Year 2000:

11. Questions?
(Ask the guy
in the middle)