Lecture 14 Outline of Current Lecture II. Defining Public OpinionIII. Defining Political Socializinga. Political SocializationIV. Age and VotingV. Finding Public OpinionVI. How do Polls help? VII. In reality...Current Lecturel. Public Opinion-Finding the opinion of the population and recording it. It’s how people feel about the government and current issues. Experiences from life, situations, and upbringing with family all affect someone’s opinion. POLS 206 1st Editionll. Political Socialization- how people get their political affiliation/opinion. This process is mainly influenced by upbringing with family (kids often take on their parent’s political position) However, other factors do have an affect...a. School- the government socializes kids into politics, how good an education you received (how much your school relied on government funding and how well the government responded)b. Media- certain stations and programs have more of a political affiliation, people also often watch programs that reaffirm their viewsc. Peer Groups- people most often hang out with people similar to them, also reaffirms their viewsd. Socioeconomic level- this is affected by jobs, also changes what policies someone will support depending on how well economically someone is doinglll. Age and Voting- essentially, the younger crowd tend not to vote and so the government oftenfavor the older crowd for that is where their main support is coming fromVl. Finding Public Opinion- found by:a. Random Sampling- using social scientific data to find the general opinion with having to get every single person’s opinionb. Wording matters, affects people’s decisions- surveys have non bias questionsc. Sampling Error- helpful in getting a better idea of actually how accurate the data is, help gives an approximation of what the number could beV. How do polls help? - affects politicians decisions, gives them a better idea what the general populations opinion is at, so it is to politician’s advantage to follow the pollsa. Exit polls- the media uses in order to guess who will win elections (like a foreshadow for who the winner will be)b. Misuse of polls- push polls, most used in states where the winner is a close callVI. In reality... most people do not know that much about politics, very mis-informed or havea lot of misconceptions, and so just relying on public opinion can be a bad
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