| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Aggregate partisanship | The distribution, or percentage, of the electorate that identifies with each of the political parties. |
| Aggregate public opinion | In a democracy, the sum of all individual opinions. |
| Ambivalence | A state of mind produced when particular issues evoke attitudes and beliefs that pull in opposite directions. |
| Attitude | An organized and consistent manner of thinking and feeling about people, groups, social issues, or, more generally, any event in one's environment. |
| Cognitive shortcut | A mental device allowing citizens to make complex decisions based on a small amount of information. For example, a candidate's party label serves as a shortcut by telling voters much about his or her positions on issues. |
| Conservative | In the United States, a proponent of a political ideology that favors small or limited government, an unfettered free market, self-reliance, and traditional social norms. |
| Core values | Moral beliefs held by citizens that underlie their attitudes toward political and other issues. As integral parts of an individual's identity, these beliefs are stable and resistant to change. |
| Framing | Providing a context that affects the criteria citizens use to evaluate candidates, campaigns, and political issues. |
| Ideology | A comprehensive, integrated set of views about government and politics. |
| Issue publics | Voting for candidates based on their positions on specifics issues, as opposed to their party or personal characteristics. |
| Liberal | In the United States, a proponent of a political ideology that favors extensive government action to redress social and economic inequalities and tolerates social behaviors that conservatives view as deviant. Present-day liberals advocate policies benefitting the poor, minority groups, labor unions, women, and the environment and oppose government imposition of traditional social norms. |
| Measurement error | Uncertainties in public opinion as revealed by responses to polls, that arise from the imperfect connection between the wording of survey questions and the terms in which people understand and think about political objects. |
| Opinion leader | A citizen who is highly attentive to and involved in politics or some related area and to whom other citizens turn for political information and cues. |
| Political socialization | The process by which citizens acquire their political beliefs and values. |
| Prime | The news media's influence on how citizens make political judgments, through emphasis on particular stories. |
| Public opinion | "Those opinions held by private persons which governments find it prudent to heed." |
| Scientific polling | Tool developed in the twentieth century for systematically investigating the opinions of ordinary people, based on random samples. |
Combine with other sets
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace