Chapter 6- Public Opinion and Political Action

exit poll

public opinion surveys used by major media pollsters to predict electoral winners with speed and precision

civil disobedience

A form of political participation based on a conscious decision to break a law believed to be unjust and to suffer the consequences.

protest

A form of political participation designed to achieve policy change through dramatic and unconventional tactics.

sample

A relatively small proportion of people who are chosen in a survey so as to be representative of the whole.

random digit dialing

A technique used by pollsters to place telephone calls randomly to both listed and unlisted numbers when conducting a survey.

melting pot

A term often used to characterize the United States, with its history of immigration and mixing of cultures, ideas, and peoples.

ideology

Acoherent set of values and beliefs about public policy is a political _______1______. Liberal _______1______, for example, supports a wide scope for the central government, often involving policies that aim to promote equality. Conservative _______1_______, in contrast, supports a less active scope of government that gives freer rein to the private sector.

political ideology

A coherent set of beliefs about politics, public policy, and public purpose, which helps give meaning to political events.

600

African Americans have been exercising more political power, and the number of African Americans serving in an elected office has increased by over ___ percent since 1970. African Americans have been elected as mayors of many of the country's biggest cities, including Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. Under George W. Bush, two African Americans, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, served as secretary of state. And the biggest African American political breakthrough of all occurred when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008.

political participation

All the activities used by citizens to influence the selection of political leaders or the policies they pursue. The most common means of this in a democracy is voting; other means include protest and civil disobedience.

1. conventional 2. unconventional

Although the line is hard to draw, political scientists generally distinguish between two broad types of participation: __________1________ and __________2__________. _________1_________ participation includes many widely accepted modes of influencing government— voting, trying to persuade others, ringing doorbells for a petition, running for office, and so on. In contrast, __________2_________ participation includes activities that are often dramatic, such as protesting, civil disobedience, and even violence.

d. Conservative

Americans identify most with which political ideology? a. Moderate b. Liberal c. Democrat d. Conservative

American

Americans live in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual society. Yet, regardless of ethnic background, Americans have a common political culture —an overall set of values widely shared within the society. For example, there is much agreement across ethnic groups about such basic American values as the principle of treating all equally. Debra Schildkraut's recent study of immigrants finds that the longer one's family has had to integrate into American society, the greater the likelihood that one will identify oneself primarily as ______________. Thus, integration is a simple matter of time for most immigrants. She therefore concludes that "there is not much validity to concerns that American national identity is disintegrating or that the newest Americans are more likely than anyone else to reject their own American identity or American institutions.

census

An "actual enumeration" of the population, which the Constitution requires that the government conduct every 10 years. It is a valuable tool for understanding demographic changes.

Simpson-Mazzoli Act

An issue of particular relevance to the Hispanic community is that of illegal immigration. According to the Department of Homeland Security, there were about 10.8 million unauthorized persons residing in the United States in 2010, 75 percent of whom were from Mexico and other Central American countries. Although presidents Bush and Obama both pledged to address the problems of illegal immigration, no significant reform has been enacted since the 1986 _______1________-____________ ____. This law requires that employers document the citizenship of their employees. Whether people are born in Canton, Ohio, or Canton, China, they must prove that they are either U.S. citizens or legal immigrants in order to work. Civil and criminal penalties can be assessed against employers who knowingly employ undocumented immigrants. However, it has proved difficult for authorities to establish that employers have knowingly accepted false social security cards and other forged identity documents, and, as a result, the _______1_________-________ ___ has not significantly slowed illegal immigration.

disenchanted

Any democracy has a vested interest in students' learning the positive features of their political system because this helps ensure that youth will grow up to be supportive citizens. David Easton and Jack Dennis have argued that "those children who begin to develop positive feelings toward the political authorities will grow into adults who will be less easily ___________________ with the system than those children who early acquire negative, hostile sentiments." Of course, this is not always the case. Well-socialized youths of the 1960s led the opposition to the American regime and the war in Vietnam. It could be argued, however, that even these protestors had been positively shaped by the socialization process, for the goal of most activists was to make the system more democratically responsive rather than to change American government radically.

political figures

As Lance Bennett points out, these findings provide "a source of almost bitter humor in light of what the polls tell us about public information on other subjects." For example, slogans from TV commercials are better recognized than famous ___________ _______. And in a Zogby national poll in 2006, 74 percent of respondents were able to name each of the "Three Stooges"—Larry, Curly, and Moe—whereas just 42 percent could name each of the three branches of the U.S. government—judicial, executive, and legislative.

Knowledge Networks

As with many other aspects of commerce in America, the future of polling may lie with the Internet. Internet pollsters, such as _______1______ _________, assemble representative panels of the population by first contacting people on the phone and asking them whether they are willing to participate in Web-based surveys on a variety of topics. If they agree, they are paid a small sum every time they participate. And if they don't have Internet access, they are provided with it as part of their compensation. Once someone agrees to participate, he or she is then contacted exclusively by e-mail. As _________1________ __________proclaims, "This permits surveys to be fielded very quickly and economically. In addition, this approach reduces the burden placed on respondents, since e-mail notification is less obtrusive than telephone calls, and most respondents find answering Web questionnaires to be more interesting and engaging than being questioned by a telephone interviewer."

win public support

Based on their research, Jacobs and Shapiro argue that the common perception of politicians pandering to the results of public opinion polls may be mistaken. Their examination of major policy debates in the 1990s finds that political leaders "track public opinion not to make policy but rather to determine how to craft their public presentations and ____ _________ ___________ for the policies they and their supporters favor." Staff members in both the White House and Congress repeatedly remarked that their purpose in conducting polls was not to set policies but rather to find the key words and phrases with which to promote policies already in place. Thus, rather than using polls to identify centrist approaches that will have the broadest popular appeal, Jacobs and Shapiro argue, elites use them to formulate strategies that enable them to avoid compromising on what they want to do. As President Obama's chief pollster, Joel Benenson, said in 2009 about his team's work for the president: "Our job isn't to tell him what to do. Our job is to help him figure out if he can strengthen his message and persuade more people to his side. The starting point is where he is and then you try to help strengthen the message and his reasons for doing something."

