American Government

Chapter 6Public Opinion and Political

Socialization

Public Opinion

• What is it? • The aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs

shared by some portion of the adult population

• Consensus versus Divided Opinion (p.194)• Can you think of any examples of issues where

there is a general consensus? What about divided opinion?

Political Socialization

• Do you remember the term political socialization? What are its main sources?

• What about the Internet? How can people become socialized by the Internet now?

Political Preferences and Voting Behavior

• Many factors influence how you vote on election day:

• Education• Income• Religion• Race• Gender• Geographic region

Measuring Public Opinion

• Opinion Poll- a method of systematically questioning a small, selected sample of respondents who are deemed representative of the total population

• How might Polls be useful?• What about Sampling Error? (the difference

between a sample’s result and the true result if the entire population had been interviewed)

• Any other issues with opinion polls? (telephone problems, no cell phones yet, internet polling)

Political Trust

• The degree to which individuals express trust in the government

• See Figure 6-5 on p. 213• See Table 6-3 on p. 214