Political Opinion/Socialization

Public opinion: What the public thinks about a particular issue or set of issues at a particular time

Committee On Public Information: Created by Woodrow Wilson to raise support for the war effort. 

Straw Polls: unscientific surveys used to gauge public opinion. Literary Digest used them to predict 4 presidential elections. 

Political socialization: The process through which an individual acquires his particular political orientations – His knowledge, feeling, and evaluations regarding his political world. 

Gender Gap: men and women hold different opinions on a variety of issues. The gap in the way men and women vote. 

Random Sampling: Gives each potential voter/adult the same chance of being selected. 

Quota Sample: Sample based on known statistics to determine the proportion of particular groups in the sample. 

Stratified Sampling: A variation of random sampling. Census data is used to divide a country into 4 sampling regions. Sets of counties and standard metropolitan statistical areas are then randomly selected in proportion to the total national population. 

Push Polls: Telephone “polls” designed to give respondents some negative or even untruthful information about a candidate’s opponent. Data is often ignored, as this is not the intention of push polls. 

Tracking polls: Continuous surveys that allow a campaign to chart its daily rise or fall in support. Small samples are contacted every 24 hours. 

Exit Polls: polls conducted at selected polling places on Election Day. Samples every tenth voter emerging from the polling place. They allow the media to predict the outcome of elections before the polls have closed. Exit polls caused Jimmy Carter to concede defeat 3 hours before the polls closed, leading to controversy over whether or not he would have one had the Exit polls not dismayed potential voters. 

Voter News Service (VNS): The conglomerate organization that provided the major networks with their exit poll data. In 2000 they had many errors concerning the state of Florida, leading many networks to predict the outcome prematurely. 

Sampling Error: The difference between the actual universe and the sample. It is a measure of accuracy of a public opinion poll. 

Bandwagon Effect: When polls or early victories in the primaries can influence new supporters to, “jump on the bandwagon” of that particular candidate. The better a candidates’ outcome in a poll, the more likely he or she is to receive more donations, where as if the candidate seems to have little support in the polls, people are unlikely to donate money to the failing campaign. 

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