Questions from Readings 1
Caplan’s book begins with what he calls the “Paradox of Democracy,” referring to this puzzling fact about democratic policy outcomes.
What is that democracies often adopt policies harmful to most citizens?
The U.S. election system is described as this type of structure — decentralized and locally administered.
What is federalism?
This term, first used by President Richard Nixon in 1969, described Americans who opposed protests against the Vietnam War and quietly supported his policies.
What is the “silent majority”?
V. O. Key famously argued that voters aren’t fools; they judge government by looking backward at performance. This is known as what kind of voting?
What is retrospective voting?
The next U.S. presidential election will be held in this year.
What is 2028?
Abramowitz describes this 1970s–1980s period as one of weakened party loyalty and ticket-splitting.
What is dealignment?
This 1993 law, nicknamed the “Motor Voter Act,” aimed to expand access to registration.
What is the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA)?
According to Caplan, voters are not merely uninformed — they are this, systematically holding false but comforting beliefs about policy.
What is irrational?
Reforms like the direct primary and initiative process reflected this populist belief that “the cure for democracy’s ills is more democracy.”
What is the folk theory of democracy?
This Supreme Court case (2010) allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited money on independent political advertising.
What is Citizens United v. FEC?
By the late 1980s, this group had shifted from overwhelmingly Democratic to predominantly Republican, marking a key regional realignment.
Who are white southern voters?
Passed after the 2000 election controversy, this 2002 law modernized voting equipment and created the Election Assistance Commission.
What is the Help America Vote Act (HAVA)?
Caplan argues that democracy fails not because it ignores voters’ preferences, but because it does exactly this.
What is democracy fails because it does what voters want?
This 1992 independent presidential candidate won nearly 19 percent of the national popular vote — the highest for a non-major-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.
Who is Ross Perot?
In 2020, this state flipped from Republican to Democratic in the presidential race, largely due to suburban and Black-voter turnout.
What is Georgia?
This 1994 event, led by Newt Gingrich, marked the full emergence of a new partisan alignment.
What is the Republican Revolution?
This Georgia Secretary of State became nationally known in 2020 for resisting partisan pressure to overturn results.
Who is Brad Raffensperger?
According to The Loud Minority, protests that align around shared ideological beliefs — like liberal or conservative — help voters perceive parties as clearly representing this.
What is consistent ideological identity or issue ownership?
This 1965 law outlawed literacy tests and established federal oversight of elections in states with histories of discrimination.
What is the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
This type of advertising, often focused on attacking opponents rather than promoting a candidate’s policies, has become a staple of modern campaigns.
What are negative ads (or attack ads)?
Abramowitz argues that polarization today stems less from elites and more from these underlying societal divisions.
What are racial, cultural, and religious divides?
The Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder (2013) decision led to an increase in these, disproportionately affecting minority voters.
What are polling place closures?
Caplan identifies four recurring public misconceptions — or “biases” — that distort democratic policymaking: antimarket bias, antiforeign bias, make-work bias, and this one, which overestimates the fragility of the economy.
What is pessimistic bias?
In the 2026 election cycle, multiple states added this voting reform option — allowing voters to rank candidates by preference — thereby eliminating separate runoff elections.
What is ranked-choice voting?
In 2025, these two U.S. states became focal points of redistricting conflict: one proposing to override its own independent commission (via Proposition 50) and the other seeing legislators return to attempt map changes.
What are California and Texas?
Abramowitz shows that, beginning in the 1990s, American voters became less likely to switch parties and more likely to vote straight tickets. This nationalization of politics, where local elections increasingly reflect presidential partisanship, is driven by the growing alignment between these two factors.
What are party identification and ideological consistency?
(Alternate acceptable phrasing: “What is the nationalization of congressional elections through ideological and partisan alignment?”)
The 2000 presidential election exposed major flaws in U.S. election administration, from ballot design to recount procedures. The controversy in this state highlighted how decentralized election systems can undermine public trust in close contests.
What is Florida?
In Gillion’s framework, protests become most electorally powerful when they do this — bridging the gap between street activism and formal political institutions like campaigns or parties.
What is institutionalization or integration into formal politics?
In 1948, this newspaper famously printed the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman,” illustrating the dangers of premature reporting and polling error.
What is the Chicago Daily Tribune?
As part of ongoing election reforms, this western state introduced “ballot curing by text,” allowing voters to fix signature issues through mobile verification.
What is Colorado?