Compare and contrast how voters policy preferences are presented and understood in Zaller (The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion) and Stimson (Tides of Consent). Can the two viewpoints be reconciled? Why or why not?
Citizens vary in their level of attentiveness to politics and their exposure to political information and arguments
Citizens reactions to political arguments are mediated by their level of political knowledge
Citizens typically do not possess fixed attitudes, but rather construct opinion statements based on salient considerations
Every opinion is a marriage of information and predispositions
Citizens are dependent on elite-level discourse for political information
Predispositions mediate responses to elite information, but predispositions themselves are not influenced by elites
Stimson
Aggregation gain – large numbers of uninformed people balance each other out when voting
Few people that are informed, tip the tide
Opinion leadership – two step flow theory, social networks, heuristics & cues
Thermostatic model: public adjusts preferences for spending downward when appropriations are upward, & vice versa
Issue evolution
Two party system: collapses multiple controversies into a
single dimension
Cross-cutting: issues that split party coalitions
Mutations/natural selection: critical moments that force
parties to take sides
Ideological constraints
