Deck 10: Public Opinion

Question 1

Why did Literary Digest predict the 1936 presidential election incorrectly?

A) Only a small number of ballots were actually returned.
B) The sample was badly biased for an election that divided the electorate strongly along economic lines.
C) The size of the sample was too big so that the margin of error in the poll was not precise.
D) The ballots were sent out from Kansas, where one of the contenders lived.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Because the fit between the words and concepts used in polling questions and how people actually think about issues is never perfect, even the most carefully designed question ______.

A) can fail to provide any accurate information
B) can result in an essentially fabricated gauge of public opinion
C) is subject to some measurement error
D) is only right about 47% of the time

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Because of the basic constitutional guarantees that allow citizens to express their views and compel government leaders to take those views into account, it is both possible and essential for political leaders and policy advocates to try to ______.

A) mobilize public opinion on behalf of their causes, because they are incapable of also shaping public opinion on behalf of their causes
B) shape public opinion on behalf of their causes, because they are incapable of also mobilizing public opinion on behalf of their causes
C) shape and mobilize public opinion on behalf of their causes
D) avoid considering the role of public opinion in the success of their causes

Answer 3

C

Question 4

The term straw poll, an analogy for finding out what public opinion is, refers to ______.

A) political parties choosing candidates when delegates drop straws in a box as they vote for one candidate or another
B) tossing straws in the air to see which way the wind is blowing
C) sipping a drink through a straw to get the flavor of the drink
D) drawing straws to see who wins or loses

Question 5

What lessons about public opinion can we draw from The Federalist Papers?

A) Public opinion can easily be swayed by skillful arguments.
B) American public opinion from the beginning has been treated as a political force to alternatively be shaped, mollified, or exploited.
C) During the earliest days of the republic, political elites paid little attention to public preferences since most of the nation was illiterate.
D) Public opinion has only played a role in American politics since the advent of scientific polling methods in the twentieth century.

Question 6

The patterns of public opinion with regard to the National Anthem controversy illustrate that ______.

A) Americans hold clear and well-defined opinions opposing the use of torture
B) Americans hold clear and well-defined opinions supporting torture if it would protect the country from a terrorist attack
C) the opinions most people hold on political issues rely heavily on cues and signals the leaders of their preferred party send on the issues
D) most Americans are well-versed on major issues, and while they consider the cues from party leaders, they generally make up their own minds based on the facts

Question 7

What is the term used to describe elaborately organized sets of political attitudes?

A) partisanship
B) socialization
C) ideologies
D) realignments

Question 8

What is one of the consequences of the effort to shape and channel public opinion?

A) The line between campaigning and governing has blurred because presidents are more reliant on grassroots public support for winning policy battles.
B) As the White House takes a more aggressive stand in shaping public opinion, it has limited the opportunities for outside forces to participate.
C) It has resulted in greater fragmentation of the political attitudes Americans hold because there are so many competing messages.
D) It has reduced political efficacy because Americans only see competing efforts to shape opinions rather than a real dialogue on the issues.

Question 9

Which of the following statements about sampling is true?

A) It is pretty easy to draw a random sample of the population in order to measure public opinion accurately.
B) The larger the sample the more closely the sample's answers will closely approximate the answers if the entire population could be asked.
C) Larger samples are always better so the results from a sample of 2,000 will be twice as accurate as the results from a sample of 1,000.
D) Pollsters who can draw good samples can virtually eliminate any errors in polling.

Question 10

What affects the margin of error in a poll?

A) the size of the sample
B) the size of the population
C) the length of the survey
D) the representativeness of the sample

Question 11

Regular elections, broad suffrage, freedom of speech and the press, and freedom to join or form political organizations are significant because ______.

A) they ensure that government leaders can simply do their jobs without worrying about public opinion
B) they mean that government leaders always know precisely what the public's opinion is
C) they compel government leaders to take the public's opinion into account if they want to keep their jobs
D) they are mechanisms through which the government distracts the public from policy

Question 12

The fact that some people in the United States may not have a telephone or only have a cell phone or refuse to participate in polls illustrates what about scientific polling?

A) Pollsters can overcome any problems with the sample to make sure the results are not biased.
B) Nothing really because these people constitute a very small part of the population.
C) No poll is completely free of the biases they introduce in drawing the sample.
D) There is really no such thing as scientific polling and these problems make polls unreliable.