Polls

Before examining the role that public opinion plays in American politics, it is essential to learn about the science of public opinion measurement. How do we really know the approximate answers to questions such as "what percentage of young people favor abortion rights," "how many Hispanics supported Barack Obama's 2012 reelection campaign," or "what percentage of the public is looking for a job but cannot find one?" ____ provide these answers, but there is much skepticism about them. Many people wonder how accurately public opinion can be measured by interviewing only 1,000 or 1,500 people around the country.

socialization

Central to the formation of public opinion is political _________1_________, or "the process through which an individual acquires his or her particular political orientations—his or her knowledge, feelings, and evaluations regarding his or her political world." As people become more socialized with age, their political orientations grow firmer. Not surprisingly, governments aim their socialization efforts largely at the young. Authoritarian regimes are particularly concerned with indoctrinating their citizens at an early age. For example, youth in the former Soviet Union were organized into the Komsomol—the Young Communist League. Membership in these groups was helpful in gaining admission to college and entering certain occupations. In the Komsomol, Soviet youth were taught their government's view of the advantages of communism (though apparently not well enough to keep the system going). Political ________1________ is a much more subtle process in the United States.

telephone willing

Computer and telephone technology has made surveying less expensive and more commonplace. In the early days of polling, pollsters needed a national network of interviewers to traipse door-to-door in their localities with a clipboard of questions. Now most polling is done on the _______1_______ with samples selected through random digit dialing. Calls are placed to phone numbers within randomly chosen exchanges (for example, 512-471-XXXX) around the country. In this manner, both listed and unlisted numbers are reached at a cost of about one-fifth that of person-to-person interviewing. There are a couple of disadvantages, however. About 2 percent of the population does not have a phone, and people are substantially less _____2____ to participate over the telephone than in person—it is easier to hang up than to slam the door in someone's face. These are small trade-off s for political candidates running for minor offices, for whom telephone polls are the only affordable method of gauging public opinion.

following leading

Critics of polling, by contrast, say it makes politicians more concerned with _______1______ than _______2______. Polls might have told the Constitutional Convention delegates that the Constitution was unpopular or might have told President Thomas Jefferson that people did not want the Louisiana Purchase. Certainly they would have told William Seward not to buy Alaska, a transaction known widely at the time as "Seward's Folly." Polls may thus discourage bold leadership, like that of Winston Churchill, who once said, Nothing is more dangerous than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup poll, always taking one's pulse and taking one's temperature.... There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe.

1. conservative 2. liberal

Decades of survey data have consistently shown that more Americans choose the ideological label of _______1________ over _____2_____. In 2011, the Gallup poll reported that of those who labeled themselves, 41 percent were conservatives, 36 percent were moderates, and just 21 percent were liberals. The predominance of _________1________ thinking in America is one of the most important reasons for the relatively restrained scope of government activities compared to most European nations.

1. decade 2. census

Demographic changes are associated with political changes. States gain or lose congressional representation as their population changes, and thus power shifts as well. This reapportionment process occurs once a _____1_____, after each _____2_____, when the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are reallocated to reflect each state's proportion of the population. If the census finds that a state has 5 percent of the population, then it receives 5 percent of the seats in the House for the next 10 years. Thus, as the percentage of Americans residing in Texas grew with the movement to the Sun Belt, its representation in the House increased from 22 for the 1962-1972 elections to 35 for the 2012-2020 elections. During this same time period, in contrast, New York lost over one-third of its delegation.

b. Less

Do a majority of Americans favor more or less government? a. More b. Less c. About the same as we have currently d. It is unclear what the public wants

65 longer dropped

Florida, currently the nation's fourth most populous state, has grown in large part as a result of its attractiveness to senior citizens. Nationwide, citizens over _1_ are the fastest-growing age group in America. Not only are people living _____2______ as a result of medical advances, but in addition the fertility rate has ______3_____ substantially—from 3.6 children per woman in 1960 to about 2.1 today.

slaves

For most of American history, African Americans were the largest minority group in the country. Most African Americans are descended from reluctant immigrants— Africans brought to America by force as _______. A legacy of centuries of racism and discrimination is that a relatively high proportion of African Americans are economically disadvantaged—in 2011, according to Census Bureau data, 26 percent of African Americans lived below the poverty line compared to 9 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

1. north 2. east

For most of American history, the most populous states were concentrated _______ of the Mason-Dixon Line and ______ of the Mississippi River. However, much of America's population growth since World War II has been centered in the West and South. In particular, the populations of Arizona, Texas, and Florida have grown rapidly as people moved to the Sun Belt. From 2000 to 2010, the rate of population growth was 29 percent in Arizona, 19 percent in Texas, and 16 percent in Florida. In contrast, population growth in the Northeast was a scant 3 percent.

criminals lunatics diseases Chinese Exclusion Act Johnson-Reid Immigration Act

For the first century of U.S. history, America had an open door policy for anyone who wanted to come to fill up its vast unexplored territory. The first restrictions that were imposed on immigration, in 1875, limited _______1______ and prostitutes from staying in the United States, and soon ______2_____ and people with serious _______3______ were banned also. The first geographically based restrictions were imposed in 1882 when the _____4_____ ________________ ____ was passed. As concern grew about the flood of new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, the _______5______-_______ ________________ ____ was passed in 1924, establishing official quotas for immigrants based on national origins. These quotas were based on the number of people from each particular country living in the United States at the time of the 1890 census. By tying the quotas to a time when most Americans were from northwestern Europe, this law greatly cut down on the fl ow of immigrants from elsewhere.

