PUBLIC OPINION AND THE CLASSICAL TRADITION (Thursday, January 20)

1.    What does Walter Lippmann (1922) mean when he refers to the “pictures in our heads”?  Who creates these pictures?  Why are they so influential?

2.     On the first page of his essay, James Bryce (1900) asks a deceptively simple question: "What do we mean by public opinion?" What answer does he give? Why is there confusion over the definition?

3.    Bryce understands the nature of public opinion by looking at the way it percolates throughout society. It is something that grows and spreads, but also something that is made and manipulated. What four stages in its development does he identify?

4.    According to Bryce, how much of the "average man's" views are "really of his own making"? What role do the "makers or leaders of opinion" play?

5.    How does Bryce characterize the political and social beliefs of "nineteen persons out of very twenty"? Is his description fair?

6.    Lowell (1913) says: "There is a common impression that public opinion depends upon and is measured by the mere number of persons to be found on each side of a question; but this is far from accurate." What, then, is it? Is unanimity required? A majority?

7.    Lowell believes that "the ideas of people who possess the greatest knowledge of a subject are also of more weight than those of an equal number of ignorant persons." Is/should this be the case? Does/should "one man who holds his belief tenaciously count for as much as several men who hold theirs weakly?"

8.    Finally, in comparison to Bryce and Lowell, how do Erikson and Tedin (2007) define the term "public opinion"? What do they mean when they say that "public opinion and the results of public opinion polls are not necessarily the same thing?" Do you agree?


CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF PUBLIC OPINION (Tuesday, January 25)

1.    Blumer (1948) criticizes pollsters for being “so wedded to their technique and so preoccupied with the improvement of their technique that they shunt aside the vital question of whether their technique is suited to the study of what they are ostensibly seeking to study.” Is this a fair criticism of polling today? Does public opinion consist merely of “what public opinion polls poll”?

2.    According to Blumer, what “obvious and commonplace” characteristics of public opinion do pollsters routinely ignore?

3.    Blumer believes that polls treat public opinion and its place in society in a way that is “markedly unrealistic.” Explain what he means.

4.    How does Converse (1987) respond to Blumer’s criticism? Why, according to Converse, is the pollsters’ view of public opinion better than Blumer’s “antiquarian” view? Do you agree?

5.    Where does Berinsky’s (1999) work fit in to the Blumer vs. Converse debate?

6.    Berinsky says that “under some circumstances, opinion polls may poorly reflect collective public sentiment…” Why? What examples does he give? What are the consequences?


A PRIMER ON SURVEY RESEARCH (Thursday, January 27)

1.    According to Zaller and Feldman (1992), what are “attitudes” and how well do surveys measure them?

2.    What, in contrast, are “non-attitudes”?

3.    Zaller and Feldman argue that “opinion research is beset by two major types of ‘artificial’ variance.” What are they?

4.    What three axioms are introduced by Zaller and Feldman?

5.    For those who work in the field of survey research, what are the consequences of Zaller and Feldman’s work?

6.    In Asher’s book, Polling and the Public: What Every Citizen Should Know (2004), he stresses the importance of question wording, and even the order question in which questions are asked? Why? How does this connect to Zaller and Feldman’s article?

7.    With both reading assignments in mind, how easily can attitudes be manipulated within a survey? Can you think of any examples? Is it possible to reveal someone’s “true” attitudes?


THE USE (AND ABUSE) OF POLLS (Tuesday, February 1)

1.    How are public opinion polls used, and by whom? Are polls used for different purposes by different groups?

2.    What standards has the American Association for Public Opinion Research adopted for reporting polls results? According to Asher (2004), how effective are they?

3.    When it comes to election polls, there are many varieties. Can you name them?

4.    Why are some election predictions so far off (e.g., the recent New Hampshire primary)?

5.    Asher believes that the media is often careless and irresponsible when interpreting poll results. What are some examples?

