POLI 2051 : Poli Test 2
Document Summary
Attitude: psychological tendency or predisposition to respond to some object in a favorable or unfavorable way- likes and dislikes. Opinion: expression of an attitude-ex) raising a hand. Not about a specific person but of a general issue. Public opinion is the collection of individual attitudes towards issues or objects of general interest- issues that concern a significant number of people. First attempt to measure public opinion was in presidential elections. One of the first attempts to predict presidential elections was the literary digest. Was a straw poll- an unscientific survey that attempted to gauge voter opinion. Had been fairly accurate since the 1916 election (poll predicted that alfred landon would win wrong) Literary digest poll failed to predict the 1936 election: Gallup used a random sample- everyone had an equal chance to be selected (random=everyone has a chance of being selected) Telephone polls-some problems such as less landlines, people don"t answer unknown numbers.
