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Should people discuss their vote choices with others? On one hand, many people argue that openly deliberating with others can lead to better decision-making. On the other hand, institutions like the secret ballot imply that keeping these choices secret has value, perhaps as a means of insulating people from unwanted social pressures. This paper examines public attitudes about whether it is best to discuss one's choices with others or to treat them as personal matters. We find that the American public is evenly divided on this issue. We also find that those who are least confident in their political capabilities--those who arguably could benefit most from deliberating about their vote choices--are most likely to say that choices should be treated as personal matters. Our findings have implications for understanding the role of political deliberation in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“What’s in a name?” asks Shakespeare’s Juliet. The play’s answer is, just about everything, as Juliet and her lover Romeo learn to their sorrow and finally at the cost of their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Do people accurately perceive the Supreme Court's ideology in relation to their own positions? Which types of people are most likely to misperceive? Answering these questions is important for understanding the basis of public support for the Supreme Court. To do so requires placing the public and the Supreme Court on a common ideological scale. This study represents the first attempt to do so. We ask respondents how they would have voted on a set of cases recently decided by the Court, meaning that we can generate a comparable set of ideal points for both masses and elites in a common space. We find that the Court is generally representative of mass opinion and that most citizens have accurate perceptions of the Court. However, we also find that people are substantially more likely to misperceive the Court as being too liberal than too conservative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a speech by Frank Newport, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), delivered at the AAPOR's 66th annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona, May 13, 2011, in which he discussed the measurement of public opinion as a primary focus of AAPOR, the significance of public opinion in political discourse, and how public opinion impacts government policy.

One of the more recently created Washington bureaus is the Office of Government Reports (OGR) whose duty it is to report to the U.S. government about opinions, desires and complaints of citizens with respect to the work of the federal agencies and to report from the government information concerning purposes and activities of the executive departments and agencies to the people. Until the OGR was congressionally authorized, funds for it were allocated from relief appropriations, or included as an item in the Emergency Relief Appropriations Acts. An attempt has been made not merely to outline the prescribed functions of OGR through the cold wording of Congressional Act and Executive Order, but to make its functions live through a glimpse into its day by day action as a vital part of government. Democracy's ideal is for the President to be able to sit down in conversation with every citizen, for every citizen to be able to talk at any time with his President. But with the increase of population and the multiplication of government tasks, the need for that extra pair of hands, that extra sympathetic ear, has become acute.

