Political Science 362

Questions for Erikson and Tedin, Chapter 3

1. Explain some of the reasons why early survey researchers were quite pessimistic about the sophistication of the average citizen? How have more recent assessments of citizen sophistication been somewhat more optimistic? Give some examples of where there is evidence that the pull of self-interest is far from universal.

2. Discuss some of the reasons why some people are more attentive and caring about political issues than others. Discuss how persons with high levels of political information differed from those of low political information in 2004 according to the NES data presented on Table 3.2.

3. Discuss how citizens convert information into opinion according to the economic rationality school, the online school and the memory-based school.

4. What is doorstep opinion? What is a panel study? Discuss the instability of opinion holding as shown in Tables 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5.

5. Discuss the three major explanations given for the instability of responses to most questions over time.

6. How much meaning does the left-right continuum have for most citizens? Discuss some of the perceived major differences between those who call themselves conservatives and those who call themselves liberals. What were some of the actual issue differences in 2004 between American liberals and conservatives as presented in Table 3.7? How did ideological self-rating in 2004 compare with actual placement on an ideological scale based on 10 issues according to Table 3.8?

7. Discuss the four levels of political sophistication in the use of ideological language? Looking at Table 3.9, how has this changed since 1956?

8. Discuss the differences in ideological consistency between the more informed and the less informed. Discuss the ordinal correlations between opinions on selected issues as shown in Table 3.10.

9. How does party identification compare to ideology as a guide to explaining people’s votes? According to the authors, about what percentage of the public could be labeled as pure independents? Discuss the differences between various types of party identifiers in their opinions about major policy issues in 2004 according to the NES as presented in Table 3.12.

10. Discuss the difference between party identification as a psychological attachment and as a running tally.