Question 13

What is one of the major consequences of V. O. Key Jr.'s definition of public opinion?

A) Political actors must follow public opinion without any question.
B) Every government, democratic or otherwise, has to pay attention to public opinion in some fashion.
C) Only democratic governments have to pay attention to public opinion since elections are essential.
D) Those who have the power to move public opinion are the most important actors in the political system.

Question 14

Like the vote, public opinion has its political effect as an aggregate phenomenon, but it also shares which of the following similarities to the vote?

A) It cannot be measured at the individual level.
B) It is no more than the sum of its individual parts.
C) It rarely factors in policy decisions.
D) There is no need to understand the basis of individual opinions.

Question 15

Which of the following statements about attitudes is correct?

A) When stating opinions or casting votes, Americans rarely respond in ways that express their underlying attitudes.
B) It combines feelings, beliefs, thoughts, and predispositions to react in a certain way.
C) Most individuals hold widely shared attitudes in the United States.
D) Most people have an elaborate set of informed, organized, and internally consistent attitudes.

Question 16

Most scholars who study public opinion believe that expressed opinions ______.

A) reflect underlying attitudes
B) cannot be trusted and are not accurate
C) are unduly influenced by irrelevancies
D) are solely the result of media framing

Question 17

Which president started the trend of having an in-house pollster taking regular readings of the public pulse?

A) Dwight D. Eisenhower
B) Harry Truman
C) Bill Clinton
D) Jimmy Carter

Question 18

In theory, ideologies promote consistency among political attitudes by connecting them to a more general principle or set of principles. In practice, ideologies ______.

A) typically are incoherently connected beliefs
B) often combine attitudes linked more by coalitional politics than by principle
C) are simply irrational expressions of belief
D) reflect little more than the emotion of the moment for most people

Question 19

Which of the following is a simple definition of public opinion proposed by the political scientist V. O. Key Jr.?

A) "something that can never be determined in a pluralist society"
B) "policy positions determined primarily by the media and political elites"
C) "nothing more than the outcome of elections"
D) "those opinions held by private persons which governments find it prudent to heed"

Question 20

How did politicians determine public opinion before the advent of scientific polling?

A) by counting the number of people who attended their campaign rallies
B) by the number of people who volunteered for the campaign, which was a good proxy for public opinion
C) haphazardly through information supplied by editorials, pamphleteers, and local leaders
D) through the number of small dollar campaign contributions

Question 21

For pollsters, "framing" ______.

A) occurs when the respondent changes the question, or reframes it, before answering so they understand things more clearly
B) means the context in which the question is asked frames the question and the frame determines which attitudes govern the response
C) is the range of the margin of error within which the results are framed so that people can accurately evaluate the levels of uncertainty
D) is the set of first and last questions asked that frame the other questions that are included in the survey

Question 22

The terms liberal and conservative ______.

A) are the ideological labels commonly used in American politics
B) are the ideological labels common across the world but not in the United States
C) have not changed over time so they have become less useful in American politics
D) are names of parties in American politics

Question 23

The experiences of Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush illustrate ______.

A) that the level of public approval for the President rarely deviates very much
B) that the level of public approval for Republican presidents declines more sharply than for Democratic candidates
C) that the level of approval for presidents typically varies from month to month with economic conditions and international events
D) that the level of support for only Republican presidents is higher when there is some type of international crisis

Question 24

What do the reactions to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama illustrate about partisanship?

A) The levels of partisanship surrounding presidential evaluations have decreased in recent years.
B) Responses to political actors and events have become increasingly polarized along party lines.
C) Evaluations of the President tend not to be affected by partisanship.
D) All Republicans supported President Bush and all Democrats supported President Obama, and there was no overlap.

Question 25

How can public opinion play its assigned role in democratic politics if large segments of the public are politically ignorant or hold inconsistent views?

A) It perfectly matches the political system of the United States where separated institutions share political power.
B) It is consistent with the expectations of the Framers who wanted to temper public opinion as much as possible.
C) There are a variety of formal and informal political institutions that give public opinion shape and force.
D) While many of the public are politically ignorant or hold inconsistent views, they are capable of sending clear signals on issues of local importance.

Question 26

What is the effect of ambivalence on people's expressed opinions?

