The Public’s Opinion

Throughout the reading of Chapter 5 of The Struggle For Democracy and our class discussions of the content covered, I found that the idea of public opinion was most insightful as well as appropriate for understanding key concepts of American democracy. At the surface, public opinion is self explanatory and is defined as the collective political attitudes of citizens of a society, measurable by surveys. But, public opinion is essentially the main driving force behind any major change or decision in a society. If there is something going wrong in our government, and enough people share the same opinion; it is possible for the situation to escalate into a change being enacted. For example, in class we watched a documentary about Farmingville, New York in the late 1990’s, and how the collective political attitudes of a small town of only about 15,000 people, caused a major pushback to about 1,500 Mexican laborers. Many of these day laborers were illegal immigrants, sometimes lodged 25-30 people in a residential homes, and were the main cause of noise pollution in this quiet, suburb. Those who had grown up in Farmingville, were uneasy about this influx of Mexicans, and this political attitude spread amongst the people whom had felt there home was being invaded. The reason for this strength in public attitude is easily understood if you looked at the demographics of Farmingville before, or even after the influx of immigrants. Even in the 2000 census in Farmingville, New York it was discovered that it was comprised of 87.81% people who identified as white. This is a very prominent majority, and when some negative change happens in their day to day life due to another group of people that just arrived, many changes in the community are going to be attempted to be instilled, as we saw in the documentary. Public opinion has immense power as we observed in Farmingville. It allowed the ability to instill change in a community, cause racial tensions to flare, as well as be the motive of malicious hate crimes.

Public opinion is prevalent in everyday society. Just in the past couple of weeks, we witnessed the deadliest shooting on American soil that took place in Las Vegas, Nevada. This event was and is truly horrible and disgusting, and impacted many people considering 58 people were killed and over 500 were wounded. But, due to public opinion, there is going to be an outpour of gun control activism, and there will be lobbying for increased restrictions on guns. Public opinion has a huge role when it comes to these tragic events. It is often the case that public opinion is what helps hinder another incident like this from happening. As a member of society, you do not want to live in an environment where you go to a concert where 50 plus people die. So, when an event like this does occur, it’s the public opinion that will be the deciding factor in what to do when moving past this event, and protecting the public from it happening again. This self-correctness quality that public opinion has on government is so essential to our American democracy, and why it is such a common factor of daily life whether you realize it or not.

Sources:

http://www.usbeacon.com/New-York/Farmingville.html

http://www.pbs.org/pov/farmingville/film-description/

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/07/us/las-vegas-shooting-investigation/index.html

6 Responses to "The Public’s Opinion"

Lauren Toth says:

October 9, 2017 at 12:31 pm

As mentioned in this post, public opinion drives change, within our government, within society, within our every day lives. Public opinion is measurable data through polls, social media and news, and by current trends in our nation. This has been shown recently through a variety of events that have been happing in America. Take the current trend of Black lives matter. The most publicized event of this movement started in August 10th of 2014, after an African American boy was shot by a white police officer. The protest started off small but soon turned into a large and sometimes violent protest. The news and all of social media started coverage of the event. The riots continued off and on for the next few years but the message is still alive today. A recent public opinion poll conducted by Pew Research concluded that 43% of American support this movement. We see Black lives matter and equality for all in other cases, protests, news coverage, and even our football games. The current public opinion is debating over kneeling or standing for the national anthem or whether or not to keep up confederate statues. There is a strong relationship between Public opinion and policy that can be seen throughout history. When a strong movement is shown throughout the whole nation, the government must listen to majority and change. Our government is in a constant state of improvement and change due to public opinion which is an important part to the foundation of democracy. By listening to the public opinion, government is essentially listening to the majority fulfilling its duty to the people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_unrest#August_2014
http://degreesofdemocracy.net/Wlezien&Soroka(OUP).pdf
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/08/how-americans-view-the-black-lives-matter-movement/
Hannah Dunn says:

October 9, 2017 at 5:04 pm

Your comment about the Las Vegas shooting and its effect on public opinion really caught my attention. You say that there will be an outpouring of support for firearm regulation, which I agree with, however this overwhelming outcry of support for victims and stricter gun laws has not changed policy in the past. I’m thinking of shootings like those in Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and Orlando. After each, the public called for gun control from the government, yet people today, like the Las Vegas shooter, are still able to purchase semi-automatic weapons and outfit them so that they fire like assault rifles. I am not disputing that public opinion right now is leaning toward gun control because of this focusing event, however I question whether public opinion is always enough to push our government to self-correct. Our nation has not yet been successful in preventing these events from repeating. In the case of gun control, I think the NRA and other interest groups have much more political influence than much of the public would like, which is why these deadly shootings continue to occur.

Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/us/20-deadliest-mass-shootings-in-u-s-history-fast-facts/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/06/us/stephen-paddock-47-guns/index.html
Margaret Castelli says:

October 10, 2017 at 1:00 pm

I agree with your statements about the importance of public opinion. Most Americans do not realize the impact what is happening in the world around them and their reactions to it can have on public policy and lawmaking. I really like your points about the Las Vegas shooting, which is something on the forefront of so many American minds. Liberals are already being criticized for making this incident “about gun control,” but I really think this show public opinion impacting the government in a very real way. When a tragedy like the deaths of 50 Americans occur, we should be looking to solutions to this problem, as you noted. This is why the ability of Americans to impact their government through public opinion is so important so that we can intact change for the issues we see in our country.
The power of public opinion is also extremely prevalent in the Farmingville documentary we watched in class, as you noted. Those for and against Latinos in the Farmingville community impacted their local government into taking actions that may not have been taken otherwise. This really highlights how public opinion can affect the local government as well as the federal.
Christopher Barry says:

October 10, 2017 at 11:21 pm

Public opinion has usually led to the slow progress and improvement of our government. Your blog post discusses this very well and I agree with your sentiments. However, what struck out to me was the Las Vegas shooting and its relation to the shift in public opinion regarding gun control. In past shootings like Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook, this issue and the sudden shift in public opinion and attention has fizzled.
One possible cause is the media attention. After a week or two of news coverage, the event fails to relevant and new issues and events become brought to the limelight. Constant coverage makes the issue seem pressing and important to the American people and public opinion. This effect is not isolated to gun violence and control, but also other areas including natural disasters and terrorist attacks. At the climax, either the shift in public opinion results in action or it does not. Traditionally, in regards to gun control, the events have fizzled and seize to bother the American conscientious. For example, after Sandy Hook, parents of the children pleaded with Congress to pass substantive gun control; however, due to a variety of factors like the NRA and less media attention, no action was carried out. In regards to the media attention, since it was further away in time from the actual event and other issues took precedence in the American mind, it got less coverage, illustrating how little Americans seemed to care then about gun violence and control.
There have been some indicators that this shooting may be different. The NRA and thus NRA backed and supported Republicans have supported a small piece of gun control. While small, it illustrates a potential permanent shift in public opinion that can lead to more gun control and compromise of the issue of issue. This shift can have large ramifications for a federal government that seems to have forgotten what help found it, compromise.
Diego Rayas says:

October 10, 2017 at 11:59 pm

I think that your thoughts about public opinion in this country are a very real representation of the isssues that public opinions can cause. It isn’t something that is new either, as it has been seen throughout history that whenever there is a major change people oppose the change and public opinion will drive the policy behind that opposition. One example of this in Virginia can be that of massive resistance. When schools were desegregated after Brown v. Board of Education many districts in Virginia did not want to integrate. As a result certain counties across the state began to close down its schools in opposition of the integration. While this was done by the school administrators and county level officials, it was very often supported by the general public of those counties. Everyone with similar beliefs was basically rallied by VA Senator Harry Byrd in order to begin trying to implement massive resistance on a state level, and it almost worked! Senator Byrd had plenty of support from all over the state and he became the public face for Virginia’s massive resistance movement. It wasn’t the public that eventually put an end to the resistance, but instead the federal government that had to come in and stop it themselves, similar to the situation with the Little Rock Nine. Even though the National Guard wasn’t called into Virginia, we were still not open to integration, and much of the opposition was raised by not just the governments, but by the people that those government were meant to represent as well. Even though we live in a country where the “people” rule, what happens when they may rule incorrectly?
Lauren Rothenberg says:

October 11, 2017 at 1:32 pm

Conceptually and ideally speaking, I agree with you that public opinion is essentially the main driving force behind any major change or decision in society. However, the observable reality indicates otherwise. Even though public opinion should be the main driving force behind any major change or decision in society, the current political climate evidences that it is not the main driving force behind any major change or decision in society. What we actually see in our democracy is the direct influence of public opinion concerning what issues are addressed. Although there is an influence on how these issues should be addressed, public opinion is not the end-all, be-all of political action or movement. It merely serves as a general foundation for such. This is largely in part due to the idea of popular opinion, which is arguably the largest guiding principle underlying our government system. Public opinion is a necessary tool for communicating and advocating shared sentiments and desires. Having said this, the majority rule will inevitably overturn the aggregate of minorities’ public opinion resulting in a potentially undesirable result for many. Additionally, this is based off the assumption that public opinion actually results in change, which seemingly more often than not is not the case. As you mention, public opinion regarding sensitive yet volatile issues such as gun control often flare up following major, and often tragic, events. For instance, even though the recent Las Vegas shooting was the largest of its kind, similar occurrences have transpired that have led to the same familiar uproar in public opinion that we are beginning to see again right now. However, time and again little change has been done to prevent this issue. Could that just mean that the majority is advocating for no change? In that case, public opinion is not the ultimate driving force for political change.

Comments are closed.