Voting, Polling, & the Media
This type of primary requires voters to register with a party in advance in order to participate.
What is a closed primary?
This structural feature of the Constitution, defended in Federalist 51, divides governmental authority among branches so no one branch becomes supreme.
What is separation of powers?
When the government spends more in a year than it collects in revenue, it runs this.
What is a budget deficit?
This model of voting explains that citizens choose candidates based on which one they believe will benefit them most personally.
What is rational-choice voting?
Federalist 51 argues that this branch is naturally the strongest in a republic.
What is the legislative branch?
The federal government uses fiscal policy primarily through these two mechanisms.
What are taxing and spending?
This statistical concept ensures that every member of a population has an equal chance of being selected for a survey.
What is random sampling?
This clause of the First Amendment was central to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.
What is the Free Speech Clause?
The Fed voted on Wednesday to reduce interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point. This is an example of...
Monetary Policy
This media role involves interpreting events and giving them meaning, often shaping how the public understands political developments.
What is framing?
Citizens United distinguished between direct contributions to candidates and these separate expenditures that cannot legally be coordinated with campaigns.
What are independent expenditures?
The President authorized the seizure of “a large tanker, very large,” off the coast of Venezuela yesterday. This is an example of Trump using this type of "power" of the executive branch?
Inherent
This term refers to the media’s power to influence which issues the public considers important by choosing what topics to cover.
What is agenda setting?
Before the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), this type of party donation—intended for “party-building activities”—was largely unregulated.
What is soft money?
Congress proposed the Trade Review Act of 2025 to assert this constitutional power over trade and tariffs whenever the executive branch attempts to impose trade restrictions unilaterally.
What is Congress’s power to regulate commerce?