The political climate is the aggregate mood and opinions of a political society at a particular time. It is generally used to describe when the state of mood and opinion is changing or unstable. The phrase has origins from both

ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...

and medieval-era

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. While the concept of a political

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

has been used historically to describe both

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

and public reactions to political actions in various forms, the naming of the concept by the addition of the modifier "political" to the base "climate" has been fairly recent.

Public opinion Public opinion is the collective opinion on a specific topic or voting intention relevant to a society. It is the people's views on matters affecting them. Etymology The term "public opinion" was derived from the French ', which was first use ...

is also widely used incorrectly as a synonym for political climate. As for judging what the climate is at any given time, there is no way to know an entire country's views on certain subjects. So, polls are used to estimate what the political climate "feels" like on a regular basis.

Etymology

Climate

According to the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...

, the base climate comes from the Middle French ''climat'', which was first used to describe a region's prevailing weather conditions around 1314. One of the first recorded uses of climate as a description of prevailing political attitudes was in The Vanity of Dogmatizing by

Joseph Glanvill Joseph Glanvill (1636 – 4 November 1680) was an English writer, philosopher, and clergyman. Not himself a scientist, he has been called "the most skillful apologist of the virtuosi", or in other words the leading propagandist for the approa ...

in 1661 where he mentions "divers Climates of Opinions".

Political

The modifier (''politic'' with the ''–al'' suffix) comes originally from the ancient Greek noun ''polis'' which referred to both a Greek city state, and the ideal state or government. Over time, this evolved through the Latin noun ''politicus'' which is defined as the civil government, to the Middle French adjective ''politique'' which is the state of government, or relating to government.

Usage

Historical example

From 431 B.C.E to 404 B.C.E., ancient Greece was torn apart by the Peloponnesian War between

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

and

Sparta Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referre ...

. The war concluded with an Athenian defeat and several years of oppression by pro-Spartan rulers. By 399 B.C.E, Athens had returned to self-rule through revolution. At this time, Athens was undergoing social turmoil due to the apparent failure of democracy as an effective form of government, which created a public backlash against anything anti-democratic. Socrates—the self-described "gadfly" of Athens because of his practice of ''elenchos'' (critical interrogation)—was seen by many as anti-democratic and thus a traitor to Athens due to his associations with Critias and Alcibiades (the former a Spartan supported tyrant, the latter a deserter to Sparta) and his frequent praises of the Spartan and Creten governments because of their similarity to many of his philosophical opinions on government. The prevailing political climate of distrusting anything remotely anti-Athens or anti-democracy coupled with attacks from Socrates's personal enemies led to the philosopher's execution by poison in 399 B.C.E.

Public opinion

The phrase originates from the French term ''opinion publique'', which was first attributed to Montaigne, the father of modern

Skepticism Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...

and a major figure of the

French Renaissance The French Renaissance was the cultural and artistic movement in France between the 15th and early 17th centuries. The period is associated with the pan-European Renaissance, a word first used by the French historian Jules Michelet to define th ...

, around 1588 C.E. It is generally used to describe the overall opinion of the public body about a certain issue. The phrase is commonly used interchangeably with political climate but the two actually refer to separate concepts.

is the aggregate logical thoughts that the public thinks and expresses about an issue (which does not have to be political in nature), while political climate is what the public's emotional reaction to those logical thoughts are. Depending on the nature of the thoughts (if they are considered controversial or extreme), the emotional reaction can range from nothing to a highly violent state. Accordingly, controversial issues in the public eye are usually accompanied by or can even produce a polarizing political climate. For example, the introduction, passing, and court fight over

Proposition 8 Proposition 8, known informally as Prop 8, was a California ballot proposition and a state constitutional amendment intended to ban same-sex marriage; it passed in the November 2008 California state elections and was later overturned in cou ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

brought a controversial issue into the public sphere, which resulted in such a drastic change in the political climate of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

as to produce many protests throughout the nation, some of them violent.

Opinion polls

opinion poll An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinion ...

is a survey of public opinion from a particular group of people or sample. For determining the political climate, this usually would be a cross-section of the population in question. Opinion polls conduct series of questions and then extrapolate the average opinion of the sample according to their answers. However, opinion polls generally have appreciative margins of error because of the inability to survey the entire population and the improbability of surveying a perfectly random cross-section of the population. For example, the

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

estimated in 2006 that the average margin of error is about 3-5% in opinion polls because of a wide variety of potential inaccuracies such as

response bias Response bias is a general term for a wide range of tendencies for participants to respond inaccurately or falsely to questions. These biases are prevalent in research involving participant self-report, such as structured interviews or surveys. ...

and selection bias. Opinion polls are also known to be entirely incorrect when predicting the outcome of certain events. The best-known example of this is the 1948 US presidential election, in which the prediction was that Thomas Dewey would easily defeat

Harry Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

. Major polling organizations, including Gallup and Roper, indicated a landslide victory for Dewey when, in fact, Truman was the victor in a close election and kept the presidency. 2016 saw the validity of opinion polls enter the debate once more, as polls in both the UK "

Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC ...

" referendum and the

US presidential election The election of the president and the vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not dire ...

were ultimately shown to be largely incorrect. Polls widely predicted a win for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, while instead Republican candidate Donald J. Trump won the Electoral College and, therefore, the presidency.