ABSTRACT
Citizens have different levels of interest in politics. As shown here, the general level of knowledge in politics is often shockingly low. Yet others voluntarily choose to be involved in politics as a spectator or activist. The chapter discusses some of the reasons why people choose to be politically active or not. When polled on policy matters, people are surprisingly inconsistent over time in their answers. Patterns of unstable response are not necessarily indicative of real changes of opinion. The possible explanations are discussed. One fact about public opinion that can surprise is that peoples’ policy preferences tend not to be highly “constrained,” meaning that voters do not regularly line up as strict liberals or conservatives but rather somewhere in between. This is changing, however, with today’s partisan polarization. The chapter shows how partisanship tends to shape political views and vice versa. Nowadays, informed Democrats and informed Republicans are quite ideologically distinct from each other. The chapter concludes with a discussion of current speculation about this growing polarization.
