Civil Rights/Liberties
This is the key distinction between civil rights and civil liberties.
What is rights require obligations by the government and liberties establish freedoms from government? (Variations accepted)
This is the primary way in which we develop our party identification and political attitudes.
What is socialization (especially through parents)?
These are the three components of party, according to lecture and your textbook.
What are 1. party in the electorate 2. party in government 3. party as organization?
When political scientists say that "the fundamentals" are what really matters for winning an election, this is what they are referring to.
What are 1. the economy and 2. presidential approval
More often than not, voters use this heuristic when casting their ballot.
What is party identification/affiliation?
The case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1986) upheld this doctrine which was the foundation of race-based segregation.
What is "separate but equal"?
This method gives every member of a population an equal chance of being selected for a survey.
What is random sampling?
These are three primary functions of party as organization.
What are 1. work to elect candidates 2. organize fundraising 3. mobilize voters?
The media likely overhypes how much these two things matter on the presidential campaign trail.
What are 1. presidential debates and 2. vice presidential nominees?
This is the single biggest predictor of whether someone will turn out to vote.
What is their education level?
This clause is how whites were able to disenfranchise African American voters through literacy tests while not having to take these test themselves.
What is the grandfather clause?
If a poll oversamples a small subgroup this technique is used afterward to correct their influence on the overall results.
What is weighting?
This is the principle that suggests the United States will always be a two party system.
What is Duverger's Law?
When political scientists refer to the Median Voter Theorem in campaigning, this is what they are talking about.
What is the idea that a two-party system is designed to push candidates towards the middle/to be more moderate?
Many voters use this model of voting when evaluating incumbent performance at the ballot box.
What is retrospective voting?
This is the part of the U.S. Constitution that was the foundation/framework for incorporation.
What is the 14th Amendment (specifically the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses)?
This term describes survey responses that are unstable or made-up on the spot, indicating that respondents may not hold real opinions on an issue.
What are non-attitudes?
This is an important phenomenon describing why the political parties have polarized and sorted ideologically.
What is partisan realignment (particularly in the South over the race issue)?
According to lecture, these are some of the reasons why political campaigns may matter (name at least 2).
What are 1. setting the narrative, 2. highlighting mistakes/weaknesses, 3. persuading the undecided, 4. mobilizing voters (GOTV)?
We use this key term to describe the fact that many people still choose to vote despite the low probability of their vote being decisive combined with the high costs of voting.
What is "the paradox of voting"?
In this 1950 Supreme Court case, the justices ruled that a separate law school created for Black students in Texas was inherently unequal to the University of Texas Law School.
What is Sweatt v. Painter?
When certain groups are systematically less likely to respond to surveys, poll results can suffer from this type of bias.
What is nonresponse bias?
These Democratic Party reforms in the early 1970s expanded the use of primaries and caucuses, reducing the power of party elites in choosing presidential nominees.
What are the McGovern–Fraser reforms?
This 2010 Supreme Court decision held that corporations and unions have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money on independent political advertising.
What is Citizens United v. FEC?
This is the equation for the calculus of voting.
What is "V = pB - c + D"?