YouTube Transcript:
Evaluating PUBLIC OPINION Data [AP Gov Review_ Unit 4 Topic 6 (4_6)]

hey there and welcome back to heimlich's
history now we've been going through
unit 4 of the ap government curriculum
and in this video that means it's time
to talk about the effects of public
opinion on elections and policy debates
so if you're ready to get them brain
cows milked let's get to it okay as
always let's start with our learning
objective explain the quality and
credibility of claims based on public
opinion data so if you were here for the
previous video we talked about how
researchers use mass surveys and other
means to measure public opinion on a
wide variety of issues but they don't
just do that for funsies they do it
because public opinion affects elections
and the outcomes of policy debates based
on public opinion legislators know how
much support they have for certain
pieces of legislation based on public
opinion candidates for office know how
to appeal to people's actual desires but
aside from those higher level effects
public opinion polls have very real
consequences maybe you've seen a
presidential primary debate before this
is where all the candidates for that
party are contending to get the
nomination to run for president now for
the 2016 republican primaries there was
roughly a metric butt load of contenders
for the nomination and if you watch that
debate you may have wondered how do they
decide where to place each candidate on
the stage i mean okay you probably
weren't wondering that but whatever they
did place these people on the stage
according to their polling numbers so
the candidate with the highest numbers
will be placed at the center and then
they fan out from there now why does
that matter well it matters because the
candidate in the center will draw more
attention and the people who study these
things tell us that the center-placed
candidates usually have more speaking
time than the rest and all of that is a
result of how they fared in public
opinion polls so you can start to see
the power of the system like if a
candidate is popular in opinion polls
then that same candidate will be front
and center in the primary debate which
means more attention and hopefully more
positive opinions made to the public and
this can have a self-perpetuating effect
in fact because of what's called the
bandwagon effect people are more likely
to get behind a candidate who is polling
well because at the end of the day
people don't want to back a loser they
want to back a winner additionally
candidates who have higher polling
numbers have an easier time raising
funds because again if you're polling
well you're more likely to win and
nobody wants to give money to a losing
candidate so you can see that public
opinion polls can have a powerful effect
on the outcome of an election but in
addition to election public opinions can
have a strong effect on policy debate as
well like if polls indicate that a
majority of americans favor a given
policy then politicians are more likely
than not to vote for it on the other
side of the coin if a policy is popular
and a politician votes against it they
are going to pay for it now i confess
that recently that has not been as much
the case like for example as the
republican party has consistently tried
to block very popular legislation
embodied in president biden's
infrastructure package they don't
actually appear to be suffering any
political disadvantage for doing this
but even so in general what i said is
usually how it works now what i've said
so far is this public opinion polls have
a significant influence over elections
and policy debates and in a perfect
world that is how it works however as is
my custom i need to complicate this a
little the relationship between public
opinion polls and elections and policy
debates can be affected by how people
view the reliability of those opinion
polls if you remember in the last video
we talked about the principles of
scientific polls and how if polls are
conducted correctly according to
scientific rigor then they are about the
best tools we have for accurately
measuring public opinion however that
reliability has come into question
recently not least because there have
been a few spectacular blunders with
poland probably the most recent and
notable polling failure occurred in the
2016 presidential election between
donald trump and hillary clinton
according to the pollsters clinton was a
shoo-in for victory in fact i could
still remember going to bed about 10
o'clock that night convinced that i
would wake up to a clinton presidency
because that's what all the polls were
showing and they were good polls like no
reason to doubt them but instead i woke
up with everyone else to this shocking
news the pollsters were wrong trump had
won and not clinton now as the numbers
were added up clinton did have a healthy
winning margin on the popular vote but
trump won the electoral college vote
which is you know all that matters so
that can't be the explanation so what
happened well researchers tried to
figure out what went wrong and they came
up with a list of potential explanations
and i'm only going to give you two first
they considered what's called the social
desirability bias and this is when
people are filling out surveys and they
give a socially desirable answer even if
they don't follow through with it in
other words when a pollster asks a
person for which candidate they're
likely to vote it would not be socially
acceptable to say i am not voting as
americans we see voting as kind of like
a sacred responsibility and so it could
be that a lot of people who said they
were going to vote didn't actually vote
another potential explanation is the
non-response bias which says that
certain groups are more likely to
respond to public opinion polls than
others think about it this way if
someone is standing with a clipboard in
a mall and asks me for a few minutes of
my time to respond to a survey i always
tell them no like i've got other things
to do i don't want to stop don't judge
me that's just how i am but there are
other kinds of people who feel really
uncomfortable telling a person no for
whatever reason so even if they don't
want to stop and respond to the survey
they're going to do it just because they
don't want to endure the uncomfortable
social interaction that is required to
tell that person no so think about it at
the end of the day that person
conducting the survey is only going to
have data from people who said yes and
precisely no data from people like me
who are fine saying no now it's a very
simple example and scientific polling
has methods to adjust for that kind of
bias but that was a potential
explanation for the polling failure of
2016. polster speculated that since
trump frequently spouted strong words
against establishment media his
supporters were perhaps less likely to
respond to polls and that could account
for the inaccuracy of the data
regardless that major polling failure
led to widespread criticism of public
opinion data the last thing i should say
is that non-scientific polls can affect
the relationship between polling data
and elections as well polls can be
funded by partisan groups or partisan
news outlets and they are designed to
show support for their own favored
interests and i shouldn't even have to
say this but i will these are not
reliable polls like if you see a
partisan news outlet showing public
opinion polls that heavily favor a
policy that is in line with their
particular partisan affiliation take it
with a grain of salt nay take it with a
metric butt load of salt because those
polls are in no way a reliable measure
of public opinion but unfortunately many
americans don't know the difference
between these kinds of polls in the
scientifically rigorous polls and thus
lump them all together further degrading
the public's trust and polling numbers
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