world

From its modest beginning, with George Gallup's 1932 polls for his mother-in-law in Iowa, polling has become a big business. That it has grown so much and spread throughout the _______ is no surprise: From Manhattan to Moscow, from Tulsa to Tokyo, people want to know what other people think.

protests

From the Boston Tea Party to burning draft cards to demonstrating against abortion, Americans have engaged in countless political _____1_____. _____1____ is a form of political participation designed to achieve policy change through dramatic and unconventional tactics. The media's willingness to cover the unusual can make them worthwhile, drawing attention to a point of view that many Americans might otherwise never encounter. For example, when an 89-year-old woman walked across the country to draw attention to the need for campaign finance reform, she put this issue onto the front page of newspapers most everywhere she traveled. Using more flamboyant means, the Occupy Wall Street activists attracted a good deal of attention to the issue of economic inequality by camping out in prominent public places. The liberal Occupy movement and the conservative Tea Party movement may not share many political values, but they have both followed the now-standard playbook for demonstrations—orchestrating their activities so as to provide television cameras with vivid images. Demonstration coordinators steer participants to prearranged staging areas and provide facilities for press coverage.

80 10

Generally, the United States has a culture that values political participation. Americans express very high levels of pride in their democracy: the General Social Survey has consistently found that over _1_ percent of Americans say they are proud of how democracy works in the United States. Nevertheless, just 59 percent of adult American citizens voted in the presidential election of 2012, and only about 40 percent turned out for the 2010 midterm elections. At the local level, the situation is even worse, with elections for city council and school board often drawing less than _2_ percent of the eligible voters.

contextual knowledge

How can Americans, who live in the most information-rich society in the world, be so ill informed about politics? Some blame the schools. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., criticizes schools for a failure to teach "cultural literacy." People, he says, often lack the basic ___________ _______________—for example, where Afghanistan is, or what the Vietnam War was about— necessary to understand and use the information they receive from the news media or from listening to political candidates. Nevertheless, it has been found that increased levels of education over the past five decades have scarcely raised public knowledge about politics. Despite the apparent glut of information provided by the media, Americans do not remember much about what they are exposed to through the media.

1. landlines

However, in this era of cell phones, many pollsters are starting to worry whether this methodology will continue to be affordable. As of 2012, government studies showed that about one in four households had cell phone service only. This percentage is significantly higher among young adults, minorities, and people who are transient. Because federal law prohibits use of automated dialing programs to cell phones, pollsters have to use the far more expensive procedure of dialing cell phones numbers manually. In addition, studies have shown that people are much less likely to agree to be interviewed when they are reached on a cell phone as compared to a _____1______. All told, Mark Mellman, one of America's top political pollsters, estimates that it is 5 to 15 times as expensive to gather interviews from the cell-phone-only segment of the population as from landline users. Although big firms like Gallup have successfully made the adjustment so far, the costs of conducting phone polls are likely to further escalate as more people give up their ______1_______.

conflict hostility

However, not all observers view this most recent wave of immigration without concern. Ellis Cose, a prominent journalist, has written that "racial animosity has proven to be both an enduring American phenomenon and an invaluable political tool." Because America has entered a period of rapid ethnic change, Cose predicts immigration "will be a magnet for __________ and ___________." For Robert Putnam, the concern takes a different form, as he finds that "diversity does not produce 'bad race relations' or ethnically defined group hostility" but, rather, that "inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life" and to distrust their neighbors. Putnam thus recommends a renewed emphasis on the motto on our one dollar bill— e pluribus unum (out of many, one) to deal with the challenge created by the growing diversity within American communities.

dismally low

If there had been polling data in the early days of the American republic, Hamilton would probably have delighted in throwing some of the results in Jefferson's face. If public opinion analysts agree about anything, it is that the level of public knowledge about politics is _________ ___. This is particularly true for young people, but the level of knowledge for the public overall is not particularly encouraging either. For example, in October 2008, the National Annenberg Election Survey asked a set of factual questions about some prominent policy stands taken by Obama and McCain during the campaign. The results were as follows: ● 63 percent knew that Obama would provide more middle-class tax cuts. ● 47 percent knew McCain favored overturning Roe v. Wade. ● 30 percent knew McCain was more likely to support free trade agreements. ● 8 percent knew that both candidates supported stem cell research funding. If so many voters did not know about the candidates' stands on these hotly debated issues, then there is little doubt that most were also unaware of the detailed policy platforms the candidates were running on.

number QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

In order to obtain results that will usually be within sampling error, researchers must follow proper sampling techniques. In perhaps the most infamous survey ever, a 1936 Literary Digest poll underestimated the vote for President Franklin Roosevelt by 19 percent, erroneously predicting a big victory for Republican Alf Landon. The well established magazine suddenly became a laughingstock and soon went out of business. Although the number of responses the magazine obtained for its poll was a staggering 2,376,000, its polling methods were badly flawed. Trying to reach as many people as possible, the magazine drew names from the biggest lists they could find: telephone books and motor vehicle records. In the midst of the Great Depression, the people on these lists were above the average income level (only 40 percent of the public had telephones then; fewer still owned cars) and were more likely to vote Republican. The moral of the story is this: accurate representation, not the ___________ of responses, is the most important feature of a public opinion survey. Indeed, as polling techniques have advanced over the past 70 years, typical sample sizes have been getting smaller, not larger.

participate

In politics, as in many other aspects of life, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The way citizens "squeak" in politics is to ______1_____. Americans have many avenues to ______1______ open to them: ● Mrs. Jones of Iowa City goes to a neighbor's living room to attend her local precinct's presidential caucus. ● Demonstrators against abortion protest at the Supreme Court on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. ● Parents in Alabama file a lawsuit to oppose textbooks that, in their opinion, promote "secular humanism." ● Mr. Smith, a Social Security recipient, writes to his senator to express his concern about a possible cut in his cost-of-living benefits. ● Over 120 million people vote in a presidential election.

