Who is the “Public” Anyway?

0:01 Unpacking the Conflicting Messages of Public Opinion Polls All right, welcome back to our podcast. Today's episode is who is the public anyway? And we're going to be looking at American public opinion polling and democracy. So what does America actually think? 0:18 Let's start with a real poll. So a few months ago, in April 2026, the Pew Research Center asked more than 5000 American adults whether a series of issues were very big problems facing the country. Now, 74% said the role of money in politics is a very big problem. 73% said the affordability of Healthcare is a very big problem, 66% said inflation, 64% said the federal budget deficit, and 64% said the inability of Democrats and Republicans to work together. 0:54 So given that information, what was America's biggest problem? Healthcare, inflation, money and politics. Hold that thought. So Fast forward a few months later, Pew asked registered voters a different question. 1:13 They asked what 1 issue would you most like congressional candidates in your district to talk about? This time, respondents weren't given a list 29% name something related to the economy. 1:28 Only 5% named healthcare. Wait, how did healthcare go from 73% saying it's a very big problem to only 5% naming it as the issue candidates should discuss? 1:43 Did that many Americans really change their minds? No, probably not. The questions changed, the population changed somewhat, the timing changed, and suddenly we have the central problem of public opinion. 1:59 When someone says Americans believe X, what exactly does that mean? Which Americans? What were they asked? How were they asked? How strongly did they believe that? And what should government do with that information? Should government take it blindly and start enacting those types of policies? 2:18 That is exactly what we're going to figure out today. Now, if you would like, you can pause this podcast right here. And in the section below you will see a link to the Pew Research study. 2:35 You can look that over if you wish before returning back or just hang out here and we'll keep talking about it. 2:42 Exploring Political Socialization and Ideology's Influence So the first kind of big thing, big item I want to talk about is where do our political opinions come from? So think about one political belief you hold. Maybe you have. 3:01 Maybe you think government should spend more on education. Maybe taxes are too high. Maybe climate change deserves more attention. Maybe government regulates too much. Now ask yourself the harder question. Where did this belief come from? 3:19 Not how would I defend it, but where did it come from? Why did you start believing this? Where did you get this thought? Political scientists call the process through which people develop public beliefs and values political socialization. 3:37 And you know, it starts early. It starts with our families, the type of schools we go to, our friends, the religion we are raised in, our neighborhoods, economic circumstances if we've lived through any major historical events, media, political parties, social media. 3:55 And The thing is, none of these automatically determine our politics, but they help create the environment in which our politics develop. OK, so bear with me here, but imagine two children. 4:12 One grows up hearing the government programs help the family through a crisis. Another one grows up hearing that government regulations nearly destroyed the family business. Those aren't formal political science lessons, but experiences teach. 4:28 And these kids now have very different views on what government does, their role, and ultimately how it impacts individual citizens. Now, we can't talk about political socialization without talking about this concept of political ideology. 4:47 And political ideology is an opinion or a position on a particular issue. And an ideology versus an opinion is a broader set of beliefs about politics and the proper role of government. 5:02 So think of ideology as a playlist, and then each individual is the song. OK, but most people's playlists are messy. I mean, think if we opened your playlist right now on Spotify or YouTube or Apple Music or wherever year your music lives. 5:19 Do you only listen to one genre? Is it the same throughout? Is it consistent? Well, most people's political ideologies aren't either. You see, you may want government, more government action on one issue and less on another. You know, human beings. 5:34 We are not walking talking political philosophy textbooks. We are messy. Our ideas are messy. OK, and think about this. Suppose your political views are very similar to your parents. Does that mean you independently reach the same conclusions? 5:51 Well, maybe. Or maybe some assumptions become normal to you long before you ever evaluated them. So ask yourself right now, how can you tell the difference between a political belief you have examined and one that you've simply absorbed? 6:08 Because this question matters. It matters because political identity often develops before we begin consciously analyzing actual politics. It comes from our environments, what we hear around us, what we hear our parents saying. 