PSCI-1100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10-14: Soft Media, Msnbc, John Zaller
3 Apr 2017
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Document Summary
Polls have become really useful in modern politics but there are problems. The wording of questions, the construction of a sample, the choice of items to analyze and report, the use of surveys to measure trends, and the examination of subsets of respondents. Consumers simply need to be aware of these issues so they can properly understand the polls. 10. 2 john zaller and stanley feldman a simple theory of the survey response: answering. The results of polls is open to interpretation. Zaller and feldman argue that people do not hold strong or stable attitudes about most issues and political phenomena. When they answer these polls, they only express opinions that are at the top of their head - an opinion that can easily be swayed. There is this idea that americans have become more polarized. Polarization has intensified partisanship in the electorate and in washington.
