Public Opinion, Polling and Media

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

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

What kind of bias is produced in polls when people refuse to participate in polling calls?

• Apathetic bias

• Alienated bias

• Nonresponsive bias

• Response bias

What polls are really rumor mills?

• Tracking polls

• Push polls

• Pull polls

• Bias polls

Which of the following is the best definition of public opinion?

• the sum of many individual views

• what journalists think about issues

• the beliefs of one or more interest groups

• how politicians express common attitudes

Increasing refusal rates have raised questions about the future of

• street polling

• telephone polling

• internet polling

• exit polling

Pollsters use ________ to randomly pick telephone numbers

• computers

• satellites

• cellular phones

• None of these answers is correct

Factors that influence an individual's political attitudes, opinions, and beliefs (Check all that apply)

• Gender/Ethnicity

• Family

• School

• News/Media

A method of systematically polling a selected group of people who are representative of the total population

• Media

• Public Agenda

• Sampling

• Political Socialization

The difference between what the sample results show and what the true result would be if everyone had been interviewed

• Political Socialization

• Intensity

• Sampling Error

• Public Agenda