A) It tends to result in respondents being less likely to answer questions.
B) The response to the pollster's questions depends on which considerations come to mind first and seem most weighty.
C) People are more likely to fall back on their elaborately structured attitudes to fit a new issue into their mental framework.
D) People discount the importance of opinion leaders and prefer to gather as much information as possible so they can make a firm decision.

Question 27

The varying levels of support for the Iraq War highlight what aspect of public opinion?

A) Answers may be affected by even ostensibly minor changes in question wording.
B) Even though most Americans lacked specific knowledge, they were willing to express their opinions.
C) The margin of error meant that it was very difficult to ascertain the true feelings of the American people on the question.
D) The public was more supportive of the war in larger samples than smaller samples, and this is a common concern.

Question 28

Unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise, Americans interpret political phenomena ______.

A) without regard for party identity
B) the way that the media tell them to
C) based mainly on the objective facts
D) in ways that favor their preferred party

Question 29

What lessons can we draw from the fact that Americans believed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction or that President Obama was foreign-born and ineligible to be President?

A) Most Americans favor cognitive dissonance and those who believed such stories about Saddam Hussein and President Obama were a small fraction of the country.
B) Americans tend to blindly follow opinion leaders because the lack of legitimate political information makes it hard for Americans to discover the truth.
C) People tend to pay more attention and more credence to sources and information that confirm rather than challenge their beliefs.
D) Americans will believe just about anything.

Question 30

The process of acquiring political attitudes is known as ______.

A) political coordination
B) political substantiation
C) political reification
D) political socialization

Question 31

Which of the following is true about opinion leaders?

A) They are limited to the media elite who tell individuals how they should think.
B) They pay close attention to political issues and from them the uninformed take cues.
C) They are those who agree with the majority.
D) They are politicians who are able to gauge public opinion without using polls.

Question 32

How can stable and coherent public opinion arise from unstable and incoherent individual opinions?

A) Pollsters have developed weighting systems that allow them to identify the most informed respondents so their responses count more.
B) Measurement errors and random individual changes tend to cancel one another out and the average remains the same if the circumstances remain the same.
C) New technologies and platforms have allowed pollsters to draw better samples that reduce the amount of measurement error in polls.
D) It can arise through opinion leaders who canvass their friends and answer polling questions consistently over time.

Question 33

When asked to place themselves on a scale from very liberal to very conservative, about half the people classify themselves as liberal or conservative. Of the rest ______.

A) about a quarter position themselves in the middle and another quarter do not place themselves at all
B) about a quarter position themselves as very liberal and another quarter position themselves as very conservative
C) almost all the remaining half place themselves in the middle
D) almost all the remaining half refuse to answer

Question 34

Which of the following statements about political information is true?

A) The public is surprisingly informed of basic political facts, concepts, and issues.
B) Almost all Americans develop elaborate and well-informed political views because the payoff always exceeds the costs.
C) People are reluctant to pay the cost of acquiring information that has no practical payoff so their opinions appear to be uninformed and unstable.
D) Americans largely discount the availability of free information because surveys reveal a perception that any information that is free must be biased.

Question 35

When public opinion is not stable, its movements can usually be explained by which of the following?

A) polling-method errors
B) measurement errors that have failed to cancel one another out
C) responses to changed conditions
D) random individual changes that have failed to cancel one another out

Question 36

Which of the following interpretations of partisanship is correct?

A) Empirical research has demonstrated that most Americans change their partisanship frequently.
B) A party might be a shorthand cue for some voters but a source of personal identity for others.
C) Few Americans are willing to identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats and answer questions accordingly.
D) Scholars have no clear understanding of partisanship and the role it plays in American politics.

Question 37

Individual opinions sometimes may be badly informed and unstable, ______.

A) but aggregate public opinion is both stable and coherent
B) and aggregate public opinion is uninformed and unstable
C) although only informed and stable individual opinions are considered for the purposes of aggregate public opinion
D) but when combined into aggregate public opinion, individual opinions are informed-though still unstable

Question 38

What is the political attitude that shapes opinions and organizes other political attitudes most consistently for most Americans?

A) separation of church and state
B) homeland security
C) political parties
D) morality

Question 39

When a small segment of the public forms opinions by paying close attention to political events and issues and the uninformed and inattentive take cues from the attentive segment, what collective action problem does it illustrate?

