Public Opinion
This measures public opinion by asking a sample of the population the same questions.
What is a survey?
The results of these elections decide which candidate will represent its political party in the general election.
What are primary (or caucus) elections?
This government agency is responsible for requiring broadcast and radio stations to apply for licenses to follow rules on advertising, provide a public forum for discussion, and serving local and minority communities. They also enforce ownership limits to avoid monopolies.
What is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)?
An example of this is when southern Democrats switched their support to the Republican Party.
What is realignment?
This is a person who believes many groups healthily compete for access to decision-makers and claim political power rests in the hands of groups of people.
What is a pluralist?
This polling technique requires that each individual in a population has an equal probability of being selected for a public opinion poll.
What is random sampling?
In these primaries, voters do not need to be registered with the party in order to participate.
What are open primaries?
This occurs when regular people publish photos and write stories about news events.
What is citizen journalism?
This is the redrawing of electoral maps.
What is redistricting?
Mobilizing public opinion on a policy issue is an example of this type of interest group strategy.
What is outside game?
This is a question worded in a survey/poll that leads a respondent to give a desired answer.
What is a Leading Question?
This is set by the total of each state's number of congressional representatives and two senate seats.
What is the state Electoral College vote?
This theory about the effects of media on public opinion says that the media has so much power that it can "inject" messages into the public's opinion.
What is the Hypodermic model?
The tripartite view of parties includes parties having these roles.
What is party in the electorate, party in government, and party as an organization?
Most interest organizations engage in this activity to achieve their objectives of influencing policy.
What is lobbying?
This occurs when survey respondents tell pollsters what they think is the appropriate response rather than their true answer.
What is social desirability bias?
This is the government agency requires candidates to disclose where their money was coming from and where they were spending it, limited individual contributions, and provided for public financing of presidential campaigns.
What is the Federal Election Commission (FEC)?
What is digital?
According to this, electoral systems with single-member districts and plurality voting will result in two competitive parties.
What is Duverger's Law?
This is when people decide not to act because the perceived benefit is insufficient to justify the costs associated with engaging in the action. An example of this issue would be individuals receiving benefits without helping to bear the cost.
What are collective action problems?
A number that states how far the poll results may be from the actual preferences of the total population of citizens, like an approval rating of 42% +/- 3%.
What is a margin of error?
During presidential elections, voters must frequently use this informational shortcut when deciding who to vote for.
What is Party Affiliation?
This 1949 policy, now defunct, required holders of broadcast licenses to cover controversial issues in a balanced manner.
What is the Fairness Doctrine?
An example of this phenomenon is that members of congress increasingly vote along party lines.
What is polarization?
This is the group that interest groups usually focus their lobbying efforts on.
What are the Legislators who agree with them?