Chapter 6
Public Opinion
By Boundless
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Public opinion or political opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population.
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Political cultures have values that are largely shared by their members; these are called political values.
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Political dissent refers to any expression designed to convey dissatisfaction with or opposition to the policies of a governing body.
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People form political values throughout their life cycle through different agents of political socialization, including family, media, and education.
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People learn political values and identities by interacting with other people and the media in a process called political socialization.
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Core American political values general fall in line with one of three political ideologies: liberalism, conservatism, or moderate.
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Political socialization experiences differ depending on group membership, such as socioeconomic status, gender, or geography.
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People that surround a child during his or her childhood are crucial to the child's development of political values and voting behaviors.
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Media can have an important affect on public opinion in several ways.
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An opinion leader is an active media user who interprets the meaning of media messages for those less informed about political events.
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Political socialization takes place throughout the life cycle, but major life or political events can also impact political values.
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Political knowledge, in addition to political socialization and major events, impact the formation of people's political values and opinions.
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An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample, and is designed to represent the opinions of a population.
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The first known example of an opinion poll was an 1824 local straw poll by The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian for the Jackson Adams race.
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Gallup Inc. was founded in 1958, when George Gallup grouped all of his polling operations into one organization.
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The American National Election Studies (ANES) is the leading academically run national survey of voters in the United States.
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The main types of polls are: opinion, benchmark, bushfire, entrance, exit, deliberative opinion, tracking, and the straw poll.
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Steps to conduct a poll effectively including identifying a sample, evaluating poll questions, and selecting a question and response mode.
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A very important tool in data analysis is the margin of error because it indicates how closely the results of the survey reflect reality.
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Sampling is concerned with choosing a subset of individuals from a statistical population to estimate characteristics of a whole population.
Polling organization will lose credibility if they publish inaccurate results.
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Problems with polls typically stem either from issues with the methodology that bias the sample or the responses that cause the bias.
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Internet and telephone polls are very useful as they are much cheaper than most other polls and are able to reach a wide population.