1,000 - 1,500 random sampling

In public opinion polling, a random sample of about _____ to _____ people can accurately represent the "universe" of potential voters. The key to the accuracy of opinion polls is the technique of ___________ _______________, which operates on the principle that everyone should have an equal probability of being selected as part of the sample. Your chance of being asked to be in the poll should therefore be as good as that of anyone else—rich or poor, black or white, young or old, male or female. If the sample is randomly drawn, about 13 percent of those interviewed will be African American, slightly over 50 percent female, and so forth, matching the population as a whole.

wording

In the 1970s, Nie, Verba, and Petrocik argued that voters were more sophisticated than they had been in the 1950s. Others, though, have concluded that people have seemed more informed and ideological only because the _______ of the questions changed. Recently, the authors of The American Voter Revisited updated the analysis of The American Voter using survey data from the 2000 election. They found that just 20 percent of the population met the criteria for being classified as an ideologue in 2000—not that much more than the 12 percent in 1956. Echoing the analysts of the 1950s, they conclude that "it is problematic to attribute ideological meaning to aggregate voting patterns when most of the individuals making their decisions about the candidates are not motivated by ideological concepts."

cities Southwest

In the 2000 census, the Hispanic population outnumbered the African American population for the first time. Like African Americans, Hispanics are concentrated in ___1___. Hispanics are rapidly gaining political power in the _______2______, and cities such as San Antonio and Los Angeles have elected mayors of Hispanic heritage. As of 2010, the state legislatures of New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and California had at least 10 percent Hispanic representation.

Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act

It wasn't until the _______-_________ _________________ ____ _________________ ___ of 1965 that these quotas were abolished. This 1965 law made family integration the prevailing goal for U.S. immigration policy. As historian Steven Gillon argues, this law produced an unanticipated chain of immigration under the auspices of family unification. For example, he writes, An engineering student from India could come to the United States to study, find a job after graduating, get labor certification, and become a legal resident alien. His new status would then entitle him to bring over his wife, and six years later, after being naturalized, his brothers and sisters. They in turn could begin the process all over again by sponsoring their wives, husbands, children, and siblings.

sample

It would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to ask every citizen his or her opinion on a whole range of issues. Instead, polls rely on a __________ of the population—a relatively small proportion of people who are chosen to represent the whole. Herbert Asher draws an analogy to a blood test to illustrate the principle of sampling. Your doctor does not need to drain a gallon of blood from you to determine whether you have mononucleosis, AIDS, or any other disease. Rather, a small sample of blood will reveal its properties.

George Gallup

Public opinion polling is a relatively new science. It was first developed by a young man named ________1____ __________, who initially did some polling for his mother-in-law, a longshot candidate for secretary of state in Iowa in 1932. With the Democratic landslide of that year, she won a stunning victory, thereby further stimulating ____1____'s interest in politics. From that little acorn the mighty oak of public opinion polling has grown. The firm that ______1_____ founded spread throughout the democratic world, and in some languages _____1____ is actually the word used for an opinion poll.

public opinion

the distribution of the population's beliefs about politics and policy issues

1. giving money to candidates 2. contacting public officials

Millions take part in political activities beyond simply voting. In two comprehensive studies of American political participation conducted by Sidney Verba and his colleagues in 1967 and 1987, samples of Americans were asked about their role in various kinds of political activities, such as voting, working in campaigns, contacting government officials, signing petitions, working on local community issues, and participating in political protests. Recently, Russell Dalton has extended the time series for some of these dimensions of political participation into the twenty-first century. All told, voting is the only aspect of political participation that a majority of the population reported engaging in but also the only political activity for which there is evidence of a decline in participation in recent years. Substantial increases in participation have been found on the dimensions of ____1_____ _________ ___ _____________ and _______2______ ________ ________, and small increases are evident for all the other activities. Thus, although the disappointing election turnout rates in the United States are something Americans should rightly be concerned about, a broader look at political participation reveals some positive developments for participatory democracy.

political culture

Morris Fiorina makes a similar argument with regard to the question of whether America is in the midst of a ____________ __________ war. In the media these days, one frequently hears claims that Americans are deeply divided on fundamental political issues, making it seem like there are two different nations—the liberal blue states versus the conservative red states. After a thorough examination of public opinion data, Fiorina concludes that "the views of the American citizenry look moderate, centrist, nuanced, ambivalent—choose your term—rather than extreme, polarized, unconditional, dogmatic." He argues that the small groups of liberal and conservative activists who act as if they are at war with one another have left most Americans in a position analogous to "unfortunate citizens of some third world countries who try to stay out of the crossfire while Maoist guerrillas and right-wing death squads shoot at each other."

