208 Chapter 6Chapter 6 || Public OpinionPublic OpinionRather, they use only considerations that come to mind immediately.^27 Highly
informed people who follow politics use this process, as do those with low levels of
political interest and knowledge.^28
In most cases, there are strong commonalities among the considerations that different
people use to form opinions about the same topic. For example, in addition to the types
of considerations we’ve already identified, many people use the state of the economy as
a consideration. Economic conditions often factor into how people decide whether they
approve of the job the president is doing; people are more likely to approve of the president
when economic conditions are good compared to when conditions are bad.
However, many other considerations that vary from person to person can enter into
the calculation. If you’re asked about your approval or disapproval of Donald Trump,
the question might call to mind his party (Republican), his personal life (divorced
twice), his business experience (a wealthy developer), a picture in today’s newspaper of
Trump meeting with a foreign leader, a scandal involving one of Trump’s appointees—
or even what Trump tweeted in the past day. Your opinions might reflect things that
have no connection to Trump, such as whether you just received a pay raise, whether
you recently watched a video of politicians arguing with each other, or even whether
you were just having a bad day. Clearly, you’d reach different conclusions about
Trump’s performance in office depending on which of these pieces of information
went into forming your opinion. Thus, two different people may form evaluations in
completely different ways, using very different kinds of information. If we ask about
approval of Trump, a substantial percentage of respondents will consider economic
conditions and partisanship. But for some people, approval or disapproval of Trump
may be based on other factors, from his wealth to his preference for well-done steak.
So, if we look at individuals, opinions can be hard to predict or understand, as we don’t
know which considerations will come to mind when we ask them what they think.Individual Considerations and Mass Public Opinion While public opinion
may be difficult to predict on a person-to-person basis, at the aggregate level (where
opinions are averaged across the population of a community, state, or nation)
opinions are easier to predict. Over a large group of people, unique differences in how
individuals form beliefs largely cancel each other out, leaving common factors that
are important for most people, such as (in the case of presidential approval) economic
conditions and party identification.
As an example of how considerations work on an aggregate level, consider Figure 6.2,
which shows the trend in presidential approval during the first two years in office for Donald
Trump, and during the first four years of his two predecessors, Barack Obama and George
W. Bush. The first thing to notice is that after a few months in office, presidential approval
settles at a relatively stable level. The lack of an identifiable trend makes sense given the role
of partisanship in shaping both perceptions of the economy and approval itself. In the main,
an individual’s partisan identification stays the same over time, so his or her evaluations of
the economy and of the president stay the same as well. Of course, some individuals change
their opinion from approval to disapproval over time because of something a president says
or does—but across the whole country, these movements average out.
The only evidence of a large change in presidential approval in Figure 6.2 is in the plot for
George W. Bush, whose ratings spiked after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and after the
invasion of Iraq in 2003. These sharp changes in approval suggest that a high percentage
of Americans responded to these events by expressing support for the president. However,
within a relatively short period of time, the impact of these events (or considerations) faded,
and Bush’s approval fell back to its previous level. A large, lasting change in overall approval
would require significant shifts in partisanship or a lasting movement in economic
conditions, which did not occur during the first terms of any of these presidents.Full_07_APT_64431_ch06_198-231.indd 208 16/11/18 1:37 PM