1. Ch.1&10 American Political Culture and personal ideology

2. American Political Culture and the Basic Tenets of American Democracy
1.4
American Political Culture and the Basic Tenets of American Democracy
Liberty and Equality
Popular Consent, Majority Rule, and Popular Sovereignty
Individualism
Religious Faith and Religious Freedom
Political culture is a group’s commonly shared attitudes, beliefs, and core values about how government should operate. Key tenets of Americans’ shared political culture are:
• liberty and equality
• popular consent, majority rule and popular sovereignty
• individualism
• and religious freedom.

3. Popular Consent, Majority Rule, and Popular Sovereignty
1.4
Popular Consent, Majority Rule, and Popular Sovereignty
Popular consent
Governments derive power by consent of the governed
Majority rule
Bill of Rights protects minority rights
Popular sovereignty
Natural law
Popular consent is the principle that governments must draw their powers from the consent of the governed. Derived from political philosopher John Locke’s social contract theory, the notion of popular consent was central to the Declaration of Independence.
Majority rule means that election of officials and transformation of policies into law will take place only if the majority of citizens support such changes. The American system also stresses preservation of minority rights, as evidenced by protections of individual liberties found in the Bill of Rights.
Popular sovereignty is the notion that ultimate authority in society rests with the people. It has its basis in natural law, a doctrine that certain ethical principles are part of nature and can be understood by reason, so they should govern society.

4. Individualism 1.4 Unique to American democracy Traced to Puritans
Linked to unalienable rights
American democracy places heavy importance on the individual, an idea that may be traced back to the Puritans.
This emphasis on individualism makes Americans quite different from citizens of other wealthy democracies. Community-focused societies reject the American emphasis on individuals and try to improve the lives of their citizens by making services and rights available on a universal basis.
In contrast, individuals in the U.S. are deemed endowed, as Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, “with certain unalienable rights.”

5. Religious Faith and Religious Freedom
1.4
Religious Faith and Religious Freedom
Religious conflict motivation for immigration
Colonists sought freedom of religion
Did not want to grant it to others
Religious freedom enshrined in Constitution
Tolerance still more of an ideal
Religious conflicts in Europe brought many settlers to the New World. Seeking an opportunity to practice their religious faith, colonists initially settled large sections of the East Coast.
However, that faith did not always imply religious tolerance. The clashes that occurred within settlements led the Framers to agree that notions of religious freedom must form the foundation of the new nation. Religious tolerance, however, has often proved to be more of an ideal than a reality.

6. The Changing American Public
1.5
The Changing American Public
Racial and Ethnic Composition
Aging
Religious Beliefs
Regional Growth and Expansion
Family and Family Size
Changing demographics have had a significant effect on American political culture. Diversity in race and ethnicity, generational differences, and regional differences impact the way Americans see themselves and how they view the role of the government.

7. Racial and Ethnic Composition
1.5
Racial and Ethnic Composition
Immigration from Eastern Europe
Growth of Hispanic population
Minorities now the majority
The American population has changed constantly with the arrival of immigrants. Immigration to the United States peaked in the first decade of the 1900s, when nearly 9 million people, many from Eastern Europe, entered the country. Today, nearly 40 million people in the United States can be classified as immigrants, and most of them are Hispanic. Immigration has led to significant alterations in American racial and ethnic composition. The majority of babies born in the United States are now members of a minority group. By 2050, minorities will be the majority in America.
While many people still view the United States as a Christian nation, a great variety of religious groups have established roots in the country and with this growth have come different political and social demands.
Regional sectionalism emerged immediately in the colonies and sectional differences continued as the United States developed into a major industrial nation and waves of immigrants with various traditions arrived. All brought unique views about the role of government. Subsequent generations handed down these political views, and many regional differences continue to affect public opinion. One of the most long-standing and dramatic is between the South and the North. The South continues to lag behind the rest of the nation in supporting civil rights. The West was populated by those seeking free land and chasing dreams of gold. Some people have moved there to avoid city life and have an anti-government bias. Other Westerners are interested in water rights and seek governmental solutions to their problems. Significant differences in attitude also arise in rural versus urban areas. Those in rural areas are more conservative than those in cities.
The American family has also changed. Gender roles have become less defined, family size has shrunk, and marriage rates have declined. These changes affect the demands citizens place on government.