A) tragedy of the commons
B) coordination problems
C) public goods
D) free riding

Question 40

What ideological label do we use to describe those who distrust government, have greater faith in private enterprise and free markets, and are more willing to use government to enforce traditional moral standards?

A) liberals
B) libertarians
C) Keynesians
D) conservatives

Question 41

What are the main conduits of public opinion in a pluralist political system?

A) political parties and interest groups
B) issue publics and political parties
C) opinion leaders and interest groups
D) opinion leaders and issue publics

Question 42

Politicians pay close attention to group differences in polling data because______.

A) any problems with or defects in the polling data can be seen in the group differences
B) the polls tend to be more accurate at gauging Republican views
C) they determine feasible coalition-building strategies
D) pollsters frequently overlook the importance of demographic groups

Question 43

Which of the following is TRUE about public opinion?

A) It is not routinely manipulated by self-serving elites because pluralist competition denies any given opinion leader a monopoly.
B) It is routinely manipulated by self-serving elites because opinion leaders have a monopoly.
C) It is routinely manipulated by self-serving elites because pluralist competition undermines the rationality of the public in the aggregate.
D) It is not routinely manipulated by self-serving elites because pluralist competition means opinion leaders have no effect on public opinion.

Question 44

The opinion of most ordinary citizens regarding abortion can best be described as ______.

A) almost identical to one of the two sides of activists on the issue
B) being more evenly split
C) not widely studied because it is not important to most Americans
D) abortion should only be legal in the case of rape or incest

Question 45

Foreign policy issues tend to be remote from the everyday experiences of most Americans, and few people pay sustained attention to foreign affairs except ______.

A) when Americans are dying overseas
B) during all election years
C) when they live in towns with manufacturing industries
D) during presidential election years

Question 46

When it comes to principles instead of programs, Americans most likely think of themselves as ______.

A) liberal
B) conservative
C) independent
D) radical

Question 47

By and large, Americans seem to support a wide range of economic and social policies that are commonly classified as ______.

A) radical
B) independent
C) conservative
D) liberal

Question 48

What generalization can we make about group opinions?

A) Most of the attitudes held by members of the group will align with one of the major political parties.
B) Ethnic minorities express strong and distinctive views on issues directly affecting their group.
C) No ethnic group other than Cuban Americans expresses strong and distinctive views on issues directly affecting their group.
D) As immigrants, most ethnic minorities want to ignore issues directly affecting their group and assimilate to the United States.

Question 49

When it comes to social and moral issues, which of the following is true?

A) Most Americans hold clear and well-defined attitudes that are comparable to attitudes on economic issues.
B) These issues raise conflicting considerations that are difficult to reconcile not only between opposed groups but also for individuals in their own minds.
C) These are such complex issues that Americans generally do not have any opinions and rely heavily on opinion leaders for guidance.
D) The public generally takes well-defined positions, but opinion leaders try to find some type of middle ground in order to reduce political conflict.

Question 50

Which government program is called the third rail of American politics by politicians because, like the high-voltage bar that powers subway trains, if you touch it you die?

A) same-sex marriage
B) abortion
C) religion
D) social security

Question 51

Which of the following statements about political information is true?

A) It is critical and rational to obtain information even when our influence on the choice is effectively nil.
B) Most Americans prefer to rely only on people they know personally if they are going to engage in free riding.
C) We avoid incurring information costs by delegating opinion formation to reliable agents chosen for that purpose.
D) Few cognitive shortcuts are available to people because there is a shortage of people interested in gathering and disseminating political information.

Question 52

The attitudes of Americans toward politicians ______.

A) are increasingly positive as the government has reduced the differences in wealth and well-being among individuals and groups
B) have improved slightly in recent years as politicians rediscovered the value of bargaining and compromise to break political gridlock
C) are increasingly negative because public distrust of government has deepened markedly as Americans believe that public officials are corrupt and government wastes taxpayers' money
D) have remained stable in recent years because there is no reason to expect any significant changes in public attitudes toward government

Question 53

Which of the following statements about religion and political attitudes is true?

A) Few Americans profess religious affiliations and there are no major events in American history where religious values played an important role.
B) Religious beliefs influence opinions much more on economic issues than social ones.
C) Since the Carter administration, the Democratic Party has made a concerted effort to win the support of evangelical Protestants and other religious conservatives, with a great deal of success.
D) Regardless of religious affiliation, the more active people are in religious life, the more socially conservative they are likely to be.