6:23 OK, so think about this. How can you tell the difference? And the next time you think about a political belief you have, ask yourself, is this a political belief you've examined, or is this something you have simply absorbed? 6:39 Now, in addition to political ideology and political social socialization, we have this thing that also influences how we view the world around us politically, and that is our age or our generation. Now suppose 220 year olds and a 70 year old think very differently about an issue. 7:00 Why? Well, one possibility is called the life cycle effect. And this means basically that people change as they age. They get jobs, they pay taxes, they become parents, they buy homes, they retire, they use different government programs. 7:16 Or there's another possibility. So that was our life cycle effect or our age. Well, there's another one called generational effect. And so a 70 year old and a 20 year old grew up during very different historical periods. There were different wars, different economic crises, different technologies, social movements, political leaders, media systems. 7:37 All of those things influence us. And so when researchers find age differences, they have to ask, are people different because they are different ages or because they belong to different generations? OK. 7:52 And 1 poll usually can't tell us that answer definitively. We usually have to take evidence from across time. Now thinking about, you know, how do we get these beliefs? Where do they come from? 8:08 We then have to ask ourselves, how do people actually make their decisions, their political decisions? 8:15 How Mental Shortcuts and Social Media Shape Our Views You know, nobody knows everything about politics and you know, I I urge you to think about what would you need to master in order to feel like you knew everything about politics? Would you need to know taxes, trade, healthcare, immigration, education, foreign policy, energy, criminal justice, artificial intelligence, the environment, right. 8:37 And approximately like, I don't know, 17,000 other things. So people use mental shortcuts here. They party identify, OK, maybe they look for endorsements. Who's Taylor Swift endorsing today? 8:52 Who is Trump endorsing? Who is he not endorsing? OK, what about interest groups? Who are the Mothers Against drunk driving? Who are they looking towards? Veterans groups, environmentalists, trusted journalists, all of these people, in addition to know, you know, even friends or religious leaders or even experts in the field, You know, what shortcuts are these individuals giving us so that we can make political decisions? 9:20 And so when you think about it, using a shortcut is not necessarily irrational, especially if you use expert shortcuts. You know, if a doctor recommends medication, you usually don't say, well, I'm going to go get a second opinion or well, can you give me all of this independently, you know, verifiable test results or clinical trials results. 9:42 But shortcuts become dangerous when they replace our own thinking. So if we're constantly using these shortcuts, oh, well, my friend said this, so I will go in this direction. Now, we're not thinking for ourselves. 9:58 We're merely absorbing this information. OK, so pause here for a minute. Let's have a critical thinking pause. What I want you to do is think about a political belief you strongly hold. Now ask yourself what evidence would actually cause me to change my mind? 10:19 If your answer is nothing, then you're probably dealing with something closer to identity than evidence. OK? And every political group is capable of this. So we need to think about, you know, what evidence we would need and what is part of our identity versus what is actually a sincerely held belief. 10:42 Now, the other thing is we have to pay attention to parties, political parties and party identification also changes what we notice. OK, So being a Republican or a Democrat, for example, can shape more than voting. 11:01 It can affect which problems people see as important. For example, in Pew's April 2026 poll, they found that 60% of Republicans and Republican leaning independents called illegal immigration a very big problem. 11:18 This is heavily contrasted with 17% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. On climate change, it's nearly the opposite. 63% of Democrats and Democratic leaners call it a very big issue, whereas 14% of Republicans. 11:35 So notice what that means here. Americans aren't disagreeing on just solutions. They're disagreeing on which problems deserve our attention in the 1st place. And so that's a deeper form of political conflict than I think. 11:52 You know, here's proposal AI think we should do that, versus here's proposal B. These are different problems altogether. And not just thinking about solutions, just thinking about the problems themselves. And so then we also have kind of social media. 12:10 So if we think about having these different problems, not just having different solutions, now we add algorithms. All right? You watch one political video and all of a sudden that platform notices and then another appears and another and another. 