Public Opinion
Opinions and predispositions are two types of this.
What is an attitude?
In the equation Utility = p*B - C it's the C.
What is Cost of voting?
This type of organization can raise or spend unlimited money but can't work with or donate directly to candidates.
What is a Super PAC?
The government provides these to private businesses to partially cover costs and make things less expensive for consumers.
What are Subsidies?
Political Scientists use this term to describe a coherent, organized set of principles on which beliefs are based.
What is an Ideology?
How people rank outcomes. People tell you these when responding to a "would you rather" question.
What are preferences?
This condition in the experiment by Gerber, Green, and Larimer yielded the greatest effect on voter turnout.
What is the Neighbors condition?
This agency has regulated campaign contributions since 1974.
What is the Federal Election Commission (FEC)?
A situation in a shared-resource system where individual users act independently in their own self-interest to deplete a common good or resource.
(Bonus points if your team can explain how this situation can be avoided or ameliorated)
What is the Tragedy of the Commons?
Someone feels this when they believe that what happens to other members of their group might also happen to them.
What is Linked Fate?
According to "The Democratic Deficit in the States" by Lax and Phillips, this term describes the likelihood of policy adoption as public support for it increases, unlike their other term that describes when policy actually matches majority opinion.
What is responsiveness (as opposed to congruence)?
Discrimination and structural racism can have these two opposite effects on racial and ethnic minority voting behavior.
What are Mobilization and Demobilization?
This conundrum describes the perplexing phenomenon of the relatively small amount of money in American politics.
What is Tullock's puzzle?
We almost fell off this at the end of 2012 when a gridlocked congress had trouble reaching a deal to stop massive spending cuts.
What is the Fiscal Cliff?
On a Regression Table, this symbol indicates statistical significance.
What is a star? (*)
Survey respondents tend to select "agree" in an agree-disagree format, but are more deliberate in a forced-choice format because of this bias.
What is Acquiescence Bias?
These may or may not have stars next to them in a regression results table depending on whether they are statistically significant.
What are Coefficients?
These are the two competing theories on how candidates pick their policy platforms. (Bonus points for explaining the theories)
What are the Median Voter Theorem and Catering to the Extremes?
Reforming these types of programs is often too politically costly for political parties to make the first move.
What are Entitlement Reforms? (e.g. Social Security, Medicare)
Anthony Downs uses this term to describe why it is not worthwhile to voters to become deeply informed on every political issue?
What is Rational Ignorance?
See A. Downs, "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, Apr. 1957
"Should the government allow hate speech?" "Should the government forbid hate speech?"
The difference in question wording often leads to this in the mind of a survey participant.
What is Priming?
(Bonus 100 points to the team that can explain the difference between Priming and Framing)
Surprisingly, English language messages were usually more effective than Spanish language messages at increasing the voter turnout of Spanish speakers in the experiment conducted by these authors.
Bonus 100 for explaining the exceptions
Who are Abrajano and Panagopoulos?
This problem explains why candidates run ads, despite their small effect on election outcomes. (Bonus points for explaining this)
What is the "Arms Race" Problem
Groups paying the costs of a policy have an ability and strong motivation to organize because of these two factors.
What are Concentrated Costs and Diffuse Benefits?
This type of money is given directly to candidates and parties to support particular candidates. The other type is given to organizations to support voter mobilization and education.
What is Hard Money? (As opposed to Soft Money)