Public Opinion
“Those opinions held by private persons which governments find it prudent to heed.”
What is public opinion?
The process of targeting very specific groups of potential voters. For example, using databases that combine voter rolls with credit card purchase information or grocery store savings club records to identify potential supporters.
What is microtargeting?
Coalitions of people who seek to control the machinery of government by winning elections. Not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
What are political parties?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOnENVylxPI
This commercial is an example of the types interest groups often fund.
What is an issue awareness ad?
Type of journalism focused on reforms and exposing corruption.
Type of journalism focused on sensationalism to attract readers and increase circulation.
What is muckraking?
What is yellow journalism?
What is the rally around the flag effect?
The most important characteristic for predicting a person's vote (depending on whether they're this kind of voter).
(Two answers)
What is political party affiliation?
What are single-issue voters?
The theory that elections in political systems like the United States’ tend to favor the two major parties, making it very hard for a third party to win.
What is Duverger's Law?
A federally registered fund-raising group that pools money from individuals to give to political candidates and parties.
What are Political Action Committees (PACs)?
Agenda setting, priming, and framing.
What is the phenomenon that occurs when readers and watchers of news that relates to issues or topics are influenced by what the press covers in a very specific way—it influences what they think about, not what they think?
What is the phenomenon that occurs when readers and watchers of news that relates to the criteria with which we evaluate candidates or elected leaders are influenced by what the press covers in a very specific way—it influences what they think about, not what they think?
What is providing a context that affects the criteria citizens use to evaluate candidates, campaigns, and political issues?
A method of choosing participants/test subjects based on a subset of a statistical population in which each member of the subset has an equal probability of being chosen.
What is a random sample?
The 15th, 19th and 26th amendments eliminated these processes in government.
What are institutional barriers?
(How did each amendment do this?)
Groups of citizens who are more attentive to particular areas of public policy than average citizens because such groups have some special stake in the issues.
What are issue publics?
Moral Incentives and Selective Incentives
What are the personal satisfactions of active self-expression through contribution or other involvement to social causes?
What are private goods or benefits that induce rational actors to participate in a collective effort to provide a collective good?
Sending mail without payment of postage. (Very helpful for incumbents in campaigning).
What is franking privilege?
DAILY DOUBLE
(Margin of Error example)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVaOUf8pp28
This video shows a number of things:
"Vote"
"Takes 20 hours and costs $1000"
What is mobilization? What is conventional participation? What is franchise?
What are institutional barriers?
The two types of changes in election systems, either sharp changes in party ideology, issues, party leaders, etc., establishing a new normal or the gradual rearrangement of party coalitions, based more on demographic shifts than on shocks to the political system.
What are critical elections and secular realignments? (which is which?)
A stable, mutually beneficial political relationship among a congressional committee (or subcommittee), an administrative agency, and organized interests concerned with a particular policy domain.
What is an iron triangle?
Pack journalism
What is a method of news gathering in which news reporters all follow the same story in the same way because they read one another's copy for validation of their own?
The process by which citizens acquire their political beliefs and values and the people who influence them.
What is political socialization?
What are primary and secondary agents? (which are which)
Swing states, advertisements, payroll, insurance, merchandise and signs, travel, and rent.
What do candidates spend most of their money on?
Daily Double!
Define and explain the differences and similarities between Initiative, Referendum, and Recall.
initiative:An approach to direct democracy in which a proposal is placed on an election ballot when the requisite number of registered voters have signed petitions.
referendum:An approach to direct democracy in which a state legislature proposes a change to the state’s laws or constitution that all the voters subsequently vote on.
Recall: a procedure that allows citizens to remove and replace a public official before the end of a term of office.
Citizens United
What is the Supreme Court litigation that granted first amendment rights to corporations, essentially completely changing campaign finance donations for corporations?
The widespread suspicion among reporters that presidents will lie to the media when doing so serves their interest and they think they can get away with it.
What is the credibility gap?
(Examples of when Presidents have lied to media?)