POLS 207 1st Edition Lecture 12 Outline of Current Lecture II The Individual in Democratic Government a Public Participation b Polling i Problems with polling Current Lecture Democracy Free and Fair Elections o Suffrage The ability and means of voting being accessible to the population Not always universal Felons are not allowed to vote in the US Some states allow for early voting Freedom of speech o Americans often take this for granted Many countries do not have this and therefore the government has the power Freedom of the press o Need a voice that can be heard by many Public Participation in Politics A Hierarchy of Influence Most people are non participants over 60 o Comes from the traditionalistic political culture 10 60 are voting members o depends on the elections higher participation rates for the Presidential election 20 50 in western states Direct democracy through initiatives and referendums that are mainly present in the Western states such as California 3 20 attend public meetings Protester numbers are uncertain but they are fairly small o Have gone down over time especially since they heyday of the civil rights o Vietnam War was a big time for protesters Most recently there was Occupy protests Less than 1 run for Office Forms of Public Participation Voting o Political culture affects participation in terms of voting o So does region o South has low turnout rates Talk about politics Organizations Attending public meetings Contributions Communicating with representatives Campaigning Intimating and repealing laws o Initiative and referendum Serving public office Difficulties for Scientific Study Self reported information o May not be reliable Therefore it cannot be valid Reliability and validity o Try to improve this by maximizing cases and reaching people that will answer them Bias in response o Bias is often non response Survey Research and Polling The American Voter was published in 1960 and continues to influence the way we think of mass attitudes and behavior This book studied the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections and discussed how class coalitions led to party affiliation These early studies led to the National Election Study NES which still drives the research of political scientists interested in voting behavior Door to door polling expensive enterprise o Also who do you select o One of their findings is that American voters are not well educated they are not constrained and their information level is low o Different layers of the American public Attentive Inattentive o Differences between elite and non elite Elite are constrained But the non elite are not and therefore the elite can manipulate their thinking People vote because they feel it is their civic duty How do we measure public opinion 1 Question wording You need to know how the questions are phrased Bad questions lead to bad results Some people quantify age differently People also lie such as when asked whether voted in last election 2 Sampling In order for a poll to reliable the sample must be taken accurately The best method is a scientific random sample Such a sample guarantees that each person in the population has the same statistical chance of being selected There are a number of sampling techniques Some of the techniques are poor and should be avoided such as non stratified sampling straw polls and most nonprobability sampling methods A more reliable nonprobability method is a quota sample in which a pollster ensures representativeness using quotas 1200 1600 respondents for a good smaple 3 Contacting respondents The method of contact is important Since 95 of Americans have phones random phone calling would be a valid methods Literary Digest predicted a loss for FDR because their respondents were phone owners and at that time it meant you were rich o Selection bias There were always be some error but it is best to minimize this as much as possible Shortcomings of Polling 1 Sampling Error the margin of error or sampling error is quite small if the sample is carefully selected All polls contain some error 3 to 5 is considered a reasonably small rate of error A 3 error rate means that the poll is 97 accurate These rates become extremely important if a race is close Kerry 47 George Bush 48 Margin of Error 5 Do these numbers tell you anything No The contestants are only 1 point apart given the error rate the real race could look like this Kerry 42 47 minus 5 George Bush 53 48 plus 5 People aren t always familiar with terms or what they are being asked 2 Limited Respondent Options have you ever taken a survey or a test and said I don t like any of the answers If the options are not broad enough you get bad results Good poll must have 5 7 options 3 Lack of Information if surveys ask questions about things that the respondents don t understand or don t know about the answers will often be invalid The use of filter questions is helpful here such as have you thought about People often don t think about their responses if they are caught off guard or busy 4 Intensity polls do not measure intensity well You will learn a position on an issue but not how strong that opinion might be Different people have different ways of expressing opinions which makes it hard to quantify strength 5 Elitism deliberative polls have been accused of elite bias Time will tell whether this new form of polling will catch on Deliberative poll provided with the information before being asked the question This is not representative of the population Most misinformed people are those who watch FOX news because it is primarily an entertainment network so tends to exaggerate Participation Uncommon o 50 60 may vote Participants not representative of population o Who participates can be seen from turnout Low turnout tends to be of strong party identifiers rather than weak moderates Florida changed their election rules so as to lower turnout but people were prepared for this and determined to vote Since if turnout is low it will probably be a Republican win because more of the US population identifies as conservative