Chapter 11

Political Socialization and Public Opinion

Pearson Education, Inc. © 2008

American Government: Continuity and Change9th Editionto accompany Comprehensive, Alternate, Texas, and Essentials Editions

O’Connor and Sabato

How Political Socialization and other Factors Influence Opinion Formation

• Political Socialization– The process through which an individual acquires

particular political orientations– The learning process by which people acquire

their political beliefs and values

Agents of Socialization

• Family• School and Peers• Mass Media• Religious Beliefs• Race and Ethnicity• Gender• Age• Region

The Impact of Events• Key political events play a very important role in a person’s

socialization.• Nixon’s resignation in 1974

– Impression on young people– Government not always right or honest

• Survey in 2006 (18-20)– Failed to report a single political event that affected them during their

early school years• Many of the major studies conducted in the aftermath of Watergate

and the Vietnam War– Trust in government

Reinforcing and Cross-Cutting Cleavages

• Societal cleavages (e.g. race, class, religion, gender, region, etc) can produce conflict and disagreement among the population over politics and policy.

• Reinforcing Cleavages– If cleavages overlap with each other, this can heighten the conflict and be more divisive.– The disagreements produced by one division (e.g. class), will reinforce the divisions

produced by another (e.g. race).– Finding agreement and compromise across groups in this situation can be that much more

difficult.

• Cross-cutting Cleavages– If cleavages cut across each other, this can lessen the presence of conflict across groups– Disagreements produced by one division can produce cross-pressures for individuals and

mitigate– the divisions they may experience by way of another cleavage– Cross-pressures help produce "bridges" across the cleavages, making agreement and

compromise– more likely.

This graph shows a slight tendency for class to serve as a cross-cutting cleavage on these issues. The lower SESgroups (both white and black) tend to show slightly greater support for social programs to benefit the elderly, healthcare assistance, and assistance to college students, than their higher SES counterparts. However, blacks (regardless of

race) tend to show slightly greater support than whites.

However, this graph clearly shows that there is indeed a pattern of class serving as a cross-cutting cleavage with race.Note that the level of support among the high SES groups is uniformly lower within racial groups (i.e. high SES blackhave less support than low SES blacks, and high SES whites have less support than low SES whites). Even so, within

classes blacks do tend to show more support for these programs than whites, even though there may still bedisagreement within the races across class lines. When the issue is about policy that has a more class-based

component (e.g. making sure that everyone who is willing/able to work has a job, providing for a minimum standardof living, working to equalize income differences in society, and providing adequate housing to those who need it) the

potential for class to cross-cut with race is greater.

However, it is a very different picture when the issue is more directly related to race. On matters involving race targetedpolicies (policies like affirmative action and anti-discrimination laws) all evidence of class as a cross-cutting

cleavage disappears.

Public Opinion and Polling

• What the public thinks about a particular issue or set of issues at any point in time

• Public opinion polls– Interviews or surveys with samples of citizens that

are used to estimate the feelings and beliefs of the entire population

The History of Public Opinion Research

• 1883 Boston Globe polled voters• 1916 Literary Digest polling– Predict presidential elections– Correct from 1920 to 1932

History of Public Opinion Research

• 1883 Boston Globe polled voters• 1916 Literary Digest polling

– Predict presidential elections– Correct from 1920 to 1932

• Public opinion polling as we know it did not begin to develop until the 1930s.– Spurred on by Lippman’s Public Opinion (1922)

• Earlier straw polls used– Unscientific surveys used to gauge public opinion on a variety of issues

and policies– Literary Digest– George Gallup

• Correctly predicted the results of the 1936 presidential contest– Techniques became more sophisticated in the 1940s.

• Dewey incorrectly predicted as winner

How Public Opinion is Measured• Traditional public opinion polls

– Determine the content phrasing the questions– Selecting the sample

• Random sampling: a method of poll selection that gives each person the same chance of being selected

• Stratified sampling: A variation of random sampling; census data are used to divide the country into four sampling regions. Sets of counties and standard metropolitan statistical areas are then randomly selected in proportion to the total national population

– Contacting respondents

Political Polls

• Push Polls– Polls taken for the purpose of providing information on an

opponent that would lead respondents to vote against that candidate

• Tracking Polls– Continuous surveys that enable a campaign to chart its daily rise

or fall in support

• Exit Polls– Polls conducted at selected polling places on Election Day

Shortcomings of Polling• Inaccurate results can be dangerous.• Voter News Service made errors during the presidential election of

2000 estimating Florida– Failed to estimate the number of voters accurately– Used an inaccurate exit poll model– Incorrectly estimated the number of African American and Cuban

voters– Results lead to an early calling of the election

• VNS disbanded in 2003• Major networks and Associated Press joined together to form a new

polling consortium, the National Election Pool

Shortcomings of Polling

• Sampling Error– Sampling error or margin of error• A measure of the accuracy of a public opinion poll

• Limited Respondent Options• Lack of Information• Difficulty Measuring Intensity

Why We Form and Express Political Opinions

• Personal Benefits• Political Knowledge• Cues from Leaders or Opinion Makers• Political Ideology

Personal Benefits

• Most Americans more “I” centered• Attitudes on moral issues are often based on

underlying values.• If faced with policies that do not:– Affect us personally– Are not moral in nature…Then we have difficulty forming an opinion.

• Foreign policy is such an example.

Political Knowledge

• Political knowledge and political participation have a reciprocal relationship.

• Level of knowledge about history and politics low– Hurts Americans’ understanding of current

political events• Geographically illiterate• Gender differences

Cues from Leaders

• Low levels of knowledge can lead to rapid opinion shifts on issues.

• Political leaders may move these shifts.– President is in an important position to mold

public opinion– But who is truly leading-- the public or the

president?

Political Ideology

• An individual’s coherent set of values and beliefs about the purpose and scope of government

• Can prompt citizens to form a certain set of policy programs and influence view of the role of government in the policy process

• 35% say they are moderate, 30% say they are conservative, and 29% say they are liberal.