OPINION POLLS, INFORMATION EFFECTS, AND POLITICAL EQUALITY - EXPLORING IDEOLOGICAL BIASES IN COLLECTIVE OPINION

Much of the recent literature about political knowledge and public opi nion concludes that the low information levels of the American public are benign to the workings of democracy. However, this study finds tha t the information resources possessed by rival publics are critical de terminants of how loudly their preferences are voiced in policy-orient ed survey questions. Ill-informed respondents tend to select ''no opin ion'' more frequently and, when they provide responses, answer more ra ndomly than the well informed. Because of this, numerically small publ ics who have large proportions of well-informed constituents can signi ficantly influence the frequency marginals of information-dependent qu estions. As informed persons also tend to be affluent, respondents fro m higher income groups can act as ''informed minorities'' that cause o pinion marginals to overstate the magnitude of economically conservati ve opinion in a population.