Political Awareness, Elite Opinion Leadership, and the Mass Survey Response

Political awareness affects virtually every aspect of citizens' political attitudes and voting behavior. Among its effects are greater attitude stability, greater ideological consistency, and greater support for a nation's “mainstream” values. Yet there exists no comprehensive explanation of why political awareness has the pervasive effects that it has. Nor is there agreement on how the concept of political awareness should be conceptualized and measured. This article addresses both concerns. First, it draws on ideas from voting, belief-system, and other studies to develop a general theory of the effects of awareness. This account centers on how citizens use cues and other information from political elites to translate their general value orientations into support for particular polices. Second, the article argues that, on both theoretical and empirical grounds, political awareness is best measured by simple tests of factual information about politics.