8. Figure 1.2 How does population affect representation?
1.5
Figure 1.2 How does population affect representation?
As the population increases, the number of representatives in the House has not kept pace. The increase in Hispanic Americans and other immigrants may change the face of Congress.

9. Aging 1.5 Strain on Social Security Impact on working Americans
Just as the racial and ethnic composition of the American population is shifting, so, too, is the average age. An aging America imposes a great financial burden on working Americans, whose proportion in the population is rapidly declining.

10. Religious Beliefs 1.5 No longer so uniform
Different political and social demands
While many people still view the United States as a Christian nation, a great variety of religious groups have established roots in the country and with this growth have come different political and social demands.
For example, evangelical Christians have requested school textbooks with particular views on evolution. American Jews want policies that favor Israel, while Muslims want policies that support a Palestinian state.

11. Regional Growth and Expansion
1.5
Regional Growth and Expansion
North versus south
Anti-government bias of West
Regional sectionalism emerged immediately in the colonies. Sectional differences continued as the United States developed into a major industrial nation and as waves of immigrants with various traditions arrived. All brought unique views about the role of government.
Subsequent generations handed down these political views, and many regional differences continue to affect public opinion. One of the most long-standing and dramatic is between the South and the North. The South continues to lag behind the rest of the nation in supporting civil rights.
The West was populated by those seeking free land and chasing dreams of gold. Some people have moved there to avoid city life and have an anti-government bias. Other Westerners are interested in water rights and seek governmental solutions to their problems. Significant differences in attitude also arise in rural versus urban areas. Those in rural areas are more conservative than those in cities.

13. Family and Family Size 1.5 Gender roles Declining marriage rate
Same sex marriage
The American family has also changed. Gender roles have become less defined, family size has shrunk, and marriage rates have declined. These changes affect the demands citizens place on government.

14. Political Ideology 1.6 What Is a Political Ideology?
Finding Your Political Ideology
Problems with Ideological Labels
Ideologies, the belief systems that shape the thinking of individuals and how they view the world, affect people’s ideas about government. The major categories of political ideology in America are conservative, liberal, and moderate.

15. What Is a Political Ideology?
1.6
What Is a Political Ideology?
Four functions of ideologies:
Explanation
Evaluation
Orientation
Political program
Ideologies are sets or systems of beliefs that shape the thinking of individuals and how they view the world, especially in regard to issues of “race, nationality, the role and function of government, the relations between men and women, human responsibility for the natural environment, and many other matters.” A political ideology, specifically, is the coherent set of values and beliefs people hold about the purpose and scope of government. Ideologies are a potent political force, due to the four functions they fulfill.
Ideologies can offer explanations for why social and political conditions are the way they are, especially in time of crisis. Ideologies can also provide standards for evaluating social conditions and political institutions and events.
Americans’ belief in the importance of individual ability and personal responsibility helps explain the opposition of some people to the Obama administration’s health care reforms.

16. Finding Your Political Ideology
1.6
Finding Your Political Ideology
Conservatives
Social conservatives
Liberals
Moderates
Conservatives tend to believe that a government is best when it governs least. They want less government, especially in terms of regulating the economy. Conservatives favor local and state action over federal intervention. Conservatives are also likely to believe that the private sector is better equipped than the government to address domestic problems such as homelessness, poverty, and discrimination.
A growing percentage of voters can be classified as social conservatives, who believe that moral decay must be stemmed and that government should support and further traditional moral teachings. These voters favor government intervention to regulate sexual and social behavior and have mounted effective efforts to restrict contraceptives, abortion, and same-sex marriage.
Liberals seek to change the political, economic, and social status quo to foster the development of equality and the well-being of individuals. Modern liberals generally value equality over other aspects of shared political culture. They support well-funded government social welfare programs that seek to protect individuals from economic disadvantages or to correct past injustices, and they generally oppose government efforts to regulate private behavior or infringe on civil rights and liberties.
Moderates take a relatively centrist view on most political issues. Aristotle actually favored moderate politics, believing that domination in the center was better than any extremes. Approximately 35 percent of the population today consider themselves political moderates.

