American Govt. Chap 10

Which of these is a true statement concerning the roles of ideology and partisanship in shaping public opinion?

Party labels provide mental cues that we use in interpreting and responding to news.

Which of these is a true statement concerning sampling bias?

Pollsters compensate for undersampling by the use of weighting.

Which relationship between sample size and sampling error is correct?

The larger the sample, the smaller the sampling error will be.

The shortcuts that some Americans use to get political information are known as ______.

heuristics

On-line processing allows ______.

individuals to make real-time updates to their evaluations of political events

Tolerance is a key democratic value because ______.

it is a prerequisite for compromise

The role of public opinion in government today is strongly debated because ______.

on the one hand, we want our opinions to be heard, but on the other hand we do not want politicians to blindly follow public opinion

An important aspect of political socialization that develops in children even before they start to attend school is ______.

patriotism

The authors of the textbook argue that public opinion matters because ______.

politicians and the media actually treat public opinion as if it matters

The portion of the population selected to participate in a poll is known as the ______.

sample

Barbour and Wright indicate that the mainstream media focus on polling can partly be attributed to ______.

the 24-hr news cycle

Sampling error refers to ______.

a number that indicates within what range the results of a poll are accurate

A plebiscite is ______.

a popular vote on national policy issues

When a wealthy voter believes that the government is spending too much on social welfare programs, she is probably ______.

following her economic self-interest

Benchmark polls ______.

are instrumental in designing campaign strategy

A ______ poll could be utilized to determine what voters think about a candidate at the start of an election campaign.

benchmark

Survey experiments are normally employed to ______.

better determine the true state of public opinion on sensitive issues

Self-interest is a source of ______.

divisions in society

Generally speaking, pollsters can shrink their margin of error (sampling error) by ______.

enlarging the size of their sample

According to the text, the current process of political socialization in the United States ______.

trains us to support and obey the existing political system