Public Opinion
This refers to the political party a person usually supports or feels attached to.
What is partisanship?
This group of 538 people formally selects the president and vice president.
What is the Electoral College?
This is a rapidly growing source of political news, especially among younger generations.
What is social media?
This is the main goal of political parties.
What is winning elections?
This is how interest groups advocate for their preferred policy outcomes.
What is lobbying?
With this cognitive shortcut, people use trusted sources to develop positions on political issues without much previous knowledge of the issue
What is a heuristic?
This level of government sets most voter registration and election policy.
What are state governments?
This is the process by which mass media influences public perception and political priorities by deciding which issues to highlight and how much attention to give them.
What is Agenda Setting?
Political parties help politicians solve these.
What are collective action problems?
This type of lobbying happens at the policymaking location, often with professional lobbyists.
What is inside lobbying?
This model explains how political messages shape citizens’ opinions and lead to opinion instability.
What is Zaller's Receive–Accept–Sample (RAS) model?
In most states, candidates run for a single seat representing a geographic area, and the candidate with the plurality of votes wins. This is the name of this type of election.
What are First-Past-The-Post Single-Member District elections?
Given its role in holding the government accountable, the press is sometimes called this.
What is the Fourth Branch or the Fourth Estate?
The three faces of political parties are Parties-in-the-Electorate, Parties-in-Government, and this.
What are the Parties-in-Organization?
For outside lobbying to be effective, lawmakers must perceive the efforts of those pressuring the government to be this.
What is genuine/sincere?
This occurs when the subset of people who respond to a poll differs from the general public or target population.
What is non-response bias?
This formula determines how many electoral votes a state has. Critics often say it overrepresents small states.
What is the # of House of Representatives seats + # of Senators (2)?
This is the process by which mass media influences public perception and political priorities by deciding which issues to highlight and how much attention to give them.
What is agenda setting?
This partisan affiliation is becoming more common, especially among Millennials and Gen Z.
What is independent/unaffiliated?
What is the Access Theory?
This term describes the 10% of the public who perceive politics as very important to their lives, spend a lot of time paying attention to politics, and frequently express their political views to others.
What is deeply involved?
This is what the D term in the rational choice model of turnout (V = p*B – C + D) represents. It strongly influences whether people vote.
What are the social/psychological benefits of voting?
To examine the effects of partisan media, Broockman and Kalla paid viewers of this news organization to switch to CNN in their 2025 study.
What is Fox News?
This law shows how the structure of our elections and political districts incentivizes a two-party system.
What is Duverger's Law?
Limited evidence supports this theory stating that campaign donations buy politicians' votes. However, it may help explain certain instances of microlegislation.
What is the Exchange Theory?
This effect is a form of social desirability bias in polling responses where white voters will overstate their support of African American candidates in order not to seem prejudiced.
What is the Bradley Effect?
These datasets show who is registered to vote and whether they voted. They are often examined for potential cases of voter fraud.
What are voter files?
In Dan Hopkins' piece "All Politics Is National Because All Media Is National," he argues that this is decreasing engagement and participation in state and local politics.
What is the nationalization of the media?
Party leaders say that policy views and experience matter the most when deciding whether to recruit someone to run for office. However, the research shows that these two other factors matter as well.
What are race and gender?
Most commonly, interest groups and lobbyists use their access to policymakers to provide them with this.
What is information?