Public Opinion, Organized Labor, and the Limits of New Deal Liberalism, 1936–1945

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler ◽  
Devin Caughey
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Opinion Polls

The seemingly wide opening for liberal domestic policy innovation by the U.S. federal government in the early-to-mid-1930s gave way to a much more limited agenda in the late 1930s and 1940s. The latter years saw the consolidation and gradual extension of several key programs (e.g., Social Security and Keynesian macroeconomic management), but also the frustration of liberal hopes for an expansive “cradle-to-grave” welfare state marked by strong national unions, national health insurance, and full employment policies. Drawing upon rarely used early public opinion polls, we explore the dynamics of public opinion regarding New Deal liberalism during this pivotal era. We argue that a broadly based reaction against labor unions created a difficult backdrop for liberal programmatic advances. We find that this anti-labor reaction was especially virulent in the South but divided even Northern Democrats, thus creating an effective wedge issue for Republicans and their Southern conservative allies. More generally, we find that the mass public favored most of the specific programs created by the New Deal, but was hardly clamoring for major expansions of the national government's role in the late 1930s and 1940s. These findings illuminate the role played by the South in constraining New Deal liberalism while also highlighting the tenuousness of the liberal majority in the North.

Public Opinion in South and Nation

2018 ◽  
pp. 35-66
Author(s):  
Devin Caughey
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Irt Model ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Right ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter examines the political attitudes of the Southern mass public in the wake of the Great Depression and the New Deal. Taking advantage of hundreds of public opinion polls conducted beginning in the mid-1930s, the chapter documents Southern whites' collective turn against many aspects of the New Deal as well as their persistent ideological diversity on economic issues. The chapter illustrates these developments with a focus on four policy areas: old-age pensions, minimum wages, union security agreements, and income taxation. It then summarizes these patterns using a dynamic group-level item response theory (IRT) model, which estimates the economic conservatism of demographic subpopulations in each state and year. Based on this and other evidence, the chapter argues that the South's turn to the right was driven partly by the increasingly urban and union-oriented character of New Deal liberalism, which alienated rural areas throughout the nation, and partly by white Southerners' growing sense of threat to their region's system of racial hierarchy.

scholarly journals Attitudinal and Behavioral Consequences of Published Opinion Polls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Moy ◽  
Eike Mark Rinke
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Policy Maker ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Local Newspaper ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls ◽  
Normative Role

It is a truism to speak of the key normative role that public opinion polls play in contemporary democratic societies. Theorists and practitioners have long extolled how polls inextricably link citizens to their elected officials. Indeed, public opinion polls not only offer citizens a mechanism with which to express their sentiment on key issues of the day but also provide policy makers with information about what their constituents might or might not desire. Citizens may be able to express their views on a particular issue through individual acts such as donating money to a cause or writing a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, but along with voting polls are one of the few opportunities that offer the mass public equal voice. Moreover, the role that polls play in the citizen–policy maker relationship hinges upon their dissemination by the mass media.

Public Opinion Polls on Japan

1950 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 101-103
Author(s):  
Arthur N. Feraru
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls

Growing Inequality and Public Awareness of Inequality in the States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Franko ◽  
Christopher Witko
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Perceptions Of Inequality ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls

Here the authors present the variation that exists in income inequality across the states, and variation in public awareness or concern about income inequality as measured by public opinion polls. Though politicians may decide to tackle income inequality even in the absence of public concern about inequality, the authors argue that government responses are more likely when and where there is a growing awareness of, and concern about, inequality, which is confirmed in the analyses in this book. To examine this question in subsequent chapters, a novel measure of public awareness of rising state inequality is developed. Using these estimates, this chapter shows that the growth in the public concern about inequality responds in part to objective increases in inequality, but also that state political conditions, particularly mass partisanship, shape perceptions of inequality.

Hated but still human: Metadehumanization leads to greater hostility than metaprejudice

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843022097903
Author(s):  
Alexander P. Landry ◽  
Elliott Ihm ◽  
Jonathan W. Schooler
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intergroup Conflict ◽  
Negative Bias ◽  
Intergroup Conflicts ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls

Metadehumanization, the perception that members of an outgroup dehumanize your group, has been found to exacerbate intergroup conflict by inspiring reciprocal dehumanization of the offending outgroup. Moreover, metadehumanization is distinct from metaprejudice (i.e., the perception that an outgroup hates your group). Given the mutual animosity reported in public opinion polls toward the other side, we believed US–Russia relations would be a worthwhile context in which to extend this model. Therefore, we measured Americans’ levels of metadehumanization and metaprejudice of Russians to determine the association between these perceptions and their hostility toward Russians (Study 1). In this novel intergroup conflict, metadehumanization remained a consequential predictor of outgroup hostility over and above metaprejudice, suggesting that it can exacerbate a broader range of intergroup conflicts than those heretofore examined. Given these findings, we then sought to experimentally differentiate between metadehumanization and metaprejudice. In Study 2, we manipulated both metadehumanization and metaprejudice to (a) determine whether one or both cause greater outgroup hostility and (b) elucidate the underlying mechanisms by which they may produce this effect. Whereas metadehumanization produced greater hostility, metaprejudice did not. Moreover, although both metaperceptions inspired greater prejudice, only metadehumanization led to greater dehumanization. We conclude that metadehumanization may be a particularly potent fomenter of hostility because it inspires reciprocal dehumanization over and above more general negative bias.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Eric Lagenbacher
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Election Outcome ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
German Politics ◽  
Left Party ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls

Although it has not been that long since the articles of the previous special issue devoted to the 2017 Bundestag election and its aftermath have been published, the political situation in Germany appears to have stabilized. After almost six months without a new government, German politics has sunk back into a kind of late-Merkel era normality. Public opinion polls continue to show that the CDU/CSU is slightly above its election outcome, the SPD is still down in the 17–18 percent range, the FDP has lost about 2 percent of its support, while the AfD, Greens and Left Party are up 1–2 percent.

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