CHAPTER SIx • PublIC OPInIOn, POlITICAl SOCIAlIzATIOn, And THE MEdIA 125
Gender Gap
The difference between
the percentage of women
who vote for a particular
candidate and the
percentage of men who
vote for the candidate.
Opinion Poll
A method of systematically
questioning a small,
selected sample of
respondents who are
deemed representative of
the total population.seen as a serious problem for the Republican Party. Following the elections, several leading
Republicans began to take a much more positive line toward unauthorized immigrants.The Gender Gap
Until the 1980s, there was little evidence that men’s and women’s political attitudes were
very different. Following the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, however, scholars began
to detect a gender gap. A May 1983 Gallup poll revealed that men were more likely
than women to approve of Reagan’s job performance. The gender gap reappeared in
subsequent elections, with women being more likely than men to support Democratic
candidates. In 2012, 55 percent of women voted for Democrat Barack Obama, compared
with 45 percent of men.
Women’s attitudes also appear to differ from those of their male counterparts on a range
of issues other than presidential preferences. They are much more likely than men to oppose
capital punishment and the use of force abroad. Studies also have shown that women are
more concerned about risks to the environment, more supportive of social welfare, and more
in agreement with extending civil rights to gay men and lesbians than are men.Geographic Region
Finally, where you live can influence your political attitudes. In 2012, many commentators
suggested that the white working class was hostile to Obama. This conclusion was not
entirely accurate. In a preelection poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, neither
Obama nor Romney held a statistically significant lead among white working class voters
in the East, Midwest, or West. In the South, however, Romney’s margin was 62 percent to
22 percent (16 percent were undecided). Regardless of region, opposition to Obama was
strongest among those who saw themselves culturally as Southerners—that is, as persons
who identified with the losing side in the American Civil War.
The split between the city and the country is almost as important as the one between
the North and the South. In 2012, Obama did far better than Romney in large cities. The
northern states that Romney carried were often heavily rural.Measuring Public Opinion
In a democracy, people express their opinions in a variety of ways, as mentioned in this
chapter’s introduction. One of the most common means of gathering and mea suring pub-
lic opinion on specific issues is through the use of opinion polls.The History of Opinion Polls
During the 1800s, certain American newspapers and magazines spiced up their political
coverage by conducting face-to-face polls or mail surveys of their readers’ opinions. In the
early twentieth century, the magazine Literary Digest mailed large numbers of question-
naires to individuals, many of whom were its own subscribers, to determine their political
opinions. From 1916 to 1932, more than 70 percent of the magazine’s election predictions
were accurate.
In 1936, however, the magazine predicted that Republican Alfred Landon would
defeat Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in the presidential race. Landon won in only two
states. A major problem was that in 1936, several years into the Great Depression, the
Digest’s subscribers were considerably wealthier than the average American. In other
words, they did not accurately represent all of the voters in the U.S. population.LO3: Describe the characteristics
of a scientific opinion poll, and list
some of the problems pollsters face
in obtaining accurate results.Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.