POL 302 Voting and Public Opinion

3 hours 

This course centers around two questions key to democracy: how people form opinions about issues and why people vote the way they do. Topics include partisanship and ideology as ways to organize opinions, the roles of political knowledge, family, and demographics in the formation of opinions, and the relationship between individual opinions and public opinion. Further emphasis will be placed on the impact of these factors on voting and other forms of political participation.