AP U.S. Government and Politics Public Opinion

What demographic changes have occurred in the U.S. and what are their political and public policy consequences?

1) The three waves of immigration are, northwestern Europeans, southern and eastern Europeans, and then Hispanics and Asians. Immigration is cause a demographic change in the untied states that will cause its population to become a "minority majority". But there are also the elderly of the United States who are moving to the "sun-belt" region of the nation. And both the immigration and migration, politicians focus more on where the people who will vote are. For example the focus on Florida because more people over the age of 65 live there.

What is political socialization? What is the difference between formal and informal learning? Which do you think is most important and why? Give examples to support your answer.

2) Political socialization is the process through which individuals in a society acquire political attitudes, views, and knowledge, based on inputs from family, schools, the media, and others. Only a small portion of Americans' political learning is formal, formal learning is civics or government classes in high school. Informal learning comes from family, media, and school. Informal learning is more important because a government class will end but people are always around family or media.

Explain how public opinion is measured. What scientific techniques are used to measure public opinion? What are the arguments against public opinion polling?

3) Public opinion is measured with polls, there are many different polls that get used to measure public opinion, but Random sampling and its variations like stratified sampling are some of the scientific techniques that are used to measure public opinion. Because of the measurement of public opinion politicians are going to worry more about how they are doing in the polls, or discourage voting if a specific candidate is doing poorly in the polls, and public opinion sways votes based on popularity.

Explain the main differences between liberals and conservatives.

4) The main differences that divide Liberals and Conservatives is that liberal's believe that we should spend less on the military, are typically less willing to commit troops to action, support the "freedom of choice", are opposed to prayer in school, in favor of affirmative action, views government as a regulator in the public interest, want to tax the rich more and spend more on the poor, plus believe we should solve the problem that cause crime and guard defendants rights carefully. While conservatives typically believe we should maintain peace through strength with our military, are more likely to support military intervention around the world, support the "right to life" are supportive of prayers in school and oppose affirmative action, plus believe that we should stop "coddling criminals" and stop letting criminals hide behind laws with defendants rights.

What are some of the ways in which people participate in politics? Compare conventional and unconventional participation. How do they affect policy in different ways?

5) People can participate in politics with protest or writing a letter to a congressman, political participation a can be overt or subtle, violent or peaceful, organized or individual, casual or consuming. Conventional participation includes many widely accepted modes of influencing government- like voting, trying to persuade others, ringing doorbells for a petition, running for office, etc.. While unconventional participation includes protesting, civil disobedience, and even violence. Well conventional participation may take longer to be made into policy while unconventional is hard for politicians and the public to avoid because the media will showcase it making what the protesters are standing for, a top priority for people to resolve.

Why is participation in America unequal? What are the political and policy implications of unequal participation?

6) Participation in America is unequal because the politicians will focus on the issues of the people who are more likely to vote, which according to almost every study on political participation are the citizens of higher social economic status. People with higher incomes and levels of education are more likely to donate money to campaigns, and participate by contacting governmental officials and signing petitions.

Political Ideology

A coherent set of beliefs about politics, public policy, and public purpose, which helps give meaning to political events. Like how Liberal ideology supports a wide scope of central government, and often involves policies to promote equality, while Conservative ideology, in contrast, supports a less active scope of government that gives freer rein to the private sector.

Margin of Error

A measure of the accuracy of a public opinion poll. For example On January 30th, 2008, a poll showed that 44% of democrats support Clinton while 41% supported Obama with a margin of error of three points.

Stratified sampling

A variation of random sampling; the population is divided into subgroups and is weighted based on demographic characteristics of the national population. Basically the process of grouping members of the population into similar subgroups before sampling to make sure that same percentage of these groups at the national level get represented in the survey.

Tracking polls

Are continuous surveys repeated periodically with the same group of people that enable a campaign or news organization to chart a candidate's daily rise and/or fall in support and check/ measure changes of opinion or knowledge.

Public Opinion Polls

Interviews or surveys with samples of citizens that are used in order to estimate both the feelings and beliefs of the entire population. They are also an effort to predict election results or to estimate public attitudes on issues.

Push Polls

Poll taken for the purpose of providing information on an opponent that would lead respondents to vote against that candidate. It is a seemingly unbiased telephone survey that is actually conducted by the supporters of a particular candidate and spreads negative information about an opponent.

Exit Polls

Public opinion surveys used by major media pollsters to predict electoral winners with speed ad precision. But this is the most widely criticized poll type and critics have charged that this practice discourages many people from voting and thereby affects the outcome of some state and local elections.

Straw polls

Straw polls are unscientific and unofficial surveys or ballot that are used to gauge public opinion on a variety of issues and policies, basically the reason for why they are conducted is as a test of opinion.

Public Opinion

The distribution of the population's beliefs about politics and policy issues. Public opinion aims to understand this distribution because there are so many groups and varying opinion in the U.S.

Random Sampling

The key technique employed by survey researchers, which operates on the principle that everyone should have and equal probability of being selected for the sample. If the sample is randomly drawn, about 13% of those interviewed will be African American, slightly over 50% female, and so forth to match the population as a whole.

Sampling Error

The level of confidence in the findings of a public opinion poll. The more people interviewed, the more confident one can be of the results. The science of polling involves estimation and a sample can represent the population with only a certain degree of confidence.

Political Socialization

The process through which individuals in a society acquire political attitudes, views, and knowledge, based on inputs from family, schools, the media, and others. As people become more socialized with age, their political orientations grow firmer. Which is why governments aim their socialization efforts on the young.