Heterodox
Today, we have empirics, and what we know can best be found in John Zaller’s The Nature & Origins of Mass Opinion. In brief, Zaller summarizes the academic literature on public opinion: There is a high variance in political awareness around a very low mean. Public opinion is extremely unstable on matters large and small. Wildly different findings can result from the same survey sample by simply ordering or framing questions differently. There are numerous examples of dramatic shifts in...
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