The following is a test review for the second exam in POLS 206 with Lipsmeyer She will ensure you that the second test is harder than the rst and you should listen to her Good luck What is the best way to measure public opinion A fairly reliable way to measure public opinion is a well designed poll with a low margin of error and little bias You can judge the reliability of a poll by assessing who sponsored the poll who did the polling who was interviewed how many were interviewed what questions were asking when were the interviews conducted and what is the margin of error Polls at the beginning of their existence were very skewed and very inaccurate However a well designed poll can usually predict the outcome of an election with a very low margin of error An Exit Poll was a relatively effective way of predicting the presidential election because there were literally pollers camping outside of ballots asking voters who they voted for What are the problems with public opinion polling 1 Band Wagon Effect The people who are polled may not have had the time or the care to develop an opinion of their own on a topic Often times when they are asked about their opinion they claim the rst stance that comes to their mind which is usually the side who they feel the majority of the population supports It is said that they jump on the band wagon 2 Polls can push aside other expressions of public opinion If the polls show that a candidate that you like doesn t even have a chance that can discourage you from even participating in the vote Public opinion polling isn t perfect but there is still that perception of the polls have spoken which cause people to feel that it is not worth their time 3 Polls cannot measure the intensity of opinions If one person says I guess and another is a radical supporter of a candidate they both show up in the polls as a supporter of that candidate This can skew the perception of a candidates supporters 4 Polls have become the news If you are looking to inform yourself of current events most of the information that you will nd is various polls However it is important to acknowledge that you need more than just the numbers The why is important when guring out where you stand on political issues 5 Polls are sometimes used for marketing If a poll asks you who you are going to vote for it may be in a push poll in an effort to seed the electorate These are polls where they are not interested in measuring public opinion at all but simply hoping to change the public opinion EX In the 2000 Republican Primary in South Carolina it is McCain and Bush Jr Carl Road from the Bush Campaign puts out a telephone poll with basic campaign questions However one of the questions asked if you discovered that John McCain has an illegitimate black child would it change your opinion on voting for him In reality John McCain and his family had adopted a Bangladesh child Unfortunately this did negatively affect the election for McCain What restrictions are placed on print and broadcast media During the founding era there was obviously only print media but Broadcast media developed later in American history Print media has very few restrictions as shown in NY Times v US There can be no prior restraint on publication Freedom of the press is a fundamental right but if it take away another fundamental right then the supreme court has a right to balance these two liberties In Broadcast Media it is more heavily regulated by the Federal Communications Commission You have to have a license to start a radio station and there are three main FCC restriction 1 Equal Time Rule You must offer the same amount of time at the same price to every candidate in the race This ensures equal access to the media for political candidates Arnold s movies were taken off the air during election 2 The Right of Rebuttal People have to be given the right to reply to a personal attack If someone on the news or radio personally attacks a candidate the candidate must be given the right to share their response to the accusations 3 The Fairness Doctrine The Fairness Doctrine is an original restriction by the FCC that states you cannot air controversial programs without giving time to the other view point In 1987 the FCC took away the Fairness Doctrine and you see a huge market for highly partisan media How has the American media changed over the years The rst amendment gives freedom of press At the very beginning things were nasty between the Federalists and Democratic Republicans Adams a federalist pushed for the Alien and Sedition acts which made it illegal to publish things going against the government Most of this act however was repealed by 1802 The parties attacked each other but over time the media became less partisan and biased The media became part of the political process by realizing that they were missing the other side of the story This caused the press to become more national moving stories around with the telegraph and advanced printing press The media developed an ethic of objectivity which made the media more desirable to talk to taking the focus off of private affairs and more on the actual politics In the 1980s however there was a deregulation of the media where we see a rise in partisan and ideological media How has the role of public opinion changed since the founding era During the founding era candidates were able to look at the crowd s response to their stands on different issues This allowed them to take those responses into consideration and potentially change their stance before their next crowd Eventually polling came around in the 1930s which was able to guage public opinion However the polls were unbelievably unreliable at the beginning even falsely calling several elections FDR v Landon and Dewey v Truman In this day presidential polls are fairly accurate usually having a margin of error of around 3 Throughout history media has effected public opinion Describe the importance of elections in American politics For Thomas Payne the purposee of elections was to pick representatives that mirror us With Payne the only reason we shift to a republic is because we were too big to have everyone directly input He thinks that elections allow us to elect someone who looks or acts like us James Madison is highly suspicious of the masses and does not believe that the public should have a strong role in the government For Madison elections serve a ltering purpose They allow us to choose people who are the best
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