American Government Exam 2

The best 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

Historians estimate that _____ percent of Americans supported the Revolution in July 1776.

40

in 2008, direct remarks from the two major presidential candidates on network news programs averaged about

9 seconds

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

Some research indicates that people who watch partisan news become

more extreme in their politics

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

In Smith v. Allwright, the Supreme Court found ________ is(are) unconstitutional.

preventing blacks from voting in primary elections

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

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

contrast

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

discourage African Americans from voting

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

was among the first

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.

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%

The amendment granting women's suffrage is the

Nineteenth Amendment

A 2013 supreme court decision regarding the Voting Rights Act allowed numerous states to

enforce new voter identification laws

The first objective of campaign advertising is to

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

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

fifteenth

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

radio

In the 2000 election, the candidacy of Ralph Nader

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

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.

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

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 goal of the statistical theory of sampling is

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

The Internet was started

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

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 Care Act prohibits companies from denying health insurance to people because of any illnesses they may have

54

In a 2004 Gallup Poll, ________ percent of Americans supported affording gay marriage the same legal status as traditional marriage.

54

Campaigns use polls to

All of these choices are true. (get feedback about the success or failure of various campaign tactics, discover voters' perceptions of candidates, devise adjusted strategies, discover voters' opinions about certain issues)

_______ are group leaders who follow news in specific areas.

Attentive policy elites

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

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

Which of the following statements reflects the 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

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 1968 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

The SpeechNow.org v. FEC decision legalized

Super PACs

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

The Great Depression

_______ percent of surveyed adults indicate that they learned about the 2008 political campaign from comedy shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, or Saturday Night Live

Thirty percent

Early TV network news programs focused their evening news programs on

an "anchorman"

Research suggests that "negative ads" appear to

benefit challengers more than incumbents

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

cable news

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 more likely to "defect" on the basis of candidates' attributes and the issues

More and more, cable news seems analogous to

early partisan newspapers.

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"

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

past performance and proposed policies.

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 basic definition of public opinion is

the collective attitudes of citizens on a given issue or questions

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

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

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

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

the states

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

win any electoral votes