6.    According to Asher, what questions should we keep in mind when evaluating polls?


BEYOND NUMBERS: THE QUANTITATIVE-QUALITATIVE DEBATE (Thursday, February 3)

1.    What is Hochschild's (1981) book about? What question is she trying to address?

2.    Describe the methodology she uses. How does it differ from standard survey research?

3.    Hochschild makes four claims about the value of intensive interviewing, ranging from (in her words) the "cautious" to the "bold." What are they? Does she make a convincing case?

4.    Hochschild argues that people apply different distributive norms to different domains, or spheres, of life. Describe what she means.

5.    Compare Hochschild's work to Feldman and Zaller (1992). Does she really generate results that survey research cannot? Is the approach used by the latter a fair compromise between two extremes?

6.    We tend to prefer modern polls because they are more representative, but as Hochschild demonstrates, we also lose something along the way-a sense of true deliberation, perhaps. Fishkin and Luskin (2005) argue that modern polls are "cognitively threadbare." How does their technique of "deliberative polling" attempt to redress that?


AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION (Tuesday, February 8)

1.    What is “political socialization?”

2.    What are the primary agents of socialization (e.g., family, school, peer groups, etc.)? Which of these is most powerful?

3.    When does political awareness begin? How important is “early learning”? What impact does it have on later life?

4.    According to Niemi and Hepburn (1995), what “exaggerated premises” and “misunderstood research findings” led to the demise of research on political socialization?

5.    What is the “primacy principle”? Are its assumptions accurate? If not, what forces cause adults to reconsider their positions?

6.    Niemi and Hepburn write that “partisanship is relatively stable, but there is certainly no justification for capturing it at its earliest manifestation and assuming that it will persist through adulthood.” Is this statement consistent with your own life experience?

7.    Niemi and Hepburn say that the “high school years should perhaps hold the greatest interest for us because it is then that society makes the most explicit and concentrated effort to teach political knowledge and civic values.” Consider Litt’s (1963) findings on this point. In his opinion, how well do schools socialize students?

8.    What advice do Niemi and Hepburn give for “reestablishing political socialization as a viable and vibrant field of study”?


POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE (Thursday, February 10)

1.    In an excerpt from The Phantom Public, Walter Lippmann writes: “The private citizen today has come to feel rather like a deaf spectator in the back row, who ought to keep his mind on the mystery off there, but cannot quite manage to keep awake.” Is this a accurate judgment, even if it is harsh? In spite of it, why is Lippmann sympathetic? What does he believe to be an “unattainable ideal”?

2.    According to Carpini and Keeter (1993), what should people know about politics? Are national civics tests—frequently given to and failed by college students—a valid indicator, or does political knowledge require more than “bits of information”?

3.    Kuklinski, et al. (2000) argue that “To be informed requires, first, that people have factual beliefs and, second, that those beliefs be accurate.” What do they believe are the consequences of being uninformed? What about misinformed? Which is worse and why?

4.    Kuklinski, et al. expect that people will “hold factual beliefs about public policy,” but that “many will hold inaccurate ones and hold them confidently.” Aside from the authors’ example on welfare, can you think of any examples (e.g., Iraq and WMD)?

5.    What happens when educators give citizens correct facts? Do policy preferences adjust accordingly?


ANXIETY AND EMOTION (Tuesday, February 15)

1.    As Brader (2005) tells us, emotional language is powerful when invoked in political advertising. There is a tendency, however, to see decision-making based on affect as bad—inferior, irrational, superficial, even destructive. Is this a fair criticism? Are decisions routed through the cognitive centers of our brains always better? Why or why not?

2.    According to Huddy, et al. (2005), when it comes to managing the public’s reaction to terrorism, the government faces quite a challenge. In order to secure support for their policies, leaders must make people aware of the threat without unduly scaring them. How does this conclusion square with the Bush administration’s overall strategy in the war on terror? How might we apply the same logic to an issue like global warming?


SOCIAL IDENTITIES (Thursday, February 17)

In a classic book, simply titled Voting, Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (1948) concluded that “a person thinks, politically, as he is socially. Social characteristics determine political preferences.” In tomorrow’s class, we will consider two of those characteristics in detail: political partisanship and race.