12:27 And soon you have an echo chamber chamber where you're thinking to yourself, Dang, everybody thinks the way I do. Everyone agrees about this. Literally everyone is talking about it. But they're not, OK? Your algorithm is talking about this. Your TikTok feed is not a random sample of issues that people are talking about on the Internet, right? 12:48 It's talking about what you are looking at, OK. And likes are not votes, right? Views are not public opinion. And so we have to be really careful now with the advent of social media and thinking about who is talking about what and what that necessarily means. 13:07 Understanding Population, Sample, and Question Wording in Polling And so that brings us to our most useful skill in this entire episode. OK, polling. Whenever you see a poll, don't ask only what did they find? Ask how did they find it? Right? We want to know their population and their sample. 13:24 Remember, the population is a group of researchers and they want to understand something. Are they asking American adults, registered voters, likely voters, N Carolinians, Texans, people's people, ages to 18 to 29, right? 13:42 So who are they asking? The sample is the smaller group researchers actually survey. Clearly, we can't find every North Carolina citizen and ask them a question, so a good sample is the way we do this. And a sample helps researchers estimate what the larger population thinks. 14:03 And here is one of the most important ideas in polling. A huge sample can still be terrible if the wrong people are being sampled. OK, Imagine for example, if I want to know the average height of students at my school. I measure 1000 basketball players. 14:19 Huge sample, terrible representation. Then I randomly select 200 students from the entire school. Smaller sample, but better evidence. See, you can't fix a bias sampling process simply by serving more people. 14:36 OK, now going back to a real poll example, adults are not voters. So remember our two pupils? The April poll surveyed US adults. The July poll focused on registered voters. 14:52 Those are not identical populations. 1/3 survey even might use likely voters and that could produce yet another result. And so This is why tiny words under that giant TV graphic often matter more than that giant number. 15:10 So the next time you hear about a poll, before accepting what they say, ask which Americans. If they say Americans, think blank. Ask yourself, well, which Americans? Are they adults? Are they registered voters? Are they likely voters? Are they N Carolinians? 15:26 Are they 18 year olds? Think about who it is asking about next. We have what's called the margin of error. OK, so suppose a poll reports, I don't know, 52% support a proposal, and then it says the margin of sampling error is ±3 points. 15:44 So that means or doesn't mean that exactly 52% of the public supports it. It's an estimate, and that's critical. It means ±3 points. OK, 52 + 352 -, 3 and so margin of error does not account for every possible thing that could go wrong with a poll. 16:05 It doesn't necessarily fix bad wording, poor sampling, non response waiting problems, sampling error or uncertainty, just generally. But it gives us a good idea of how how much error we think might be living in that in that poll. 16:26 Now, when we're taking talking about polls, we also have to remember the question wording. You know, a perfect sample can be asked a terrible question, right? So imagine you're being asked these questions by political pundits. 16:43 Should government provide more assistance to families struggling to afford food? OK. When put like that, most people are like, well, yeah, these people are struggling to afford food, they need to eat, they need more funding. OK, so that question versus should government expand welfare spending? 17:00 It's asking you about the same outcome related policy, different frame. For another example, should police receive additional tools to protect public safety versus should the government expand surveillance power? 17:15 Again, same respondents, possibly very different answers and words are going to activate very different values. So that is why polling is not just about who you ask, it's about what you ask them. OK, now again, the best example we have recently is returning back to that 2026 Pew result. 17:38 And so returning to that poll In April, people were shown a list and asked whether each issue was a very big problem. They could say yes to several. In July, voters were asked to name only one and they and, and that was the one issue that they wanted congressional candidates to discuss. 17:57 Again, those questions measure different things, and one captures a broad concern while the other one gets closer to salience. So what? What comes to mind as a priority for the public? So when 2 reputable polls appear to tell different stories, don't immediately conclude that one is wrong. 18:15 It's just that they may be asking it different. Or are they even asking the same question? OK.