Better-educated

Most American schools are public schools, financed by the government. Their textbooks are often chosen by the local and state boards, and teachers are certified by the state government. Schooling is perhaps the most obvious intrusion of the government into Americans' socialization. And education does exert a profound influence on a variety of political attitudes and behavior. ______-____________ citizens are more likely to vote in elections, they exhibit more knowledge about politics and public policy, and they are more tolerant of opposing (even radical) opinions.

world

No amount of Jeffersonian faith in the wisdom of the common people can erase the fact that Americans are not well informed about politics. Polls have regularly found that less than half the public can name their representative in the House. Asking people to explain their opinion on whether trade policy toward China should be liberalized, or whether the proposed "Star Wars" missile defense system should be implemented, or whether the strategic oil reserve should be tapped when gasoline prices skyrocket often elicits blank looks. When trouble flares in a far-off country, polls regularly find that people have no idea where that country is. In fact, surveys show that many Americans lack a basic awareness of the ______ around them.

gay

One of the issues that many commentators believe have led to a political culture war is that of ___ rights. However, the survey data over the past two decades show a growing acceptance among liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike. Rather than reflect an ideological culture war, this example shows how all ideological groups have changed with the changing social mores of the times.

census

One way of looking at the American public is through demography — the science of human populations. The most valuable tool for understanding demographic changes in America is the ______1______. The U.S. Constitution requires that the government conduct an "actual enumeration" of the population every 10 years. The first ______1_____ was conducted in 1790; the most recent ______1_____ was done in 2010.

Informal

Only a small portion of Americans' political learning is formal. Civics or government classes in high school teach citizens some of the nuts and bolts of government—how many senators each state has, what presidents do, and so on. But such formal socialization is only the tip of the iceberg. Americans do most of their political learning without teachers or classes. ___________ learning is really much more important than formal, in-class learning about politics. Most of this informal socialization is almost accidental. Few parents sit down with their children and say, "Johnny, let us tell you why we're Republicans." Instead, the informal socialization process might be best described by words like pick up and absorb. The family, the media, and the schools all serve as important agents of political socialization.

1. genetics 2. identical

Recent research has demonstrated that one of the reasons for the long-lasting impact of parental influence on political attitudes is simply ______1_____. In one study, Alford, Funk, and Hibbing compared the political opinions of identical twins and nonidentical twins. If the political similarity between parents and children is due just to environmental factors, then the identical twins should agree on political issues to about the same extent the nonidentical twins do, as in both cases the twins are raised in the same environment. However, if genetics are an important factor, then identical twins, who are genetically the same, should agree with one another more often than nonidentical twins, who are not. On all the political questions they examined, there was substantially more agreement between the ___________ twins—clearly demonstrating that genetics play an important role in shaping political attitudes.

demography

the science of population changes

1. poverty 2. racial inequality

Perhaps the greatest impact of declining trust in government since the 1960s has been to drain public support for policies that address the problems of ______1_____ and ____2____ _______________. Mark Hetherington argues, "People need to trust the government when they pay the costs but do not receive the benefits, which is exactly what antipoverty and race-targeted programs require of most Americans. When government programs require people to make sacrifices, they need to trust that the result will be a better future for everyone." Hetherington's careful data analysis shows that declining trust in government has caused many Americans to believe that "big government" solutions to social problems are wasteful and impractical, thereby draining public support from them. Indeed, during the debate over health care reform, President Obama's advisers argued that the primary obstacle they faced was not persuading the public of the need for health care reform but, rather, convincing them to put sufficient trust in the government's ability to carry out the reform. Obama acknowledged the problem in his 2010 State of the Union address, saying, "We have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust—deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years." In the 2012 election, Republicans tried to exploit such doubts about the trustworthiness of the federal government, arguing that their values favoring free enterprise solutions over governmental programs were more in tune with Americans' basic values.

how questions are posed

Perhaps the most pervasive criticism of polling is that by altering the wording of a question, pollsters can manipulate the results. Small changes in question wording can sometimes produce significantly different results. For example, in February 2010, the New York Times /CBS News poll found that 70 percent favored permitting "gay men and lesbians" to serve in the military whereas only 44 percent favored military service by "homosexuals" who "openly announce their sexual orientation." Thus, proponents of gays and lesbians in the armed forces could rightly say that a solid public majority favored their military service while opponents could rightly counter that only a minority favored lifting the ban on open military service by homosexuals. This example illustrates why, in evaluating public opinion data, it is crucial to carefully evaluate _____ _________ ___ _______. Fortunately, most major polling organizations now post their questionnaires online, thereby making it much easier than ever before for everyone to scrutinize their work.

Participation

Political _________1__________ encompasses the many activities in which citizens engage to influence the selection of political leaders or the policies they pursue. _________1________ can be overt or subtle. The mass protests against communist rule throughout Eastern Europe in the fall of 1989 represented an avalanche of political ________1_______, yet quietly writing a letter to your congressperson also represents political _________1_________. Political ________1_________ can be violent or peaceful, organized or individual, casual or consuming.

behavior

Political ideology doesn't necessarily guide political _____________. It would probably be a mistake to assume that when conservative candidates do better than they have in the past, this necessarily means people want more conservative policies, for not everyone thinks in ideological terms.

public opinion

Political learning does not, of course, end when one reaches or even when one graduates from college. Politics is a lifelong activity. Because America is an aging society, it is important to consider the effects of growing older on political learning and behavior. Aging increases political participation as well as strength of party attachment. Young adults lack experience with politics. Because political behavior is to some degree learned behavior, there is some learning yet to do. Political participation rises steadily with age until the infirmities of old age make it harder to participate. Similarly, strength of party identification increases as people often develop a pattern of usually voting for one party or the other. Politics, like most other things, is thus a learned behavior. Americans learn to vote, to pick a political party, and to evaluate political events in the world around them. One of the products of all this learning is what is known as ________ ____________.

schools

Political socialization is as important to a government as it is to an individual. Governments, including our own, often use ______1_____ to promote national loyalty and support for their basic values. In most American ______1______, the day begins with the Pledge of Allegiance. As part of promoting support for the basic values of the system, American children have long been successfully educated about the virtues of free enterprise and democracy.

public preferences

Polls help political candidates detect _______ ______________. Supporters of polling insist that it is a tool for democracy. With it, they say, policymakers can keep in touch with changing opinions on the issues. No longer do politicians have to wait until the next election to see whether the public approves or disapproves of the government's course. If the poll results shift, then government officials can make corresponding midcourse corrections. Indeed, it was George Gallup's fondest hope that polling could contribute to the democratic process by providing a way for public desires to be heard at times other than elections. His son, George Gallup, Jr., argued that this hope had been realized in practice, that polling had "removed power out of the hands of special interest groups," and "given people who wouldn't normally have a voice a voice."

