GOVT 1111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act, Capitalism, Motivated Reasoning
12 Jun 2016
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Can public opinion even be discerned: polls don"t always predict right. Or is it but an echo of political elites: polls before obamacare said it was good, poll after said it was bad, support for health care reform evaporated once debate began in congress. What about when it"s inconsistent: broad antipathy to obamacare, but support for specific provisions of it. Contemporary: public opinion polls/surveys: scientific sample, probability sampling, random digit dialing, sampling error, challenges to randomness; selection bias. Defeated notion of ignorant public & capricious opinion changes. In the collective, public opinion is rational, real, stable, coherent, & logical. Public opinion as stable & consistent: views about financial inequality, 1984-2007. When opinions change, it is a response to a new circumstance/information: loving vs. virginia 1967. Parallel publics: demonstrated in changing views of same-sex marriage. Everyone at different starting points but trends are same & proportional. Prone to volatile swings until last 3 months.
