American Government Study Guide(Exam #2)

The best of the Socialist Party has ever done in America was to capture 6 percent of the vote in the election of

1912.

Women were granted universal suffrage in

1920

Survey methodology did not become a powerful research tool until the

1950s

__ Percent of surveyed adults indicated that they learned about the 2008 political campaigns from comedy shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, or Saturday Night Live.

30 Percent

Historians estimate that __ percent of American s supported the Revolution in July 1776.

40 Percent

In 2008, direct remarks from the two major presidential candidates in network news program averaged about

9 Seconds.

Some research indicates that people who watch partisan news become

More extreme in their politics.

In Smith V. Allwright, the Supreme Court found _____________ is(are) unconstitutional.

Preventing blacks from voting in primary elections.

According to the text, _____ played a significant role in Mitt Romney's ability to virtually erase Obama's lead in polls before the November election.

The presidential debates.

The first media technology to make broadcast journalists into household names was

The radio

Which country was the first to provide for the general election of representatives through mass suffrage?

United States

Despite new technological options, and despite criticism that in its current form it polarizes politics in an unhealthy way, ___ of Americans listen to traditional AM/FM radio weekly.

90 Percent

In the 2000 election, the candidacy of Ralph Nader

resulted in a loss of support for the Democratic candidate, Al Gore.

during the 2011-2012 election cycle, non-party groups (Super PACs, etc.) spent over ___.

$1.2 Billion.

A January 2014 poll showed that __ percent of Americans knew that the Affordable Health Care Act prohibits companies from denying health insurance to people because of any illnesses they may have.

54 Percent

In a 2014 Gallup poll, ___ percent of Americans supported affording gay marriage the same legal status as traditional marriage.

54 Percent

Campaigns use polls to

All of these choices are true.

_________________ are group leaders who follow news in specific areas.

Alternative policy elites

Early TV network news programs focused their evening news programs on

An "anchorman".

Research suggests that "negative ads" appear to

Benefit incumbents more than challengers and increase voter turnout.

A national survey in January 2012 found that people were most likely to say they "learned something" about the presidential campaigns or candidates from

Cable news.

Beginning with the 2010 election, corporations were free to run ads directly advocating a candidate's election for the first time since 1907, when Congress first banned using general corporate funds in federal election campaigns. This occurred based on which 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision?

Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission.

According to the text, which of the following is not a characteristic of public opinion?

Citizens are typically unwilling to offer opinions on matters outside of their experience, even when asked by pollsters.

An ad that criticizes an opponent and advocates policies of the sponsoring candidate is an example of a(n) __________ ad.

Contrast

The ________ Party won most presidential elections from 1932, during the Great Depression, through the election of 1964, when the turbulent 1960s created the environment for a major political realignment.

Democratic Party

since 1952, democrats have generally been a majority of the electorate, but republicans have won more presidential elections, because according to the text, _______.

Democrats are most likely to "defect" on the basis of the candidates' attributes and the issues.

The purpose of the literacy tests that were used in the southern states after 1870 was to

Discourage African Americans from voting in primary elections.

A 2013 Supreme Court decision regarding the Voting Rights Act allowed numerous states to

Enforce new voter identification laws.

The _______ Amendment to the Constitution prohibits states from denying the right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Fifteenth.

Which of the following statements reflects the role of public opinion should play according to the majoritarian model of democracy?

Government should do what a majority of the public wants.

The framers guessed that the ______________ would reflect public opinion, especially on the crucial issues of taxes and government spending.

House of Representatives

Reaction to a film posted on YouTube made by an Egyptian-American that mocked the Muslim prophet Muhammad is an example of the influence of new media platforms; that they

Impact the types of stories that get picked up by the "mainstream media".

The internet was started

In 1969, with support from the U.S. Department of Defense.

In the text the authors assert that the majority of voters are ideologically more _____ than the voting records of members of Congress would indicate.

Moderate.

The amendment granting women's suffrage is the

Nineteenth Amendment

A voter who determines which candidate he or she will vote for very early in the campaign most likely has based that decision on

Party identification.

According to democratic theory, the most important factor in determining voter choice in an election should be

Past performance and proposed policies

The short-lived _______ Party nominated Robert La Follette of Wisconsin for the presidency in 1924, but carried only La Follette's home state and ceased to nominate candidates in 1925.

Progressive

___________ captured the presidency in 1928 and won five of the eleven southern states in the old Confederacy, signaling an electoral realignment that has seen Republican candidates for president do very well in the south.

Richard Nixon.

Congressman ___ was the 1988 Libertarian Party presidential candidate. he was elected to congress as a republican in 1996, where he served until 2013.

Ron Paul

________, candidate for president in 1992, ran as an independent and won 19 percent of the popular vote.

Ross Perot

If someone formed the "Second Amendment Party," a political party to run on a platform of removing regulations on gun ownership, that would be an example of a _________ party.

Single-issue

Because _____, the Supreme Court has struck down most of the Congressionally-mandated limits on campaign contributions.

Spending money on political campaigns is a form of speech.

Analysis of Super PAC ads during the 2012 Republican nomination shows that they

Spent over 70 percent of their money on negative ads attacking other candidates.

The SpeechNow.org v. FEC decision legalized

Super PACs

Entering the 2012 general election, Obama and Romney both focused on nine states that voted for Bush in 2004 but for Obama in 2008. Closely contested states like these are known as

Swing States and Battleground States.

The basic definition of public opinion is

The collective attitude of citizens on a given issue or question.

A critical event that helped end the Republican Party's domination of national politics in the 1920s was

The Great Depression

In February 2012, Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul raised the second-most amount of money($26 million) after Mitt Romney($56 million) chiefly by using

The internet.

The amount of information online is so vast that most people rely on _______________ to help them determine which news is real and important.

The mainstream media.

The framers of the Constitution left the issue of voter enfranchisement to

The states.

The goal of the statistical theory of sampling is

To reflect the views of the population with some predictable degree of accuracy.

The text defines Suffrage and Franchise as the right to

Vote

Studies of the party identification and ideological orientation of voters show that

Voters tend to identify with the party that most reflects their ideological orientation.

Compared with other nations in the world in granting suffrage to women, the United States.

Was among the first.

The People's Party(or Populist Party) could at least brag that it was the first third party since 1860 to

Win any electoral votes.

More and more, cable news seems analogous to

early partisan newspapers.

The first objective of campaign advertising is to

ensure that a candidate has a high level of name recognition among voters

One critique that pluralists make of the public as a whole is that

the public seldom demonstrates clear, consistent opinions on daily issues of government.