IntroductionAs students, scholars, and the general public gain a better understanding of polls, they will have a greater appreciation of the service polls can perform in a democracy. In my opinion, modern polls are the chief hope of lifting government to a higher level, by showing that the public supports reforms that will make this possible, by providing a modus operandi for testing new ideasâ¦.Polls can help make government more efficient and responsive; they can improve the quality of candidates for public office; they can make this a truer democracy.
-George GallupPurposeThis paper will entertain a brief discussion of the effects and influences on voter choice by analyzing the effects of public opinion, exit polling, conducted by the major news networks. Moreover, this discussion will encompass concepts such as the "band wagon effect", "underdog effect" as well as elevated and declining voter turnout, as well as vote choice due to the escalating media coverage of pre and post elections.
Official Portrait of President Ronald Reagan
Alexis de Tocqueville, French political thinker an...
Photogravure of Charles Alexis Henri Clérel de To...The Media influenceDavid H. Weaver discusses how the American media has intensified since the early days of propagandizing WWI and the advent of the television as well as other mediums such as Radio and the internet. Weaver believes the world of academics has awakened to the fact that the media plays a larger role in the shaping of public opinion than what was once thought. "Scholarly research and thinking about media effects in the past fifty years or so have changed from a view of rather minimal influences to a more recent view of fairly powerful, but not unlimited, media effects." (Weaver 1996, 35) I would tend to believe that Weaver has underestimated the true power of the media. I believe the Media is the most influential influence in terms of voter choice and public opinion. For example, I...