1.    Green, et al. (2002) argue that the “term identification is commonly used in two ways.” One meaning suggests “affinity,” the other “self-categorization.” In a practical sense, what do these terms mean?

2.    According to the authors, where does political partisanship fit in? Are citizens justified in thinking of themselves as Democrats or Republicans if they do not “vote like a partisan, or think like a partisan, or register as a partisan…”?

3.    Green, et al. say that the distinctions they make “may seem like splitting hairs, but a number of important empirical insights grow out of them.” What are they?

4.    If “self-described partisans harbor genuine attachments to partisan groups,” how influential is this likely to be on public opinion and political behavior?

5.    According to Kinder and Winter (2001), why do the views of blacks and whites differ so markedly? They offer “four alternative and quite general ways that the racial divide in opinion might be understood.” What are they?

6.    Kinder and Winter argue that the differences in opinion between whites and blacks is “huge.” For instance, “where as 89.2 percent of African Americans in 1992 supported the idea that the government in Washington should see to it that black people get fair treatment in jobs, just 48.7 percent of whites did so.” Is this a function of group interest or, perhaps, self-interest? What role does “in-group solidarity” and/or “out-group resentment” play?


SELF-INTEREST (Tuesday, February 22)

1.    According to Brewer (2001), what, exactly, is the “Puff Daddy theory of presidential elections”? Are presidential elections “all about the Benjamins?”

2.    What is “sociotropic voting”? What about “pocketbook voting”? When it comes to economic issues, do voters tend to think “prospectively” or “retrospectively”? Of these four variants, which combination occurs most frequently in presidential campaigns?

3.    Erikson (1989) demonstrates a strong relationship between economic conditions and the presidential vote. What variables does he include in his equation? Are they sufficient?

4.    If “the vote is determined almost entirely by the amount of prosperity that the incumbent party delivers” (evaluations of the candidates’ personal qualities aside), why did models of economic voting misread the 2000 presidential election?

5.    In what others ways might self-interest manifest itself in political attitudes and behavior? Can voters also be altruistic? Under what conditions?


THE NEWS MEDIA, Part 1 (Thursday, February 24)

“As Walter Lippmann argued 70 years ago, our opinions and behavior are responses not to the world itself but to our perceptions of that world. It is the ‘pictures in our heads’ that shape our feelings and actions, and these pictures only imperfectly reflect the world that surrounds us” (Gilens, pp. 515-516).

Our goal today is to use the assigned reading to understand better the role that the media play in shaping (even altering) those perceptions.

1.    Gilens begins with two important observations about race and poverty. What are they?

2.    What methods does he use to study the issue?

3.    What does he find? What are his conclusions?

4.    Are you persuaded by his choice of methodology? Is it appropriate and fair? Can you think of a better approach?

5.    Do you agree with the conclusions he draws from the evidence? Are there alternative explanations? Could people’s misperception of race and poverty come from another source? Could the direction of causality be reversed?

6.    If you believe Gilens, why do you think the media misrepresent the poor? Are their actions accidental or purposeful?

7.    Why does it matter if average Americans misunderstand poverty? What are consequences, political and otherwise?

8.    Like Gilens, Hetherington starts off with several simple observations. What are they?

9.    What is his hypothesis?

10.    Hetherington uses two important terms: “priming” and “framing.” What do they mean?

11.    In contrast to Gilens, what methodology does Hetherington choose?

12.    Hetherington says that “coverage of the economy was almost exclusively negative in tone and content” in 1992. Does he provide enough evidence of this?

13.    What are his conclusions and are you persuaded by them? Think about these questions: Are there any alternative explanations? Is 1992 a unique case? Is there a difference between “statistical significance” and practical significance? In the end, does he demonstrate a “liberal bias” in the media, or merely a bias toward controversy and negative news?