Democratic responsiveness concerns the degree to which government policies match public preferences. Responsiveness studies typically use national surveys to characterize public opinion, but whether poll questions overlap with the policy agenda is unknown. The first of two empirical analyses presented here, with hundreds of issues on the national agenda in the United States from 1947 to 2000, reveals that public opinion is mostly unrelated to policy outcomes. The picture appears to be even more ominous--that is, opinion and policy are negatively related--on highly salient issues that attract media attention. A second study revisiting published work confirms that responsiveness patterns look different depending upon whether studies of opinionpolicy connections (a) begin with survey data and then examine policy developments, or (b) begin with national legislative agenda issues and then examine survey data. Thus, conclusions about democratic responsiveness depend upon the issues that are examined, and often opinion surveys do not include questions about tangible public policy options. In that sense, future changes in democratic responsiveness might go undetected because scholars often lack data on what goes into the denominator of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voter ID laws require individuals to show government-endorsed identification when casting their ballots on Election Day. Whereas some see these laws as necessary to prevent voting fraud, others argue that fraud is extremely rare and that voter ID laws can suppress voting. The relative newness of the laws, along with variance in their substance, suggests that the public may possess low information about voter ID laws; thus, opinions on the issue may be influenced by political information, group predispositions, and the media. Using data from a national poll (n = 906), this study investigates what underlies opinion on voter ID laws. The results indicate that political predispositions, including ideology, party identification, and racial attitudes, influence support for such laws. The results also yield evidence of several types of information effects. A question-wording experiment shows that exposure to an anti–voter ID law argument framing voter ID laws as preventing eligible people from voting reduced support, whereas other framing treatments (pro and con) had no discernible impact on opinion. A “polarization effect” emerges, with issue familiarity magnifying the gap in opinion between liberals and conservatives. Fox News viewers are particularly likely to support voter ID laws, though no other forms of media use are significantly related to support. Finally, perceptions of voting fraud as “common” are associated with support for voter ID laws. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public Opinion Quarterly at its outset focused heavily on the influences on public opinion, predicated on the assumption of its strong impact on politics and policymaking. Has this assumption been borne out? This essay reviews the research on the influence of American public opinion on policymaking that began to use survey data first to examine the legislative representation and then national-level and state-level policies. POQ’s assumption has been confirmed by a substantial connection, overall, between public opinion and policymaking in the United States. Although this general finding is striking, there are limits to what we can conclude from it about American democracy. This raises important questions for future research and in ongoing debates about major issues before the nation, for which the public holds its leaders accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theorists posit that a public—unlike a mass of individuals—forms opinions through awareness of multiple viewpoints and recognition of opposition in a polity. Whether individuals pursue information on others’ political preferences is another matter. While some are motivated to seek as much information as possible, others seek information that supports their own preference. This differential pattern of awareness has implications for individuals’ assessment of collective preferences. This article extends recent research on motivated reasoning to test whether accuracy goals (i.e., reaching correct conclusions) and directional goals (i.e., reaching preferred conclusions) affect perceptions of majority preferences. Results show that motivated reasoning affects overestimates of support, of both national-level opinion and modal opinion in discussion groups, even after controlling for partisan strength, demographics, news exposure, political knowledge, and interest. Implications for considered public opinion are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Time-series data from 1960-1998 is used to test hypotheses regarding the impact of protest and public opinion on the passage of U.S. environmental legislation. An amplification model of policy impact is introduced which posits that protest affects legislative action independent of public opinion as suggested by protest event theorists, whereas the impact of public opinion on legislative action is greater depending on the level of protest. Evidence is found for the existence of an amplification mechanism between environmental movement protest and public opinion, where public opinion affects policy above and beyond its independent effect when protest raises the salience of the issue to legislators. These findings point to the need to restructure analyses of the impact of social movements on public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1930s saw the birth of mass survey research in America. Large public polling companies, such as Gallup and Roper, began surveying the public about a variety of important issues on a monthly basis. These polls contain information on public opinion questions of central importance to political scientists, historians, and policymakers, yet these data have been largely overlooked by modem researchers due to problems arising from the data collection methods. In this article I provide a strategy to properly analyze the public opinion data of the 1930s and 1940s. I first describe the quota-control methods of survey research prevalent during this time. I then detail the problems introduced through the use of quota-control techniques. Next, I describe specific strategies that researchers can employ to ameliorate these problems in data analysis at both the aggregate and individual levels. Finally, I use examples from several public opinion studies in the early 1940s to show how the methods of analysis laid out in this article enable us to utilize historical public opinion data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the massive attention heaped on the rally-round-the-flag phenomenon by public opinion scholars, relatively little attention has been paid to its constituent elements. Yet, recent research has found that different groups of Americans respond differently to presidents' activities according to their interests and attentiveness. In this study, I disaggregate public opinion along two dimensions: political party and political sophistication. I argue that in responding to high-profile presidential activities abroad, different groups of Americans weigh various individual, contextual, and situational factors differently. I investigate all major U.S. uses of force between 1953 and 1998 and find that the propensity of different groups to rally does indeed vary according to individual and environmental circumstances. To explain these differences, I employ two models of public opinion. The first emphasizes the importance of threshold effects in explaining opinion change. That is, individuals who are closest to the point of ambivalence between approval and disapproval are most likely to change their opinion in response to external circumstances. The second emphasizes both the propensities of different types of individuals to be exposed to a given piece of information, and their susceptibility to having their opinion influenced by any additional information. My results offer a more nuanced picture of the nature and extent of the rally phenomenon than has been available in previous studies. My findings also hold important implications for other related scholarly debates, such as whether, and under what circumstances, the use of force can successfully divert public attention from a president's domestic political difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents trend data collected from the 1970s to 2001 on the confidence of U.S. citizens in different levels of government and their opinions about policy-making devolution. The data suggest that U.S. citizens have more confidence in state and local governments than in the federal government on many, though not all, issues. The precipitous decline in public confidence in the federal government through the 1960s and 1970s has been well documented. The 1990s, however, marked a period of diminished public confidence, with the low point occurring in 1993 and 1994. Despite the recovery of public confidence at decade's end to levels seen in the late 1970s, a small but enduring minority seems to have emerged at the bottom of the confidence scale since 1993. This small section of the public volunteers that it has no confidence in the federal government. Given U.S. Congress's track record of preemption of state authority through the 1990s on such issues as crime and environmental law. alongside devolution in other policy areas, such as welfare and Medicaid, the U.S.. Supreme Court will likely continue to be the ultimate arbiter of the boundaries between federal and state power. Ultimately, majority public opinion on federalism, given its mixed quality as well, seems unlikely to offer U.S. Congress and the states any clear guidance or check.