17. FIGURE 1.3: What are Americans’ political ideologies?
1.6
FIGURE 1.3: What are Americans’ political ideologies?
Americans’ political ideologies have shifted dramatically over time. What was once a largely moderate nation has today become much more closely divided between liberals, conservatives, and moderates. These divisions can make governing particularly challenging and lead to gridlock in our political institutions.

18. Problems with Ideological Labels
1.6
Problems with Ideological Labels
Is left-to-right the only direction?
Economic versus personal liberties
Some critics charge that a simple left-to-right continuum cannot capture the full complexity of most citizens’ political ideologies. People can be liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues or vice versa.
Statists tend to be in favor of government intervention but may not hold policy views that align with liberals or conservatives. Libertarians tend to oppose government intervention in all areas, regardless of how liberal or conservative their personal views are.

19. Forming Political Opinions
10.3
Forming Political Opinions
Demographic Characteristics
Family, Peers, and School
The Mass Media
Cues from Leaders or Opinion Makers
Political Knowledge
The first step in forming opinions occurs through a process known as political socialization. Demographic characteristics—including gender, race, ethnicity, age, and religion—as well as family, school, and peers, all affect how we view political events and issues. As you will see in this section, the views of other people, the media, and cues from leaders and opinion makers also influence our ultimate opinions about political matters.

20. Demographic Characteristics
10.3
Demographic Characteristics
Gender
Women historically more liberal than men
The process through which people acquire their beliefs and political values is called political socialization, and demographics can play a key role.
Gender is significant; historically, women have been more liberal than men. Women are more likely to have positive views of educational or environmental programs and negative views toward war and military intervention.

21. 10.3
TABLE 10.1: Do men and women think differently about political issues?
This table breaks down how men and women tend to think about certain political issues.

22. Political Gender Gap

23. Demographic Characteristics
10.3
Demographic Characteristics
Urban vs. Rural
Race and ethnicity
Differences among and within races and ethnicities
Age affects political socialization
Religion shapes political beliefs
The views of African Americans and Hispanics on a variety of issues are often quite different from those of whites, particularly when it comes to the environment and health care.
Older people support programs like Medicare, while younger voters tend to resist higher taxes to pay for it. Conversely, older people tend to resist increases in taxes to pay for schools.
And religion is unquestionably a factor in political view formation, especially on hot-button social issues like abortion rights.

24. Family, Peers, and School
10.3
Family, Peers, and School
Family influence
Children learn political beliefs at early age
Peers are influential in middle or high school
Political socialization in school
Young children begin absorbing political views from their parents an an early age. As they grow into their elementary and middle school years, children become more influenced by their peers. Groups such as the Girl Scouts of America recognize the power of peers and have developed programs to give girls a favorable view of politics. Schools also play a significant role in political socialization. Public school students may start the day with the Pledge of Allegiance. In college, students are taught critical thinking skills to help them hone their political views.
Activity: Ask your students to consider the role of schools as agents of political socialization. Have them identify the numerous ways in which schools socialize children politically. Examples might include the pledge of allegiance, education about our political system, the inculcation of patriotism and nationalism, and so on.