THE NEWS MEDIA, Part 2 (Tuesday, March 1)

1.    According to Zaller, the public’s initial response to the Monica Lewinsky scandal was puzzling. Why? What happened?

2.    Zaller considers several different explanations for the unusual pattern he observes? What are they?

3.    In the end, Zaller believes that the Lewinsky scandal represented the triumph of “political substance” over the antics of “media politics.” What does he mean when he uses those terms?

4.    Do you find his argument credible? Are there any other (competing) explanations?

5.    In Kull, Ramsay and Lewis’ article on public opinion and the Iraq War, on what specific “misperceptions” do they focus? There are three. Can you name them?

6.    According to the evidence they present, how common were these “misperceptions”?

7.    How to these “misperceptions” relate to support for the war in Iraq?

8.    According to the authors, where do these “misperceptions” come from? From the Bush administration’s own false statements? From the news media? If the latter, from which news outlet(s), in particular? Is there a liberal/conservative bias here? Why or why not?

9.    How persuaded are you by their results? As in Zaller’s case, are there any alternative explanations here for the turnaround in public opinion once the war in Iraq began? (Hint: There are many! Can you spot them?)

10.    “To some extent,” say the authors, “this period [in the aftermath of 9/11] may be regarded as unique.” Is it? How does this compare to the other cases we have discussed so far - Gilens on race and poverty, Hetherington on the 1992 economy, Zaller on the Lewinsky scandal? What powers of persuasion does the media possess? What limitations are imposed on that power?

THE NATURE OF MASS BELIEF SYSTEMS (Tuesday, March 15)

1.    Some of the material in Chapter 3 of Erikson and Tedin will sound familiar, reinforcing our previous discussions on political knowledge, for instance. Pay particular attention here to what they call “opinion consistency.” Now that we have explored what public opinion is, and how attitudes form, we will tackle the matter of how attitudes are organized (or, in some cases, disorganized). Should we expect attitudes to remain stable, across issues and even over time? If so, what serves as the central anchor, or binding agent? For years, scholars assumed (read: hoped) that ideology would serve that purpose, whereby our commitment to liberal or conservative principles would provide the framework on which would base our opinions on issues as diverse as welfare reform, the environment, abortion, and the budget deficit. According to Erikson and Tedin’s review of the literature, how likely is this?

2.    Both of the remaining articles—Peffley and Hurwitz (1985) and Prothro and Grigg (1960) explore attitude constraint in greater detail. Rather than looking at consistency across issues (what we might call “horizontal constraint”), they examine consistency between abstract principles and the application of those principles to specific situations (think of this as “vertical constraint”). Which do you think is more important and why?

3.    According to Peffley and Hurwitz (1985), are citizens capable of abstract ideological thought? While the models they use are complex, focus on Figures 1 and 2, which provide a nice graphical representation of their work. Keep in mind, higher numbers indicate more consistency.

4.    Prothro and Grigg (1960) explore the same notion of constraint, but they test a different anchor, or organizing principle. Instead of ideology, what is it?

5.    In Prothro and Grigg’s piece, what “abstract principles” and “specific principles” do they examine? Are these appropriate choices?

6.    What do Prothro and Grigg (1960) find? Is there consensus on democratic principles? What about on the application of those principles to specific situations? What happens to cause consensus to break down? How do we explain it? Is this just another case of ambivalence (as per Hochschild)?

7.    In what ways are the conclusions reached by Peffley and Hurwitz (1985) and Prothro and Griff (1960) similar? In what ways are they different?

8.    We often use measures of opinion consistency (or “constraint”) as a standard for judging the political competence and sophistication of the public? Is this a fair? Why or why not? Think about why attitude constraint matter. Should we really prefer citizens—even leaders—who have rigid and highly consistent beliefs? Doesn’t flexibility in politics matter too?

CORE VALUES AND BELIEFS (Thursday, March 17)

1.    If most people fail to structure their beliefs ideologically, what is left? How well do “core beliefs,” like those used by Feldman, work?

