Civics - Mrs. Ball's Social Studies Classes
AP Government Name _____________________________________
Mrs. Ball
Public Opinion Polls
Part I: Answer the following while watching the clip from The First Measured Century.
1. What is a population?
2. What is a sample?
3. What did Gallup bet on? Who did he bet with?
4. What population were the Literary Digest and Gallup trying to sample?
5. Why were they trying to sample this population?
6. How did the Literary Digest get its sample? How big was their sample?
7. How did Gallup get his sample?
How big was his sample?
8. What happened in the election of 1936?
9. Why had the Digest’s samples not failed before 1936? Why did they fail now?
10. Why does Gallup consider polling to be so critical to democracy?
Part II: Some Problems with Polling:
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Polling Bias?
Analyze the following polling questions. Do you see bias in any of these questions? Mark a B beside the question if you think it is biased, and NB if you think it is not biased. Discuss with your neighbors why you think the way you do.
_____ Do you think Barack Obama's travel and speaking schedule makes him look more
like he is a candidate on the campaign trail or more like he is the president of the U.S.?
_____ Do you support the unprovoked military action by the USA in Iraq?
_____ Do you have a favorable or unfavorable impression of Barack Obama?
_____ Do you think President Obama apologizes too much to the world for past U.S. policies?
_____ Do you have more confidence in President Obama or in the Republicans in
Congress to deal with the major issues facing the country today?
_____ Do you think the Obama administration is proposing more government spending
than American taxpayers can afford, or not?
_____ Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the situation
with Afghanistan?
_____ If maintaining arts programs for children would cost you only 10 dollars a year in
taxes, would you support it?
_____ Regarding the national debt, would you rather:
• Cut spending now so future generations don't have to pay
• Keep spending at current levels and let future generations pay
_____ When Barack Obama was a candidate campaigning for the presidency, he spoke of
the urgent need to finish the fight in Afghanistan, which he called the central front on the war on terrorism. Do you think that, as president, Obama is doing what it takes to win in Afghanistan?
Some Problems with Polling:
1. Cause leaders to follow rather than lead – politicians say what they know the public will want to hear, rather than what they know to be correct
2. Polls ignore complexities – ask simplistic questions
3. Polls can actually create public opinion (if 75% of Americans are favor of X, maybe I should be too)
4. Sampling Errors – not getting a representative sample (only asking randomly selected names from the phonebook in Massachusetts and Utah will not represent the whole country)
5. Methods of Contact – how interviewers make contact (phone, mail, internet, in person) might skew the process (not everyone answers the phone or agrees to stop and talk) – studies show that only calling landlines and not cell phones produces a Republican bias
6. Responses that don’t reflect true beliefs (example: Bradley Effect – people say they will vote for a black candidate, but then when they get into the voting booth, vote for the white candidate – named after Mayor Tom Bradley of L.A.)
7. Confusing questions
Example: Holocaust denial: In 1993, a poll seemed to suggest that 22% of Americans said they thought it was possible the Holocaust never took place. People were alarmed and upset, especially the Jewish community.
Then it turned out that the question that produced this data was confusing because it was written as a double negative, and people didn’t know how to answer.
"Does it seem possible or does it seem impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?"
Later, a new poll fixed the question with this one:
"Does it seem possible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened, or do you feel certain that it happened?"
After the new question, only about 1% of Americans thought the Holocaust had never happened.
8. Polling Objectivity – bias in the questions
Loaded questions: lead the respondent to an intended answer
As you know, residents near the Love Canal, in the Niagara Falls , New York area, were reported to have stillbirths, cancer, deformed children, and chromosome damage as a result of the dumping of hazardous chemical wastes. How serious a problem do you think the dumping of toxic chemicals is in the country today-very serious, only somewhat serious, or hardly serious at all?
Push Polls – fake polls used to smear opponent rather than to gather information – the purpose is not to collect data on people’s opinions, but to convince people to elect a particular candidate by spreading bad information about the other candidate
Some characteristics of Push Polls:
• The pollster or polling organization does not collect or tabulate survey results;
• The survey prefaces a question regarding support for a candidate on the basis of an untrue statement; and
• The survey is primarily for the purpose of suppressing or changing the voting position of the call recipient.
Examples:
• "If you knew that Candidate Smith was being investigated for corruption, would you be more likely to vote for him, or less likely?"
The question doesn't state that the allegation is true, so it is not a lie, but it serves to imply that the candidate has done something wrong.
Most famous example of Push Polling, which killed John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary (this was a poll on behalf of George W. Bush):
• "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"
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