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American Democracy: Public Opinion and Political Action

Explore public opinion, demographics, and political culture in America. Learn about immigration waves, minority-majority dynamics, and political ideologies. Understand how public opinion is measured, decline in trust in government, and various forms of political participation. Examine the impact of family income on political engagement and the ideological paradox of Americans.

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American Democracy: Public Opinion and Political Action

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  1. AP Government Chapter 6 Public Opinion and Political Action

  2. Definitions • Public Opinion: Aims to understand the distribution of the population’s belief about politics and policy issues • Demography: Science of human populations • Census: Enumeration of the population every 10 years • 295 million Americans (2000 census) • 311,110,140 million today (April 5, 2011)

  3. Three major waves of Immigration • 800,000 new immigrants legally admitted every year Melting Pot/Tossed Salad Minority-Majority • Prior to the late 19th century: Northwestern Europeans (English, Irish, Germans, Scandinavians) • Late 19th and early 20th century: Southern and Eastern Europeans (Italians, Jews, Poles, Russians, etc.) • Recent decades: Hispanics (Cuba, Central and South America) and Asians (Korean, Vietnam, Philippines, etc.)

  4. Minority Majority

  5. Definitions Continued • Political Culture: An overall set of values widely shared within a society • Reapportionment: States gain or lose congressional representation as their population changes and thus power shifts as well • Every decade (census) 435 seats in the House of Representatives is reallocated to the states on the basis of population changes • Politics is a lifelong activity

  6. Political Socialization 1. Family 2. Mass Media 3. School….what else?

  7. Measuring Public Opinion • Gallup Polling: Sample population of 1,000-1,500 people can accurately represent the “universe” of potential voters • Random Sampling: Everyone should have an equal probability of being selected as part of a sample • Sampling error +-3% • Random Digit dialing

  8. Decline in Trust in Government

  9. Political Ideologies

  10. Liberals V. Conservatives • Gender Gap: Regular pattern by which women are more likely to support democratic candidates • Religiosity: The degree to which religion is important in one’s life (most conservative demographic group) • Fundamentalists or “born again” are the new Christian Right of Catholics and Protestants

  11. Participation in Politics • Conventional: Voting, trying to persuade others, ringing doorbells for a petition, running for office • Unconventional: Protesting, civil disobedience, violence,

  12. Political Participation by Family Income

  13. Unconventional Participation • Protesting: Form of political participation designed to achieve policy change through dramatic and unconventional tactics • Civil Disobedience: Form of protest; Consciously break a law that is thought to be unjust

  14. Low Participating Groups • Many politicians don’t concern themselves with views of groups with low participation rates (young, low income) • So who gets what in politics, therefore, depends in part, who participates

  15. What are Americans?? • Political scientists say Americans are “ideological conservatives but operational liberals—meaning that they oppose the idea of big government in principle but favor it in practice”

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