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Po Campaigns

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Political Science
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1. Lumen Learning defines public opinion as a collection of popular beliefs and
attitudes towards a variety of topics such as politics, events, or ideas. Public opinion first
and foremost comes from the individual beliefs of people and then collated together.
As for an individual, their personal beliefs and attitudes are shaped by the process
of socialization. In particular, political socialization is the process wherein our political
mindset is formed, and this is shaped by a variety of things. This process actually begins
in childhood where one can hear the opinions of their parents on a variety of political
topics such as the president, the government, and the way things are run. This process
eventually continued in school, where children learn the foundations and structures of
government, the history of these, and current political events. Media also plays a big
factor in influencing political opinion, as well as one’s own personal experiences in
regard to political affairs.
Public opinion may be collectively rational if most or all people have well-
informed opinions and are updated with current happenings, therefore giving them
enough knowledge to properly give judgement. However, I think that most of the time,
public opinion isn’t as rational, and may even end up influencing people because of the
sole reason that it’s the popular choice or ideal.
2. There are a variety of ways to measure public opinion, with some more accurate
than others. Lumen Learning has mentioned that polling has changed over the years, with

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modern being only as new as around 80 years old. One of the methods used to measure
public opinion is through the use of focus groups, where respondents may be selected at
random in malls or shopping centers. Participants may also be pre-selected via phone
number or previous surveys. While this can be convenient, especially for shoppers
targeted in commercial areas, this type might lead to a sample that does not represent
public opinion very well since the selection process is pretty random.
Like focus groups, nonscientific polling is also convenient, easily administered, and
may not be a good representation of the totality of public opinion. Some of these include
magazine surveys or even polls on Twitter or Facebook. These can be easily accessed by
anyone at all, which would make the results not accurately representative of public
opinion. To add, there would probably be more working adults taking a magazine survey
and more young people on social media polls, leading to varying results.
Lastly, scientific polling allows for a more representative and accurate data
collection on public opinion. Here, participants may be gathered based on their
demographic. For example, a survey may get one participant from each state in order for
all the states to be equally represented. On the other hand, a survey may use
representative sampling which means that the sample of people gathered would be
directly proportionate to the real population. This means that states with bigger
populations would send in more representatives than a state with a tiny population. I
believe that this is the best polling method to use as it better represents the population and
would lead to less errors when determining public opinion. The downside of this would
be that data collection would be more tedious and difficult. However, there is still a risk

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1. Lumen Learning defines public opinion as a collection of popular beliefs and attitudes towards a variety of topics such as politics, events, or ideas. Public opinion first and foremost comes from the individual beliefs of people and then collated together. As for an individual, their personal beliefs and attitudes are shaped by the process of socialization. In particular, political socialization is the process wherein our political mindset is formed, and this is shaped by a variety of things. This process actually begins in childhood where one can hear the opinions of their parents on a variety of political topics such as the president, the government, and the way things are run. This process eventually continued in school, where children learn the foundations and structures of government, the history of these, and current political events. Media also plays a big factor in influencing political opinion, as well as one’s own personal experiences in regard to political affairs. Public opinion may be collectively rational if most or all people have wellinformed opinions and are updated with current happenings, therefore giving them enough knowledge to properly give judgement. However, I think that most of the time, public opinion isn’t as rational, and may even end up influencing people because of the sole reason that it’s the popular choice or ideal. 2. There are a variety of ways to measure public opinion, with some more accurate than others. Lumen Learning has m ...
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