1. Chapter 18, Section IV

2. Traditional Methods  Political Party Organizations Party leaders in cities communicated with national party leaders keeping them posted about the publics attitudes and opinions  Interest Groups Often represent only a small vocal minority concerned with a specific issue

3. Traditional Methods  Mass Media Newscasts that get higher ratings show more public interest Drawbacks are that media relies on shock value and this can distort reality ○ People that get their news solely from TV tend to be pessimistic

4. Traditional Methods  Shock Value Examples

5. Traditional Methods  Letter Writing Letter Writing Interest groups stage massive letter writing campaigns generating thousands of letters National Write Your Congressman ○ For profit service that sums up legislation and helps you contact your elected officials Purple Letter ○ For profit service that helps you contact elected officials

6. Traditional Methods  Electronic Access Email Fax Twitter Internet  Straw Polls Unscientific attempts to measure public opinion Biased sample – people who respond are self selected (they choose to respond)

7. Scientific Polling  Sample Populations The Universe: group of people being studied ○ If I asked the senior class where the prom should be held, what would be the universe? Representative Sample: Small group of people representative of the universe ○ If I asked every fourth senior homeroom the same question, I would have a representative sample of your class Random Sampling: Everyone in the universe has an equal chance of being selected ○ 1,200-1,500 adults accurately measure the opinions of 212 million people

8. Scientific Polling  Sampling Error: How much the sample results may differ from the sample universe 1,200-1,500 people give us an error of +/- 3%  Unskewed Polls Unskewed Polls

9. Scientific Polling  Sampling Procedures Cluster Sampling – organizing sampling by geographical divisions ○ Race ○ Gender ○ Age ○ Education

10. Scientific Polling  Poll Questions Poll Questions Do you believe serial murderers should be executed? Do you support capital punishment?

11. Scientific Polling  Mail and Phone Polls Cheaper than in home interviews ○ Less polls are returned (mail only 10-15%) Random Digit Dialing ○ Area code and first three digits are selected and a computer picks the last 4 ○ People don’t answer the phone, or don’t want to answer the questions

12. Scientific Polling  Interpreting Results Never completely accurate ○ Honesty? Has improved greatly since its inception in the 1930’s Can usually predict outcomes within a few percentage points