Unpacking the Con ict 25aggregated estimate that same day was 38.7 percent. Moreover, past Rasmussen polls
had also showed higher approval ratings for Trump. We’ll talk more about polling
and how to interpret poll results—in Chapter 6. For now, these numbers illustrate the
dangers of relying on a single information source to make sense of American politics.
Some sources are also better than others. For example, even though pollsters cannot
measure public opinion with perfect certainty, they know some techniques are better
than others. Accordingly, most public opinion scholars criticize the polling techniques
used by Rasmussen Reports, on the grounds that they produce less accurate (and
more pro-Republican) findings than the techniques used by other pollsters. Of course,
pollsters don’t know which techniques are the best in all circumstances—but they can
still distinguish better from worse.
You should also be skeptical about simple explanations for political outcomes. For
example, one explanation for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 was that Americans
were not ready to elect a female president. However, this account ignores the fact that
throughout America, women are routinely elected as mayors, governors, and members
of Congress. This is not to say that attitudes about gender did not play a role in Clinton’s
defeat, but rather to note that this outcome was the result of many factors working
together. Complex outcomes are rarely explained by a single factor.
Finally, you might ask, If I’m supposed to be skeptical, why should I believe anything
in this book? The answer is that throughout this book, we’ve strived to follow all of the
rules presented here. Our aim is to describe how American politics works, rather than
to make an argument about how it should work. Rather than shaping your preferences,
our goal is to give you the tools to understand, evaluate, and interpret political
information and to help you be an informed, effective participant in the political
process. As we always tell our students, “My goal is not to tell you what to think, but to
help you learn how to think about politics.” We emphasize facts and data (often from
multiple sources) because the first step in understanding why things happen is to
learn the details of actual events. And while we believe that American politics makes
sense and that you can learn to make sense of it, we avoid simple explanations, as these
generally do not provide much insight into political behavior or policy outcomes.Unpacking the Conflict
As we consider the three key ideas about politics that we’ve discussed in this chapter,
let’s return to the problem of defining “fake news” discussed at the beginning of the
chapter. If Americans can’t even agree on which news is “fake,” how can we know what
to trust?
By understanding that politics is conflictual, that it is rooted in process, and that
it is everywhere, you will see that modern American political life, with all its apparent
contradictions, makes more sense than you might have thought. As you read this book,
we hope you will learn important “nuts and bolts” of the American political process
as well as some political history that will help you gauge the likely accuracy of what
you learn from news reports and will help you determine if there might be more to the
story than the narratives that are being presented. In general, your reading in this book
will focus on contemporary questions, debates, and examples—the kinds of stories
that constitute a lot of political news coverage—to illustrate broader points about our
nation’s political system.
While you may not always be able to tell if a news story is entirely accurate at first
glance, by the end of the semester you will know how to find out. We also hope you willFull_02_APT_64431_ch01_002-029.indd 25 16/11/18 1:36 PM