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Individual Opinions

Individual Opinions. GOVT311 Lecture 10. Political Knowledge. Some people are political junkies Most people have little knowledge about government. Almost everyone knows the name of the president About half know the name of their congressperson

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Individual Opinions

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  1. Individual Opinions GOVT311 Lecture 10

  2. Political Knowledge • Some people are political junkies • Most people have little knowledge about government. • Almost everyone knows the name of the president • About half know the name of their congressperson • About 2 in 10 know the name of the Chief Justice • When an issue raises in importance, people learn • Knowledgeable people tend more liberal on social issues and more conservative on economic issues (Erikson and Tedin p. 65)

  3. How does Knowledge » Opinion? • Economic way of viewing politics: For the Median Voter Theorem (Downs) to work, people must be able to evaluate the costs and benefits of policy choices • Psychology views: • On-line perspective: people keep a running tally in their heads (campaigns) • Memory based: people store “considerations” and use these to make judgments on issues (low-information). This implies that accessibility of considerations is important.

  4. Response stability • In panel studies, when asked the same question, people will sometimes respond differently, especially on issues that are not particularly salient (E & T p.67) • Some interesting observations: • When intermediate answers are allowed, there is more evidence of response stability (such as abortion questions, p.68) • The amount of time between panels does not seem to make a difference on the magnitude of response stability

  5. Explaining Response Instability • Non-attitudes: people without true attitudes will provide a response even if they don’t have one. These people will exhibit response instability (problem: political knowledge is not correlated with response stability) • Measurement Error: surveys themselves are prone to error that might cause response instability (such as framing and question wording) • Response Probability: people have propensities to answer a question in a certain direction, these probabilities may change over time, such as with national mood swings such as Sept. 11 (memory based)

  6. Ideology • Ideology: opinions that are connected by a logical consistency of core political values. (E & T p. 72). • Ideology can be “sociotropic” – people who are rich may be liberal, even though liberal policies may hurt their pocketbook. • Ideologue: a person that places politics in the context of ideology. • Ideology may change over time • Ideology may be dependent on the issues of the day

  7. Ideological Consistency(E & T p.76-7) • Most people are ideologically consistent, though there are a number of people who are not. • Some issues break across ideology, such as abortion • People like more spending: they like both guns and butter • People with more knowledge do tend to be more ideologically consistent • People with more knowledge are more ideological (p.83)

  8. Knowledge and Partisanship • People generally figure out where the two parties are ideologically (E&T p.85). • Conservatives tend to align with the Republicans and Liberals with the Democrats (p.87) • Persons with most knowledge are the strongest partisans (p.88)

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