Question 54

Aggregate public opinion on abortion is ______.

A) both highly stable and acutely sensitive to how the issue is framed
B) highly stable but not responsive to framing
C) unstable but also not responsive to framing
D) unstable but acutely responsive to framing

Question 55

Although only 24% of the public support increased spending on "welfare," which of the following is also true?

A) Sixty-two percent support increased spending on "aid to the poor."
B) Sixty-two percent support increased spending on "training the poor to work in good jobs."
C) Sixty-two percent support increased spending on "convincing the poor to enlist in the military."
D) Sixty-two percent support increased spending on "teaching the poor how to avoid having children by accident."

Question 56

When it comes to the relationship between public opinion and public policy ______.

A) studies find that the more prominent the issue, the less likely public opinion is to be influential
B) scholars have found that because elections are so important, any changes in public opinion are automatically reflected in changes in public policy
C) studies have demonstrated that public opinion significantly affected public policy in three-quarters of instances
D) the structure of the American system of government prevents public opinion from systematically affecting public policy

Question 57

Farmers who pay attention to farm policy or retired persons and their doctors who keep tabs on Medicare are examples of ______.

A) opinion leaders
B) issue publics
C) thought leaders
D) high demanders

Question 58

Candidates and parties trying to win elections have no choice but to ______.

A) ignore social groups that do not fully agree with those groups already in any given coalition
B) piece together coalitions out of the major social groups that constitute the raw material of politics
C) pick a coalition and stick with it regardless of any social changes that may occur
D) ignore their own differences so they can always appeal to every social group

Question 59

Unlike in the past, a large majority of White Americans now reject ______.

A) abortion
B) segregation
C) equal opportunity
D) welfare

Question 60

Which of the following accurately describes public opinion on economic issues?

A) Large majorities typically support stable or increased government spending on programs that will serve or eventually serve almost everyone.
B) Large majorities of the public believe that private businesses should be unregulated and the things people value should be allocated by an unfettered free market.
C) The public sends very clear signals that balanced budgets are important and any new spending should be offset by new taxes.
D) There is growing support for fundamental reforms of America's entitlements, especially Social Security.

Question 61

What is the relationship between opinion leaders and issue publics?

Question 62

One of the consistent findings about political knowledge is that overwhelming numbers of Americans can always identify the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Question 63

Strange as it may seem, a sample of 1,500 mirrors a population of 250 million just as accurately as it would a population of 10,000.

Question 64

What is aggregate public opinion?

Question 65

Explain the differences in public opinion on economic issues, social issues, and foreign policy issues.

Question 66

Public opinion is routinely manipulated by self-serving elites.

Question 67

Why is political ignorance rational?

Question 68

Abortion is the kind of issue that defies political resolution because the wide disagreement on values leaves little space for agreement on action.

Question 69

Ideological labels may be indispensable to politicians and pundits, but most citizens get by without them and feel no obligation to be consistently liberal or consistently conservative.

Question 70

Not only is there broad popular support for political equality and equality of opportunity but there is broad support for mandating equal outcomes.

Question 71

The work to measure and shape public opinion has diminished the ability of individual citizens to act collectively.

Question 72

When it comes to the practical application of these abstract values, such as the right to vote or the right to due process, the consensus rarely breaks down.

Question 73

Explain why the Literary Digest poll taken before the 1936 presidential election incorrectly predicted the election's outcome.

Question 74

Attitudes introduce bias into perceptions and interpretations of political information because people tend to pay more attention and give more credence to sources and information that confirm rather than challenge their beliefs.

Question 75

Surveys find abundant evidence that opinions differ among income classes and the differences are greater than those found in most other modern industrial nations.

Question 76

As response rates to traditional phone calls drop and Internet and mobile platforms continue to replace existing modes of communication, new methods are developing that use the science of statistics to construct samples that represent the population without being randomly drawn from the population.

Question 77

Explain the purpose and role of a random sample. Include in your explanation how a random sample is obtained and what problems and benefits, if any, exist as a result of its use.

Question 78

Explain the influence of ideology and partisanship on public opinion.

Question 79

Identify at least three demographic divisions in the United States.

Question 80

When there is no obvious reason to expect significant change, the distribution of opinion tends to be highly stable.