Why is public opinion important? It guides government action, influences public policy, gives feedback to politicians. It gives self rule in democracy.

Democracy is government in which power and civic responsibility are exercised by all adult citi- zens, directly, or through their freely elected rep- resentatives. Democracy rests upon the principles of majority rule and individual rights.

Public opinion plays an important role in the political sphere. These have registered the distribution of opinions on a wide variety of issues, have explored the impact of special interest groups on election outcomes and have contributed to our knowledge about the effects of government propaganda and policy.

Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals. A person who conducts polls is referred to as a pollster.

What is the public opinion, and what factors shape it? Public opinion is those attitudes held by a significant number of people on matters of the government and politics. The main factors shaping public opinion include family, school/education, mass media, peer groups, opinion leaders, and historic events.

public opinion polls. scientific efforts to estimate what an entire group thinks about an issue by asking a smaller sample of the group for its opinion. sample. the portion of the population that is selected to participate in a poll.

Why should a poll be scientific rather than informal? Because scientific polls are based on hard measurements and are less likely to fall victim to sporadic change that informal polls are often subject to.

How do the media use public opinion polls during election season? The media uses public opinion polls to decide which candidates are ahead of the others and therefore of interest to voters and worthy of interview.

Family and/or school are the agents of socialization that have the strongest impact on an individual.

How do polls affect presidential elections? Polls tell voters the issues that the candidates support. Presidential approval ratings________ over a presidents term of office.

Social policy is often controversial because some don’t believe in paying for programs that don’t directly benefit them immediately. Non-contributory programs are more controversial because some believe the beneficiaries are not deserving of the benefits they qualify for since they did not pay in to the programs.

What are the 6 agents of political socialization? The Family, Schools, Mass Media, Peers, Churches and religion, Political Institutions and Leaders. You just studied 40 terms!

Agents of socialization, sometimes referred to as institutions, work together to influence and shape people’s political and economic norms and values. Such institutions include, but are not limited to: families, media, peers, schools, religions, work and legal systems.

What is the most important agent in the political socialization process? Individuals and institutions, including family, school, peer group, and mass media, responsible for imparting political orientations through the socialization process. Historical events that affect the views of those who lived through them.

Which is a way that schools teach patriotism? Requiring recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Education has the strongest impact on participation, as it socializes people to the political system. Schools are important agents for political socialization, and as a result, educated people develop the skills that allow them to follow and understand events through the mass media.

Family, school, peers and mass media are the most important. other factors are religion, race and ethnicity, gender, age, the region where you live and political events.

The most important early sources of political socialization are the family and the schools.

Public opinion can be influenced by age, gender, income, hobbies, race, religion, occupation, etc., as well as the economic situation during or concerning a public issue. Public opinion can also be influenced by mass media which includes television, magazines, radio, and newspapers.

Political socialization is a part of that much broader process. Family and school play significant roles in the development of our political roots and attitudes. They are often our earliest and sometimes longest lasting influences.

The family as an agent of political socialization is most successful in passing on basic political identities, especially an affiliation with the Republican or Democratic Parties and liberal or conservative ideological leanings (Dennis & Owen, 1997). Children can learn by example when parents act as role models.

Religious ties also greatly contribute to individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2010). Put simply: parents socialize children, and religion influences political behavior. Thus, religious socialization from parents should play a prominent role in socializing political behavior.

There are many factors that affect political participation. Education, gender, age and family are some of them. The family factor is an important factor that the individual has been in since he was born.

Cultural factors

• trust in government;
• degree of partisanship among the population;
• interest in politics, and.
• belief in the efficacy of voting.

Political culture is a set of views, attitudes, and behaviors to the political system as a whole. transmitted from one generation to another, the political culture also appears in the form of ideals and values. ranked as one of the main factors that influence the formation of political identity of the countries.

American political scientist Lucian Pye defined political culture as the composite of basic values, feelings, and knowledge that underlie the political process. Hence, the building blocks of political culture are the beliefs, opinions, and emotions of the citizens toward their form of government.

Daniel Elazar posited that the United States can be divided geographically into three types of political cultures—individualistic, moralistic, and traditionalistic—which spread with the migratory patterns of immigrants across the country.