Election Day

Probably the most widely criticized type of poll is the ____________ ____ exit poll. For this type of poll, voting places are randomly selected around the country. Workers are then sent to these places and told to ask every tenth person how he or she voted. The results are accumulated toward the end of the day, enabling the television networks to project the outcomes of all but very close races before hardly any votes are actually counted. In some presidential elections, such as 1984 and 1996, the networks declared a national winner while millions on the West Coast still had hours to vote. Critics have charged that this practice discourages many people from voting and thereby affects the outcome of some state and local races.

sampling error 95

Remember that the science of polling involves estimation; a sample can represent the population with only a certain degree of confidence. The level of confidence is known as the ____________ _______, which depends on the size of the sample. The more people that are randomly interviewed for a poll, the more confident one can be of the results. A typical poll of about 1,500 to 2,000 respondents has a sampling error of ±3 percent. What this means is that ___ percent of the time the poll results are within 3 percent of what the entire population thinks. If 60 percent of the sample say they approve of the job the president is doing, one can be pretty certain that the true figure is between 57 and 63 percent.

dissatisfied

Sadly, the American public has become increasingly ________________ with government over the past five decades. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, nearly three-quarters of Americans said that they trusted the government in Washington to do the right thing always or mostly. By the late 1960s, however, researchers started to see a precipitous drop in public trust in government. First Vietnam and then Watergate shook people's confidence in the federal government. The economic troubles of the Carter years and the Iran hostage crisis helped continue the slide; by 1980, only one-quarter of the public thought the government could be trusted most of the time or always. Since then, trust in government has occasionally risen for a while, but the only time a majority said they could trust the government most of the time was in 2002, after the events of September 11.

cynicism

Some analysts have noted that a healthy dose of public _________ helps to keep politicians on their toes. Others, however, note that a democracy is based on the consent of the governed and that a lack of public trust in the government is a reflection of their belief that the system is not serving them well. These more pessimistic analysts have frequently wondered whether such a cynical population would unite behind their government in a national emergency. Although the drop in political cynicism after September 11 was not too great, the fact that it occurred at all indicates that cynicism will not stop Americans from rallying behind their government in times of national crisis. Widespread political cynicism about government apparently applies only to "normal" times; it has not eroded Americans' fundamental faith in our democracy.

agreement

Some degree of adolescent rebellion against parents and their beliefs does take place. Witnessing the outpouring of youthful rebellion in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many people thought a generation gap was opening up. Supposedly, radical youth condemned their backward-thinking parents. Although such a gap occurred in some families, the overall evidence for it was slim. For example, eight years after Jennings and Niemi first interviewed a sample of high school seniors and their parents in the mid-1960s, they still found far more _____________ than disagreement across the generational divide.

care

The "paradox of mass politics," says Russell Neuman, is that the American political system works as well as it does given the discomforting lack of public knowledge about politics. Scholars have suggested numerous ways that this paradox can be resolved. Although many people may not know the ins and outs of most policy questions, some will base their political behavior on knowledge of just one issue that they really ____ about, such as abortion or environmental protection. Others will rely on simple information regarding which groups (Democrats, big business, environmentalists, Christian fundamentalists, etc.) are for and against a proposal, siding with the group or groups they trust the most. And finally, some people will simply vote for or against incumbent officeholders based on how satisfied they are with the job the government is doing.

diverse

The American people are wondrously ___________. There are over 300 million Americans, forming a mosaic of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. America was founded on the principle of tolerating diversity and individualism, and it remains one of the most diverse countries in the world. Most Americans view this diversity as among the most appealing aspects of their society.

48 50

The Census Bureau estimates that by the middle of the twenty-first century, non-Hispanic whites will represent only _1_ percent of the population. The projected increases are based on two trends that are likely to continue for decades to come. 1. Immigration into the United States has been and will probably continue to be concentrated among Hispanics and Asian Americans. 2. Birth rates have been consistently higher among minorities. Indeed, the Census Bureau reported that among the babies it counted in the 2010 census less than _2_ percent were non-Hispanic whites.

immigrants 12; 41

The United States has always been a nation of ______________. As John F. Kennedy said, America is "not merely a nation but a nation of nations." All Americans except Native Americans are descended from immigrants or are immigrants themselves. Today, federal law allows for about 1 million new immigrants a year, and in recent years about 500,000 illegal immigrants a year have also entered the United States. Combined, this is equivalent to adding roughly the population of Phoenix every year. The Census Bureau estimates that currently ___ percent of the nation's population are immigrants and that ___ percent of this group have already become U.S. citizens. States vary substantially in the percentage of their residents who are foreign born—from a high of 27 percent in California to a low of 1 percent in West Virginia.

Census Bureau

The _______1_____ ___________ tries to conduct the most accurate count of the population possible. It isn't an easy job, even with the allocation of billions of federal dollars to the task. In 2010, a census form was mailed out to all 134 million residential addresses in the United States. Despite the fact that federal law requires a response from every household—a fact that is noted on the mailing envelope—only 72 percent of households responded, ranging from a high of 81 percent in Wisconsin to a low of 62 percent in Alaska. Thus, 800,000 people were hired to follow up with the remaining 28 percent through door-to-door canvassing. In explaining on its Web site why participation was so important, the ____1_____ ____________ noted that "the information the census collects helps to determine how more than $400 billion dollars of federal funding each year is spent on infrastructure and services like (1) hospitals; (2) job training centers; (3) schools; (4) senior centers; (5) bridges, tunnels and other public works projects; and (6) emergency services." Communities that are usually undercounted in the census—primarily those with high concentrations of minorities, people with low incomes, and children— end up getting less from the federal government than they should.