25. 10.3
Political Knowledge
Political knowledge and political participation
Have a reciprocal effect on each other
Americans’ level of civic knowledge
Lower than 50 years ago
Political knowledge and political participation go hand in hand. Without knowledge about the political system, people can’t effectively participate. The more they participate, the greater their understanding about public affairs.
Most Americans have a low level of civic knowledge—lower, in fact, than it was 50 years ago. How do you respond to college students today knowing less about civics than high school students did 50 years ago? Americans know even less about foreign policy and geography.

26. Public Opinion Polling
Not only did advance polls in 1948 predict that Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey would defeat Democratic incumbent President Harry S Truman, but on the basis of early and incomplete vote tallies, some newspapers’ early editions published the day after the election declared Dewey the winner. In this photo, a triumphant Truman holds aloft the Chicago Daily Tribune.

27. The Earliest Public Opinion Research
10.1
The Earliest Public Opinion Research
Polling to predict winner of elections
Polling to discover public opinions
Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion
Literary Digest
Straw poll
Sample
As early as 1883, Americans used polling to try to predict the winners of presidential elections. But public opinion research didn’t really emerge as a science until the 1930s, following the publication of Walter Lippmann’s book Public Opinion in As political scientists gained interest in public opinion in politics and other walks of life, different methods to capture it were tried. The survey was the primary method.
The popular magazine Literary Digest was a pioneer in the use of the straw poll, an unscientific survey used to gauge public opinion, with initial success. That success ran out, however, when the magazine in 1936 predicted the defeat of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who actually won in a landslide. It later became clear that the upper middle class had been overrepresented in the sample of Americans the magazine had surveyed.

28. The Gallup Organization
10.1
The Gallup Organization
George Gallup
Dissertation on how to measure the readership of newspapers
Expanded research to study public opinion about politics
Increased use of polling to market products and candidates
Newspapers—like the Chicago Daily Tribune held by President Harry S. Truman with the famous “Dewey defeats Truman” that got the 1948 presidential election predictions wrong—probably wished they’d hired a pollster named George Gallup. Gallup wrote his dissertation at the University of Iowa on how to measure the readership of newspapers. He later expanded his research to include public opinion about politics.
Soon businesses and politicians were using polling to discover what the market wanted. The Gallup Organization continues to predict the winners of presidential elections.

29. 10.1 FIGURE 10.1: How successful has the Gallup Poll been?
Figure 10.1 shows how close the Gallup Organization has come to predicting the outcome of presidential elections since 1936.

30. Conducting and Analyzing Public Opinion Polls
10.2
Conducting and Analyzing Public Opinion Polls
Designing the Survey and Sample
Contacting Respondents
Analyzing the Data
Shortcomings of Polling
Those who conduct polls must first determine what questions they want answered and how to phrase those questions. Then they must determine the sample, or subset, of the group whose attitudes they wish to measure. Finally, they have to figure out how to contact respondents. The different types of polls include telephone polls, in-person interviews, and Internet polls. And once the results are in, they must be analyzed. In this section, we will discuss these aspects of polling in more detail.

31. 10.1
How did the emergence of scientific polling in the twentieth century change our democracy? In this video, Columbia University political scientist Robert Y. Shapiro outlines the history of polling and the emergence of public opinion as a major factor in American politics.

32. Designing the Survey and Sample
10.2
Designing the Survey and Sample
Determining the content and phrasing of the questions
Wording is crucial
“Push polls”
Selecting the sample
Population
Random sampling
Stratified sampling
Before pollsters can ask anyone anything, they must ask themselves a number of critical questions first. When it comes to the content and phrasing of the poll, special care must be taken in constructing the question; differently phrased questions could lead to different answers.
Especially in politics, sometimes the intent of the poll is to skew the results by negatively phrasing the question. These are called push polls, and they might ask a respondent: “If you knew Candidate X beat his wife, would you vote for him?” Reputable pollsters avoid push polls.
Once the questions are selected, pollsters must determine the population whose attitudes they want to gauge. If it’s simply the population at large, pollsters might use a random sampling. If they’re looking at specifics in income, family size, or ethnicity, they might use stratified sampling, which is based on U.S. Census data that provide the number of residences in an area and their location.