2.    Does Feldman’s model presume too much effort, too much information? He argues that “It should not require a high degree of political sophistication for people to absorb the political norms of society when they are so ingrained in the political and social life of the nation” (p. 418). Do you agree?

3.    What three “core beliefs” does Feldman examine? Describe them. Does that change your answer to #2 above? Are his conclusions sensible?

4.    Based on our reading of Feldman (as well as Prothro and Grigg), let’s take our understanding of core democratic values, in all its permutations, out for a spin. “Core” suggests something fundamental, solid, stable. What do Davis and Silver find? Is that the case with the civil liberties issues they examine within the context of 9/11? What implication does their work have for our understanding of attitude constraint?

5.    Finally, if we come to understand the importance of a shared consensus on core democratic values, we should also consider how those values are absorbed. Litt’s earlier study of civic education in Boston told us that schools play a vital role in the socialization of young citizens. Murphy’s piece demonstrates just how controversial that can be. He believes that “the attempt to inculcate civic values in our schools is at best ineffective and often undermines the intrinsic moral purpose of schooling.” Do you agree or disagree? Why? Should schools try to make us “good citizens.” If not. if schools were to follow his advice and “avoid civic education altogether,” what would happen? Where and how would those “core democratic values” (so central to the other works we read) be transmitted?

ONE STATE, TWO STATE, RED STATE, BLUE STATE (Tuesday, March 22)

1.    In looking at a series of recent elections, Barone (2001) says that if we round off the results, we see “essentially the same number over and over” again. In “The 49 Percent Nation,” we seem to be evenly divided down the middle, into what pundits have called “Red” states and “Blue” states. On what basis do these states differ?

2.    According to Barone, is the country (gradually) becoming more “Red” or more “Blue”? Do you agree or disagree with the logic behind that conclusion? Why?

3.    As Fiorina (2006) points out, even if voters in the U.S. are evenly divided, it need not mean that they are deeply divided, despite the popularity of that claim in the news media. When compared to Barone’s work, he offers a “contrary thesis.” What is it? Are claims of a culture war “simple exaggeration” and “sheer nonsense”? On what misperceptions of American elections does he believe it is based?

4.    On the subject of “closely and deeply divided” versus “closely but not deeply divided” (see Figure 2.1 on page 13), what difference does it make?


WHAT MOVES PUBLIC OPINION? (Thursday, March 24)

Americans are a stubborn lot. As we have seen so far this term, people tend to hold onto their beliefs tenaciously, even when those beliefs are based on inaccurate information. Still, public opinion does move. Change is sometimes swift, but more often slow; sometimes unexpected, but usually explicable. Our task in tomorrow’s class is to reach a better understanding of how and why public opinion changes over time.

1.    According to Page and Shapiro (1992), how stable are the policy preferences of the American public? When change does occur, under what conditions is it gradual? When is it likely to be abrupt? Is change “capricious”?

2.    According to Stimson (1999), what cycles, waves, and trends in public opinion occur over time? Think about the variety of subjects we have covered so far—the war in Iraq, the environment, the Lewinsky scandal, etc. Is the trajectory for each over time similar or different? Why?

3.    In response to *what* does public opinion change--to events, experts, politicians, interest groups, the news media, etc?

4.    Rally effects are a particularly interesting form of opinion change. What, exactly, is a “rally”? According to Hetherington and Nelson (2003), what makes the rally following 9/11 distinctive? What explains its duration and (given what we know now) its eventual collapse? What have the political consequences been?


SOCIAL CAPITAL AND CIVIC PARTICIPATION (Tuesday, March 29)

1.    In “The Strange Disappearance of Civic America,” how does Putnam in define “social capital”? From his perspective, why is it so important?

2.    Putnam’s “bowling alone” metaphor has become popular in the press. What does it mean?

3.    What evidence does Putnam cite when describing the erosion of social capital in the United States over the last few decades? What is his prime culprit?

4.    Putnam’s article contains all of the elements of a good mystery. Are you persuaded by Putnam’s evidence? Why or why not?