Social Security

The aging of the population has enormous implications for ___1___ ________________. It is structured as a pay-as-you-go system, which means that today's workers pay the benefits for today's retirees. In 1960, there were 5.7 workers per retiree; today there are 3. By 2040, there will be only about 2 workers per retiree. This ratio will put tremendous pressure on this system, which, even today, is exceeded only by national defense as America's most costly public policy. The current group of older Americans and those soon to follow can lay claim to trillions of dollars guaranteed by this. People who have been promised benefits naturally expect to collect them, especially benefits for which they have made monthly contributions. Thus, both political parties have long treated ____1____ _____________ benefits as sacrosanct. For example, Republican representative Paul Ryan's recent proposal for reshaping the this system carefully promised to keep the system unchanged for anyone over the age of 55.

12 42 24 22

The authors of the classic study The American Voter first examined how much people rely on ideology to guide their political thinking. They divided the public into four groups, according to ideological sophistication. Their portrait of the American electorate was not flattering. Only _1_ percent of people showed evidence of thinking in ideological terms. These people, classified as ideologues, could connect their opinions and beliefs with broad policy positions taken by parties or candidates. They might say, for example, that they liked the Democrats because they were more liberal or the Republicans because they favored a smaller government. _2_ percent of Americans were classified as group benefits voters. These people thought of politics mainly in terms of the groups they liked or disliked; for example, "Republicans support small business owners like me" or "Democrats are the party of the working person." _3_ percent of the population were nature of the times voters. Their handle on politics was limited to whether the times seemed good or bad to them; they might vaguely link the party in power with the country's fortune or misfortune. Finally, _4_ percent of the voters expressed no ideological or issue content in making their political evaluations. They were called the no issue content group. Most of them simply voted routinely for a party or judged the candidates solely by their personalities. Overall, at least during the 1950s, Americans seemed to care little about the differences between liberal and conservative politics.

1. time 2. emotional commitment

The family's role in socialization is ________ because of its monopoly on two crucial resources in the early years: 1. 2. If your parents are interested in politics, chances are you will be also, as your regular interactions with them will expose you to the world of politics as you are growing up. Furthermore, children often pick up their political leanings from the attitudes of their parents. Most students in an American government class like to think of themselves as independent thinkers, especially when it comes to politics. Yet one can predict how the majority of young people will vote simply by knowing the party identification of their parents.

less

The gender gap is a relatively new predictor of ideological positions, dating back only to 1980, when Ronald Reagan was first elected. A more traditional source of division between liberals and conservatives has been financial status, or what is often known as social class. But in actuality, the relationship between family income and ideology is now relatively weak; social class has become much ______ predictive of political behavior than it used to be. Even among the much-talked-about wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, Gallup has found that conservatism is no more prevalent than in the population as a whole.

random sampling

The key technique employed by survey researchers, which operates on the principle that everyone should have an equal probability of being selected for the sample.

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.

1. parent 2. age gap

The mass media are the "new ______1_____," according to many observers. Average grade-school youngsters spend more time each week watching television than they spend at school. And television displaces parents as the chief source of information as children get older. Unfortunately, today's generation of young adults is significantly less likely to watch television news and read newspapers than their elders. Many studies have attributed the relative lack of political knowledge of today's youth to their media consumption or, more appropriately, to their lack of it. In 1965, Gallup found virtually no difference between age groups in frequency of following politics through the media. In recent years, however, a considerable __2__ ____ has opened up, with older people paying the most attention to the news and young adults the least. The median age of viewers of CBS, ABC, and NBC news programs in 2010 was 62—18 years older than the audience for a typical prime-time program. If you have ever turned on the TV news and wondered why so many of the commercials seem to be for various prescription drugs, now you know why.

skilled surpassed

The new Asian immigrants are the most highly _____1____ immigrant group in American history, and Asian Americans have often been called the superachievers of the emerging minority majority. Significantly, 53 percent of Asian Americans over the age of 25 hold a college degree, almost twice the national average. As a result, their median family income has already _________2_________ that of non-Hispanic whites. Although still a very small minority group, Asian Americans have had some notable political successes. For example, in 1996 Gary Locke (a Chinese American) was elected governor of Washington, in 2001 Norman Mineta (a Japanese American) was appointed secretary of transportation, and Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal (both of whom are the children of immigrants from India) currently serve as the governors of South Carolina and Louisiana, respectively.

democratic

The payoffs of schooling thus extend beyond better jobs and better pay. Educated citizens also more closely approximate the model of a _______________ citizen. A formal civics course may not make much difference, but the whole context of education does.

reapportionment

The process of reallocating seats in the House of Representatives every 10 years on the basis of the results of the census.

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.

gender gap

The regular pattern in which women are more likely to support Democratic candidates, in part because they tend to be less conservative than men and more likely to support spending on social services and to oppose higher levels of military spending.