33. Contacting Respondents
10.2
Contacting Respondents
Telephone polls
Random digit dialing survey
Tracking polls
Despite the increase in cell phones and decrease in landlines, telephone polling is still the chief form of polling used in surveys, especially during campaign season. The most common type of telephone poll is the random digit dialing survey, in which a computer selects a phone number for dialing.
Sometimes campaigns use tracking polls, in which a small sample of people are polled every 24 hours. These allow campaigns to measure short-term developments and the effects of certain campaign strategies.

34. Contacting Respondents
10.2
Contacting Respondents
In-person interviews
Exit polls
Internet polls
Scientific polls versus unscientific Web polls
Some polls, such as the American National Election Studies, use in-person interviews. The most common of these types of polls are the exit polls that are conducted as citizens emerge from voting on Election Day.
Finally, there are Internet polls. Some polling companies have devised scientific strategies to ensure that the results of Internet polling are legitimate, but they aren’t to be confused with so-called Web polls that allow anyone to weigh in on a topic.

35. 10.2 FIGURE 10.2: What does a daily tracking poll look like?
Figure 10.2 shows the day-to-day fluctuations in public opinion on electoral contests.

36. 10.2
Analyzing the Data
Reveals implications for public policy and political campaigns
Data analyzed by computers
Subgroups of population, such as men versus women, age groups, or political ideology, may be analyzed
Margin of error
Natural errors in statistical measurement, typically 4%
Sampling error
Small samples can be accurate IF drawn correctly
Data gathered from the poll must be analyzed for meaning. This step reveals the implications of the data for public policy or for political campaigns. The data are crunched by computers, which may further break down the information by subgroups. This allows campaigns to see how their candidate is faring among women versus men, or in a certain age group.
Because polls are based on a sample that’s intended to reflect the general public, the results are close but not exact. Polls allow for a margin of error. Typically, the margin of error in a sample of 1,000 people is plus or minus about 4%. So if 52% of the people in a sample of 1,000 say they plan to vote for Candidate X, pollsters can predict that between 48% to 56% of people support this candidate.
Another type of survey error is the sampling error. This occurs when pollsters fail to sample all elements of a population. For example, the poor and the homeless are generally underrepresented in polls. If a sample is correctly drawn, a small sample can be accurate.

37. Shortcomings of Polling
10.2
Shortcomings of Polling
Limited respondent options
Lack of information
Difficulty measuring intensity
Lack of interest in political issues
Polls may have several shortcomings that create inaccuracies.
There are problems with limited response options in polls. Respondents who feel very strongly about an issue or are somewhat neutral about it may not be able to adequately—or accurately—respond to a poll that offers only yes/no or approve/disapprove options.
Depending on the issue, respondents may not have enough background information about an issue to accurately answer poll questions. In these cases, especially if the poll is about a complex policy or budgetary issue, the pollster may first ask a filter question to determine how much a respondent knows or has thought about the issue. Based on this response, up to 20% of respondents could be excluded from the rest of the poll.
Most people have opinions about personal or moral issues, such as drugs, crime, or abortion. When asked questions about these areas, respondents give fewer “no opinion” or “don’t know” responses.
Another shortcoming of polls is that they can’t measure the intensity of a respondent’s feelings. A person might say yes to a question about absentee ballot laws but not care that much. On the other hand, a person who responds to a question about the war on terror may have very strong feelings.
Many people have a difficult time forming an opinion on policies that don’t appear to affect them directly or aren’t connected to a moral value question. This is especially true with Americans and foreign policy. Domestic policies, such as those affecting health care, bank bailouts and employment are more likely to generate Americans’ interest.

38. 10.2 Can polls measure intensity of opinion?
One of the greatest shortcomings of many public opinion polls is that they measure direction of public opinion, but not intensity. Here, members of the Westboro Baptist Church demonstrate intense opposition to homosexuality by protesting at a military funeral.