To what extent have the policy decisions of the U.S. government been consistent with the preferences of the public? Using results of national surveys, public opinion was compared with actual policy outcomes on over 500 issues from 1980 through 1993. Overall, policy outcomes were consistent with the preferences of public majorities on 55 percent of the cases, representing a decline from 63 percent during the 1960-79 period. While this decline ex- tended to almost all substantive policy topic categories analyzed, foreign policy decisions tended to be among the most consistent (67 percent), as in the previous two decades. Similar to the analysis of the earlier period, it appeared that a key reason for policy not being more consistent with public opinion was an inherent bias against change in the U.S. political process, a tendency that has increased over time. The reasons for this increase in bias against change, and the corresponding decline in consistency, are not entirely clear, but may be rooted in divided control of government combined with increased ideological conflict. It is interesting that when issues were categorized in terms of their salience to the public, it appeared that opinion/policy consistency was greater (and bias against change less) on those issues of highest public salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been speculations in the political circles and the U.S. media on the need for realignment of the present political parties and a third party should be added to take care of the voters who are dissatisfied with Democratic and Republican parties. There are critics of the American party system who do not talk of a third party, but who "think the parties should be formed by more logical combinations of interests than the existing Republican and Democratic combinations. They call," as sociologist Arthur N. Holcombe points out, "for an alignment of 'liberals' against 'conservatives' or of the 'masses' against the 'classes.'" From time to time during the past ten years the major polling agencies have taken the public's opinion with regard to realignment. A scrutiny of some of these readings may aid in evaluating realignment talk in 1947-1948, and perhaps even more importantly in 1952. Specifically, the results which have presented in the article deal with two aspects of the issue: the possible revamping of the existing two parties; and the possible formation of a new third party.

This article contains a compilation, topically arranged, of public opinion poll results related to political developments in the U.S., released by the American Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO), by the journal "Fortune," and by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion (CIPO). The AIPO and CIPO results cover the period from October through December 1942. The "Fortune" questions are those which appeared in the November and December 1942 issues. Dates appearing in connection with AIPO and CIPO questions are those carried in the date lines of Institute releases to subscribing newspapers; dates following "Fortune" questions indicate the issue of the magazine in which the information appeared. The poll results concerning the U.S. domestic issues shows opinion of voters of the U.S. Democratic Party and the Republican Party concerning their presidential candidates for 1944. The opinion poll also reveals public opinion about plans of the U.S. Government to collect income tax on money earned by people.

Progress in the technique of ascertaining states and trends of public opinion has revived interest in the question of representative versus direct democracy. The problem is that what is the proper role of public opinion in the U.S. system of government. This problem is by no means new, but needs to be reconsidered in the light, not only of improvements in polling techniques, but also in relation to the public policy demands and the capacities of the average man. The problem is to discuss the theoretical function of opinion as the book "The Federalist" states it. The central propositions to be argued here is that most modern discussions of the function of opinion do not face clearly certain fundamental issues, and that "The Federalist" can throw light on these issues, as well as assist in the formulation of a coherent, conservative theory of opinion. The article suggests that a frontal analysis of the function of public opinion in a revolutionary age is required. Modern writers, like authors of "The Federalist," never say that government rests entirely on opinion, or that government is justified wholly by the opinion of its citizens.

This article discusses the question that whether the U.S. government should advertise or not. Simple as this question may seem, it has proved perplexing to public officials, advertisers, editors, and publishers alike. The nature and effectiveness of the informational and propaganda efforts of the government, the financial future of the advertising profession and of publishing enterprises, to say nothing of the editorial freedom of the press, all are to an extent affected by the answer. To focus public attention on the issues involved and to further the cause of clear thinking on the subject, the editors of the journal "Public Opinion Quarterly" invited a number of persons directly concerned to state their views. The article suggests that regarding the Second World War situation, the advertising can play an important role in winning. Through advertising the government can encourage morale and can effect the war situation.

This article focuses on efforts of organized groups and governmental agencies to influence public opinion and describes individuals and organizations engaged in public relation activities in the U.S. It talks about the legislative programs of organized groups discussing the American Legion, National Council for the Prevention of War, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Women's Joint Congressional Committee and Labor Union. While discussing governmental influence and combating the U.S. "Balkanization," article talks on municipal public relation, citizen's polling, role of public relations agencies in radio and films. This article also presents the publicity staffs of four federal departments: Commerce, Interior, Labor and State. It includes only staff members on the professional and administrative levels. Governmental publicity staffs vary greatly in size and character. Though all departments have been required by Congress to disseminate information and promote the functions for which they were set up, the ways in which different staffs operate exhibit striking dissimilarities.