5.    Why, according to Samuelson, is the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon bunk? What counter evidence does he cite?

6.    On balance, which argument is more persuasive? For instance, do Putnam’s data accurately measure participation? Does it square with other evidence of civic engagement from the same period of time(e.g., the women’s rights movement, Civil Rights, consumer movement, environmental movement-all of which were grassroots in nature)?

7.    Is Putnam’s baseline fair? For example, we might say that the 1940s and 1950s were a unique time period. We might ask why that group was so much more civic in its orientation, not why later groups are not.

8.    Does Putnam romanticize the 1950s as a “golden age”? Think of the strife, division and racial prejudice of that era.

9.    What can the campaigns of Howard Dean and Barack Obama tell us about “social capital”? Can the internet create new, powerful connections between people—different connections (e.g., more global, less local)—but real connections nevertheless?

UNDERSTANDING TRENDS IN VOTER TURNOUT (Thursday, MArch 31)

The decline in voter turnout is, as tomorrow’s reading reminds us, “the most important, most familiar, most analyzed, and most conjectured trend in recent American political history.” Let’s consider two very different views on the matter:

1.    According to Patterson (2002), why have voters “vanished”? What reasons does he offer? Are they convincing?

2.    What is McDonald and Popkin’s (2001) response to this debate? Why do they believe that it is an “illusion”?

3.    How important is this debate? Does low voter turnout really matter? If so, how?

GETTING OUT THE VOTE (Tuesday, April 5)

In discussing voter turnout last class, we said there were three possible responses to the issue: A) Do nothing because what seem to be low rates of voter turnout are in actuality higher. The turnout “problem” is merely a product of measuring turnout incorrectly; B) Do nothing because it is not desirable to increase turnout if that means encouraging the participation of the uneducated and ill-informed; and C) Do something. In tomorrow’s class, we will tackle the full range of the “do something” option.

1.    Marshall Ganz discusses a policy known as “Motor Voter.” What is it? According to the author, how well has it worked in increasing turnout? What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses?

2.    Meirick and Wackman come at the problem from a completely different direction. What is Kids Voting USA? Again, according to the authors, how well does the program work? Are you convinced by their findings? Why or why not?

3.    In contrast to the first two pieces, what approach do Gerber and Green take? What strategy for increasing turnout do they investigate? What methodology do they use? Do you find the evidence they cite compelling?

4.    Finally, think about the logic that underlies each of these proposals. What do they identify as the root cause of the problem? For instance, in the eyes of Motor Voter proponents, why is turnout low? For those who support programs like Kids Voting USA, what would they likely believe? How about campaigns that emphasize canvassing? From their perspective, why don’t people vote? Given our understanding of the issue, are these solutions well suited to the problem? Which is most likely to work and why?

MODELS OF VOTING BEHAVIOR (Thursday, April 7)

1.    In “The Two Faces of Issue Voting,” Carmines and Stimson say that “there are two theoretically different and empirically identifiable types.” What, exactly, are “hard” issues? What are “easy” issues? In the world of politics today, can you think of any examples?

2.    If issue voting occurs rarely, is that because of the “inherent limitations of the citizen/voter” or it is because of the “inadequacies of choice offered by the political system”? What role, if any, might the media play here?

3.    If Carmines and Stimson are right when they suggest that easy-issue voting occurs in “waves or surges,” how might political campaigns capitalize? How might they appeal to the easy-issue voter? What risk is there in doing so?

4.    Carmines and Stimson argue that “the study of issue voting is infused with normative considerations.” Voters who cast ballots based on their own personal policy preferences relative to those of party candidates are often assumed to make decisions that are rational, wise and sophisticated. What do the authors believe? Should we “observe issue voting and infer sophistication”? Why or why not?

5.    In “The 2000 U.S. Presidential Election: Can Retrospective Voting be Saved,” Fiorina, Abrams and Pope discuss Gore’s loss within the context of political science theories that insist that election outcomes depend on “fundamentals,” such as peace and prosperity (remember, Zaller pointed to the same in his article on the Lewinsky scandal). What do they think is the major cause of Gore’s defeat? Consider their hypotheses and the evidence they cite in each case carefully.

