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- Public officials use polls in a variety of ways.
- Polls that show constituents who hold strong views on one side of an issue may prompt a lawmaker to introduce a bill on the issue or may sway a lawmaker’s vote on a related bill.
- Candidates for office use polls to help them decide where to campaign and where to advertise most heavily.
- Polls may also help them shape their messages.
- Considering public opinion when making decisions is a good idea, but government officials can go too far in their use of polling data.
- The media also use polling data.
- They report poll results as news, especially during election season.
- Citizens who enjoy following the campaigns as they would sports teams closely track poll results.
- Exit polls involve interviewing voters as they leave the polling place and asking them for whom they voted.
- In presidential elections, the television networks have used exit polls to predict who has won a particular state.
- Often, these projections are made before the polls close in Western states.

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- Almost everyone involved in politics today uses scientific polls to measure public opinion.
- Scientific polling involves three basic steps: selecting a sample of the group to be questioned, presenting carefully worded questions to the individuals in the sample, and interpreting the results.
- In conducting polls, the group of people that is to be studied is called the universe.
- A universe might be all the seniors in a high school, all the people in the state of Texas, or all women in the United States.
- Since it is not possible to actually interview every person in Texas or every woman in the United States, pollsters question a representative sample, a small group of people who are typical of that universe.
- Such a small group is representative because pollsters use random sampling, a technique in which everyone in that universe has an equal chance of being selected.
- Telephone interviews are used in many national polls.
- To create a random sample, pollsters use random digit dialing: They select an area code and the first three local digits.
- Then a computer randomly chooses and dials the last four digits.
- A sampling error is a measurement of how much the sample results might differ from the sample universe.
- Sampling error decreases as the sample size becomes larger.
-  If a poll says that 65 percent of Americans favor tougher pollution laws, with a 3 percent sampling error, that means between 62 and 68 percent of the entire population favor such laws.

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- Americans express their opinions at the ballot box. Between elections, officials want to know what the public is thinking.
- Over the years, the methods and technology to access and tabulate public opinion have changed.
- Party organizations have long been a reliable source of information about public opinion.
- Local party leaders could provide information to national leaders.
- Interest groups, too, provide elected officials with an easy way to find out about the opinions of concerned citizens.
- The mass media often reflect public attitudes fairly well because they speak to a broad audience.
- Newspapers, magazines, and television and radio programs reflect the interests of the public.
- These sources of information, however, may give a distorted view of public opinion.
- The mass media’s focus on news that has visual appeal or shock value, such as stories about violent crime, distorts the public perception of reality.
- Another method of gauging opinion is the straw poll.
- This is an unscientific attempt to measure public opinion.
- Straw polls do not use scientific procedures to choose the respondents.
- The people who take the poll self-select, straw polls are always a biased sample of the population.

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- People’s opinions emerge as part of the process of political socialization.
- Most Americans have opinions or preferences about many matters that affect their lives.
- One form of opinion, called public opinion, has an enormous influence on government.
- Public opinion refers to the ideas and attitudes that a significant number of Americans hold about government and political issues.
- Public opinion is varied. In a nation as vast as the United States, it is unlikely that all people will think the same way about any political issue.
- Because of our nation’s history and the diversity of American society, different groups of people hold different opinions on almost every issue.
- People’s ideas and attitudes must in some way be expressed and communicated to government.
- Unless Americans make their opinions on important issues clear, public officials will not know what people are thinking.
- The phrase “a significant number of Americans” in the definition of public opinion means that one or a few people’s ideas do not constitute public opinion.
- Public opinion is the aggregate or combination of many people’s views.

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- Most people are unaware that political socialization occurs in their lives because it is a slow process that begins in childhood and continues over a lifetime.
- People may not realize that this socialization directly affects their opinions on public issues, as well as their feelings of political efficacy.
- Political efficacy refers to a person’s belief that he or she can have an impact on government and policy.
- Some people are socialized to believe that they cannot impact the system.
- Others are brought up to believe that their actions can be effective and lead to changes that are important to them. Some people join interest groups; groups of people who share common goals and organize to influence government and policy because they believe being part of a group will increase their political efficacy.

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- Political socialization is not just a process of developing one’s views on political issues.
- It is also a process of absorbing the political culture of one’s nation.
- A political culture is a set of basic values and beliefs about a nation and its government that most citizens share.
- The political culture sets the general boundaries within which citizens develop and express their opinions.
- A nation’s political culture also influences how its citizens interpret what they see and hear every day—the political culture colors how Americans see the world.

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Political socialization in Everyday Life

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Political socialization in Everyday Life

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- Political socialization begins within the family. Children learn many of their early political opinions from their parents.
- As adults, more than two-thirds of all voters continue to favor the political party their parents supported.
- School also plays an important part in the political socialization process.
- In the United States, all students learn about their nation, its history, and its political system.
- An individual’s close friends, religious group, clubs, and work groups called peer groups—are yet another factor in the political socialization process.
- A person’s peer groups often influence and shape opinions.
- Individuals’ personal experiences the way they interact with the political and economic systems also influence their political views.
- Because economic and social statuses affect these experiences, they play a role in political socialization.
- The Internet, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, movies, and books; the mass media play an important role in political socialization.
- Both the Internet and television provide political information and images that can directly influence political attitudes.

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- Individuals learn their political beliefs and attitudes through a complex process called political socialization.
- This process begins early in life, continues throughout adulthood, and has a major influence on opinion formation.