Protestants liberal conservative

The role of religion in influencing political ideology has also changed greatly in recent years. Catholics and Jews, as minority groups who struggled for equality, have long been more liberal than _________1________. Today, Jews remain by far the most liberal demographic group in the country. However, the ideological gap between Catholics and Protestants is now smaller than the gender gap. Ideology is now determined more by religiosity—that is, the degree to which religion is important in one's life—than by religious denomination. What is known as the new Christian Right consists of Catholics and Protestants who consider themselves fundamentalists or "born again." The influx of new policy issues dealing with matters of morality and traditional family values has recently tied this aspect of religious beliefs to political ideology. Those who identify themselves as born-again Christians are currently the most conservative demographic group. On the other hand, people who say they have no religious affiliation (roughly 15 percent of the population) are more_____2______ than __________3__________.

minority majority

The situation, likely beginning in the mid-twenty-first century, in which the non-Hispanic whites will represent a minority of the U.S. population and minority groups together will represent a majority.

beliefs

The study of American public opinion aims to understand the distribution of the population's __________ about politics and policy issues. Because there are many groups and a great variety of opinions in the United States, this is an especially complex task. This is not to say that public opinion would be easy to study even if America were a more homogeneous society; as you will see, measuring public opinion involves painstaking interviewing procedures and careful wording of questions.

1. northwestern Europeans 2. southern Europeans 3. eastern Europeans 4. Hispanics 5. Asians

There have been three great waves of immigration to the United States: ● In the first wave, in the early and mid-nineteenth century, immigrants were mainly __________1__________ Europeans (English, Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians). ● In the second wave, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many immigrants were ______2_____ and _____3______ Europeans (Italians, Jews, Poles, Russians, and others). Most came through Ellis Island in New York (now a popular museum). ● In the most recent wave, since the 1960s, immigrants have been especially _________4________ (particularly from Cuba, Central America, and Mexico) and _____5_____ (from Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, and elsewhere).

shift

These findings do not mean that the vast majority of the population does not have a political ideology. Rather, for most people the terms liberal and conservative are just not as important as they are for members of the political elite, such as politicians, activists, and journalists. Relatively few people have ideologies that organize their political beliefs. Thus, the authors of The American Voter concluded that to speak of election results as indicating a movement of the public either left (to more liberal policies) or right (to more conservative policies) is not justified because most voters do not think in such terms. Furthermore, those who do are actually the least likely to _____ from one election to the next.

liberal

This is in large part because excluded groups have often looked to the government to rectify the inequalities they have faced. For example, government activism in the form of the major civil rights bills of the 1960s was crucial in bringing African Americans into the mainstream of American life. Many African American leaders currently place a high priority on retaining social welfare and affirmative action programs in order to assist African Americans' progress. It should come as little surprise, then, that African Americans are more ____1____ than the national average. Similarly, Hispanics also are ____1_____ than non-Hispanic whites, and the influx of more Hispanics into the electorate may well move the country in a slightly more _____1_____ direction.

self-government

Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had very different views about the wisdom of common people. Jefferson trusted people's good sense and believed that education would enable them to take the tasks of citizenship ever more seriously. Toward that end, he founded the University of Virginia. In contrast, Hamilton lacked confidence in people's capacity for ____-_______________. His response to Jefferson was the infamous phrase, "Your people, sir, is a great beast."

a. Voting

What is the most common form of political participation? a. Voting b. Writing to elected officials c. Working on campaigns d. Protesting

b. Family

What is the most important agent of political socialization in the U.S.? a. Government b. Family c. School d. Profession

c. They influence election results

What is the problem with exit polls? a. They are usually inaccurate b. They don't poll every voter c. They influence election results d. None of the above

a. From Northeast to Southwest

What kind of regional population shift is America experiencing? a. From Northeast to Southwest b. From Northwest to Southeast c. From Southwest to Northeast d. From Midwest to Northeast

melting pot minority majority

With its long history of immigration, the United States has often been called a ______1______ ____ , in which cultures, ideas, and peoples blend into one. As the third wave of immigration continues, policymakers have begun to speak of a new ______2______ ____________, meaning that America will eventually cease to have a non-Hispanic white majority. As of 2010, the Census Bureau reported an all-time low in the percentage of non-Hispanic white Americans—just 63 percent of the population. Hispanics made up the largest minority group, accounting for 16 percent of the U.S. population, with African Americans making up 13 percent, Asian Americans 6 percent, and Native Americans 2 percent.

54 conservative gender gap

Women are not a minority group—making up, as they do, about _1_ percent of the population—but they have been politically and economically disadvantaged. Compared to men, women are more likely to support spending on social services and to oppose the higher levels of military spending, which conservatives typically advocate. These issues concerning the priorities of government (rather than the issue of abortion, on which men and women actually differ very little) lead women to be significantly less ________2______ than men. This ideological difference between men and women has resulted in the _____3______ ___ , a regular pattern in which women are more likely to support Democratic candidates. In his 1996 reelection, for example, Bill Clinton carried the women's vote, whereas Bob Dole won more support from men. In 2012, surveys showed that women were about 10 percent more likely to support Barack Obama than men.

30

Yet there are some groups that are more liberal than others and thus would generally like to see the government do more. Among people under the age of ___, there are slightly more liberals than conservatives. The younger the individual, the less likely that person is to be a conservative. The fact that younger people are also less likely to vote means that conservatives are overrepresented at the polls. In general, groups with political clout tend to be more conservative than groups whose members have often been shut out from the halls of political power.

voters who support a candidate because they see others doing so

Yet, polls might weaken democracy in another way—they may distort the election process by creating a bandwagon effect. The wagon carrying the band was the centerpiece of nineteenth-century political parades, and enthusiastic supporters would literally jump on it. Today, the term refers to? Although only 2 percent of people in a recent CBS/ New York Times poll said that poll results had influenced them, 26 percent said they thought others had been influenced (showing that Americans feel that "it's the other person who's susceptible"). Beyond this, polls play to the media's interest in who's ahead in the race. The issues of recent presidential campaigns have sometimes been drowned out by a steady flood of poll results.

political culture

an overall set of values widely shared within a society