6.    How might we apply Fiorina, et al’s work to the 2004 presidential election? Did Kerry lose to Bush for the same reasons that Gore lost to Bush?

ELECTIONS AS AN INSTRUMENT OF POPULAR CONTROL (Tuesday, April 12)

In this class we will talk about the political consequences of voter ignorance. As Lau and Redlawsk point out: “The classic texts of democratic theory. assume that for a democracy to function properly the average citizen should be interested in, pay attention to, discuss, and actively participate in politics.. Five decades of behavior research in political science have left no doubt, however, that only a tiny minority of the citizens in any democracy actually live up to these ideals.”

In short, based on so much of what we have read this term, we know that most citizens are relatively uniformed about politics-they fail the conditions of Erikson and Tedin’s “rational-activist model,” and often quite miserably-but to what extent does it matter?
Some scholars insist that is inconsequential for two reasons:

A) Poorly informed voters can make efficient use of relevant cues and cognitive short-cuts;

B) Individual errors tend to cancel out when votes are aggregated;

In order to explore to these hypotheses, each of today’s reading assignments attempt to compare real and ideal situations: how people “actually” vote to how they “might” vote when fully informed. Notice first how this is similar to the efforts made by Fishkin and Luskin with “deliberative democracy,” then move on to consider these questions:

1.    According to Lau and Redlawsk, what does the term “voting correctly” mean?

2.    Lau and Redlawsk pose an interesting question: “What if people can make reasonably good decisions, most of the time, without all the motivation and attention and knowledge required by classic theory?” This sounds too good to be true, right? Is it? “Quite simply,” they write, “human beings have adaptively developed a large series of cognitive heuristics and shortcuts that allow they to make ‘pretty good’ judgments most of the time.” This perspective encourages us to judge the outcome (that is, the decision itself), not just the perceived quality of the process we use to get there. So, what exactly are these heuristics and shortcuts? How do they work?

3.    Describe the experiment the authors use. How did it work? What was the goal?

4.    What do you think of their experimental design? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Should we ask respondents if they think they voted “correctly”? Will respondents be reluctant to admit they made a mistake? How do the authors adjust for this? What is their “second measure” of correct voting?

5.    According to the authors’ results, what percentage of people voted “correctly,” both in their experiment and in their extension of the model to the 1972 through 1988 presidential elections? Are the numbers high or low? Or, to put it another way, are they high enough?

6.    Moving on to Bartels, he says that the “electorate as a whole deviates in significant and politically consequential ways from the projected behavior of a ‘fully informed’ electorate.” How so? Other things being equal, who are relatively uninformed voters more likely to support?

7.    Why do Bartels’ results differ from those of Lau and Redlawsk? Could this be a matter of looking at a glass as half-full rather than half-empty?

8.    Bartels considers the magic of statistical aggregation at some length. The argument itself is based on Condorcet’s theorem (Remember, it proves mathematically that the probability of a correct majority vote in a group of modestly well-informed individuals may increase substantially as the size of the group increases). According to Bartels, the “practical difficulty with Condorcet’s argument is that it only works to the extent that individual errors are truly ‘random’-with an expected value of zero and no correlation across voters.” How likely is this? What conditions during a political campaign are likely to violate those assumptions?

THE INTERPLAY OF PUBLIC OPINION AND PUBLIC POLICY (Thursday, April 14)

Certainly, public opinion can influence public policy through the circuitous route offered by elections. We might assume that informed voters cast ballots for those candidates most proximate to their own policy preferences, and that representatives act on those preferences sincerely once in office. In reality, of course, few of us are informed enough to act with much assurance on matters of policy, but as our previous reading demonstrates, we often find creative ways to vote “correctly” much of the time nevertheless.

