TOPIC 4.4 Influence of Political Events on Ideology

TOPIC 4.4 Influence of Political Events on Ideology

Overview

• The relative importance of major political events to the development of individual political attitudes is an example of political socialization.

• Age at the time of event

• Length of event

• Coverage of event

Location

• Is the event local and Large

• Is the event State and large

• Is the event Local or State yet became a Federal event by issue

• Is the event Federal

• How did the leaders react, congress, president

Reaction

• Was the event handled quickly

• All individuals treated fairly and equally

• Who was in office at the time of event and how did they react

• If possible did the federal government, give money, did the president show, military sent in

Multiple Choice

Which of the following best describes how the generations view themselves in regards to the idealistic trait?

• Millennial respondents are the least likely to consider themselves idealistic.

• Each group is less likely to identify as idealistic as they get older.

• Baby-Boomer respondents are more likely to consider themselves idealistic than Generation X respondents.

• Silent Generation respondents are the most likely to consider themselves idealistic.

Multiple Choice

One of the principal effects of 9/11 was instilling in Americans a fear that their personal security was at greater risk than ever before. Many aspects of the post-9/11 world are indeed new, but the fear it evokes echoes that felt by prior generations. At times the country has met those fears while still holding fast to its core democratic principles. Other times, fear has overruled American principles, especially the protection of individual freedoms. The most important legacy of the American experience following 9/11 will not be the novelty of fear, but rather how well the country copes with that fear while adhering to its constitutional framework.

Given how searing the 9/11 experience was, it is sometimes hard to remember that prior generations of Americans didn’t always sleep soundly either. Pearl Harbor is an often-cited example, but it joins many other moments of intense fear in U.S. history. During the 40-plus years of the Cold War, American school children practiced “duck and cover” drills the way today’s kids might practice school lock-downs. As a teenage in the 1980s, I joined Sting in hoping we could avert a nuclear holocaust if “the Russians love their children, too.”

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, other threats in the United States soon appeared: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, to name just a few. During the 1990s, some in the military liked to refer to the United States as a “homeland sanctuary;” after 9/11, many talk about the end of that sanctuary.

True, the country has experienced fewer external threats to its population than have most other nations. But it’s a misconception to think that the American sense of external threat is new.

-Kathleen Hicks, “What Will Americans Do About Their Fear of Terrorism?” The Atlantic Monthly, 2016.

The passage is most related to which of the following concepts?

• Political partisanship

• Political socialization

• Political ideology

• Political polling

Multiple Choice

Which of the following best describes a trend in the data?

• The older the respondents, the more likely they are to identify as patriotic.

• Generation X respondents are more likely to be politically active than the Baby-Boomer respondents.

• Baby Boomer respondents are the most likely to consider themselves self-reliant.

• The younger the respondents, the more likely they are to identify as religious and moral.

TOPIC 4.5 Measuring Public Opinion

Background

• Origins

• American political leaders have a long history of trying to gauge public opinion.

• Polls help politicians decide how to present issues to the public and which issues are most important to the public.

• Early attempts included counting the size of a crowd, noting the level of audience applause, and asking random people on the street to express their opinion.

• These tactics are called straw polling. The name comes from the practice of tossing straw into the air to see which way the wind is blowing.

Literary Digest Fiasco

• In 1936, The Literary Digest, mailed postcard ballots to10 million+ people asked if they supported President FDR or his Republican challenger, Alf Landon.

• The overwhelming majority supported Landon. Based on this response, the Literary Digest predicted Landons' win instead FDR took it

• The Literary Digest poll produced flawed results

• Only surveyed phone, car and other owners not the truly poor

Types of Polls

• Opinion Polls-Opinion polls simply ask respondent’s their position on a set of issues.

• Benchmark Polls-These are often the first type of poll used in an election, often before a potential candidate declares his or her intentions.

• They are used by political parties and campaigns to gather general information about people’s views and concerns.

• Tracking Polls-Tracking polls ask people the same or similar questions over time to “track” the path of public opinion.

• They are often used heavily during election season to show how public opinion changes or to assess a candidate’s strength.

Types of polls (cont'd)

• Entrance and Exit Polls-Exit polls are conducted by media as voters leave the voting booth

• By looking at early exit poll data, networks often declare a winner in the evening while millions on the west coast still have hours to vote. 

• Exit polls received much of the blame for the media’s inaccurate calls of the Florida result in the 2000 election.

• Focus Groups-Focus groups are conversations about issues or candidates.

• Though less scientific than many types of polls, focus groups allow for deeper insight into a topic.

  
  

Scientific Polling

• Sampling

• George Gallup and Elmo Roper developed the technique of scientific sampling. 1500 equal a nation?

• Led by the Gallup Organization and the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, as many as 200 organizations focus on polling the American public’s political preferences.

• The level of confidence in the poll is known as the sampling error. 3-5%

Steps

• Public opinion data that can impact elections and policy debates is affected by such scientific polling types and methods as the type of poll, sampling techniques, identification of respondents, and the type and format of questions.

• Define the universe or population to be surveyed.

• Most polls use random sampling in which every member of the population being studied must have an equal chance of being sampled. 

• Various ways to conduct a poll, face to face the best

Multiple Choice

Which poll uses randomly selected and stratified sample populations to predict the voting behavior of a large population?

• Online polls

• Focus groups

• Scientific polls

• None of the above

Multiple Choice

What are straw polls?

• Sample populations that are not demographically stratified

• Sample populations that are not randomly selected

• Sample populations that do not represent the general population

• All the above

Multiple Choice

Why are polls useful?

• Polls provide the public with information that is useful during elections

• Polls provide candidates and campaigns relevant information about their performance

• Polls provide information to policy-makers about important public policy issues

• All the above

Multiple Choice

What is public opinion?

• What people feel about issues

• What people believe about public policies

• The attitudes people express on political issues

• What the public thinks about any subject or topic

Multiple Select

Which one(s) are not a poll?

• Opinion Polls

• Right Polls

• Benchmark Polls

• Tracking Polls

Multiple Choice

Polls are always 100% correct

• True

• False

Open Ended

List two times the polls were incorrect for a Presidential Candidate.