Political Polls:
Measuring Public Opinion
Since 1932
How we tell them what we want…maybe
How We Learn About Politics
 Political Socialization
 How someone acquires particular political orientation
 Orientation grows firmer
with age
 Process of Political
Socialization
 The Family

Political leanings of
children often mirror
their parents’
Socialization Con’t
 Mass Media
 Chief source of
information as children
age
 Generation gap in
viewing television news
 How does social media
affect/change this?
 School
 Used to socialize young
into political culture
 Better-educated citizens
are more likely to vote
and are more knowledge
about politics and policy
Measuring Public Opinion Polls
 How are polls conducted?
 Sample: small proportion of people are chosen in a survey to
be representative of the whole
 1000-1500 people are necessary
to represent the “universe” of
potential voters

This will give a sampling error
of +/- 3%

Does this seem low?
Measuring Public Opinion Polls
 Random Sampling: used by
researchers and operates on the
principle that everyone should have
an equal probability of being
selected
 What are methods that could work?
 Random-digit dialing – calls
randomly chosen listed and
unlisted numbers

Issues with this?
 How could (or are) polling
companies adapting to the
changing times?
Measuring Public Opinion Polls
 Sampling Error: level of confidence in the findings of a
public opinion poll
 Larger the population the higher the confidence and the
lower the margin of error
Role of Polls
 How polls affect politics
 For polling:
 Polls help politicians figure out preferences
 Against polling:
 Polls make politicians think more about following that leading
 What if people vote overwhelmingly for something but the
politicians ignore it?
 Polls allow politicians to figure out how to word their opinions
to get their bills passed
 “Our job isn’t to tell him [Obama] what to do. Our job is to help
him figure out if he can strengthen his message and persuade more
people to his side…” – Joel Benenson
Role of Polls con’t
 Questionable wording may affect results
 Push polling – polls taken to provide information on an
opponent that would lead respondents to vote against that
candidate
Role of Polls
 How polls affect democracy
 Polls may distort the election process
 Exit Polls – used by the media to predict election day winners
 May discourage people
from voting (especially in
Western states)
 2000 presidential election
in Florida
Role of Polls
 What polls reveal about American’s political information:
We don’t know much about
politics
 We may know our basic
beliefs but not how those
policies affect the gov’t
 We don’t really know the
world either

 Decline of Trust in the Gov’t
Since 1964, trust in the gov’t
has declined
 What does this mean for the people? Gov’t?

How do you compare to the rest
of America?
How do you compare to the rest
of America?
Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who think that economic conditions in
the country as a whole are "getting better" or "getting worse." The results are reported
here and also included in Gallup's Economic Confidence Index. Daily results are based
on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 national adults; Margin of error is ±3
percentage points.
How do you compare to the rest
of America?
How do you compare to the rest
of America?
How do you compare to the rest
of America?