What, then, are we to make of the second half of our simple democratic theory? How responsive is government to the preferences of its citizens? These articles tackle both the empirical and the normative sides of this debate:

1.    According to Page and Shapiro, their approach to measuring the effects of public opinion on policy “employs a macrolevel aggregate design” based on “congruence.” What does this mean? How do they identify their cases?

2.    What do they find? In how many cases was there a “congruent change in opinion and policy”? What about “noncongruent change,” or even “no change” at all? Are you surprised by this result?

3.    According to the authors, what factors seem to explain—or even predict—the extent of congruence that appears? Does the type of policy issue matter (e.g., foreign or domestic)? What about the ideological direction of change? Does that matter?

4.    Can you think of any recent examples of congruent and incongruent changes in policy? Are those cases consistent with the authors’ results?

5.    As Page and Shapiro point out: “The mere observation of congruence between opinion and policy tells us little, of course, about which causes which.” Under what conditions might a change in government policy precipitate a change in public attitudes?

6.    While Page and Shapiro examine whether public opinion DOES influence policy, Weisberg questions whether it SHOULD. Does he believe that polling methodology is scientific enough to provide “sound policy counsel”? Is the average citizen wise enough? What do you believe? As Weisberg ask: “Where do we go from here”?

MANIPULATING OPINION (Tuesday, April 19)

In this class, we will continue to discuss the reciprocal link between public opinion and public policy, this time by focusing directly on the role that politicians play.

1.    Syndicated newspaper columnist Maureen Dowd once wrote that politicians were “prisoners of polling.” Indeed, with Dick Morris’ memoirs of the Clinton years in mind, she said: “polling has turned leaders into followers. There will never such a thing as greatness with a three-to-five point margin of error.” Criticism such as Dowd’s is commonplace today. There is a pervasive belief that politicians pander. What does that term mean? How does that word characterize the relationship between presidents and the polls?

2.    According to Michael Barone, how do politicians use polls? How has this changed over time? Does his brief and somewhat anecdotal argument confirm or reject the image of the “pandering politician”?

3.    Based on the title of their article, we know that Jacobs and Shapiro’s goal is “Debunking the Pandering Politician Myth.” Do they agree or disagree with Barone on the extent to which politicians use polls? Were you impressed or skeptical of the interviews they conducted?

4.    According to Jacobs and Shapiro, “the primary purpose of tracking public opinion” is not to pander, “but to educate, lead, or otherwise influence public attitudes towards the President and his policies.” From a normative standpoint, contrast this is the “pandering” model. Is there a difference between pandering politicians and those who are responsive to the needs of their constituents? If so, what is it? On the other hand, is there a difference between presidential leadership and outright manipulation? Where should that line be drawn?

5.    Finally, consider the Luntz memo, which advises Republicans on how to “frame” environmental issues to their advantage. With Carmines and Stimpson in mind, is the attempt to sell the environment as a “hard” issue or an “easy” one? To what extent do you recognize the language used here in the current policy debate over global warming?

TRUST IN GOVERNMENT (Thursday, April 21)

On the subject of political consequences, it is time to broaden our scope beyond the relationship between public opinion and public policy on narrow issues, to an impact on the government system as a whole:

1.    What is “political trust” and why, according to Hetherington, is it relevant? What, in particular, are the consequences of low trust?

2.    In considering both assigned articles, what are the most plausible causes for the erosion of political trust in the United States? For an explanation, should we focus on policy “outputs” (e.g., satisfaction with the policies the government produces), or on a “process” that violates our expectations about how the government should make decisions?

3.    According to Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, how do people want government to operate? Are their expectations both rational and reasonable?

4.    Hibbing and Theiss-Morse believe that “process matters.” How does this square with other evidence we have considered this term?

5.    As Hibbing and Theiss-Morse observe, Americans like to complain that “the government is out of touch with their needs, concerns and wants.” Is this a fair criticism? Why or why not?

6.    What, if anything, can politicians do to earn the public’s trust? As a society, are we simply impossible to please?

7.    Should citizens have a “healthy skepticism” of their government? Are there benefits to that?