AP GOV Chapter 6 questions

In public opinion polling, a sample as small as about ________ people can faithfully represent the "universe" of Americans.

1,500

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately what percentage of the nation's population is constituted by immigrants

12 percent

African Americans comprise what percentage of the American population, approximately?

13 percent

Hispanics comprise approximately what percentage of the American population?

15 percent

Hispanics account for approximately ____ percent of the U.S. population, African Americans ____ percent, and Asian Americans _____ percent.

15, 13, 5

In 1960, there were ________ workers per retiree; today there are ____ workers per retiree.

5.7; 3

The fastest growing age group in the United States is defined by the ages

65+.

Approximately what percentage of non-Hispanic whites lives below the poverty line?

9 percent

Which of the following statements about Americans' political participation is FALSE?

Across all levels of income and education, whites are more likely to participate than are blacks.

Which of the following statements about political socialization and age is TRUE?

Aging increases political participation as well as the strength of party attachment.

When it comes to questions about the scope of government,

All of the above are true.

Which of the following statements about political socialization is FALSE?

As people become more socialized with age, their political orientations grow weaker

Which of the following statements is FALSE when it comes to ideology and the scope of government?

Central to the ideology of the Democratic Party is the belief that the scope of American government has become too wide.

A relatively small proportion of people chosen in a survey to be representative of the whole is called the population.

FALSE

As of the 2000 census, a majority of Americans were either African American, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American, meaning that the United States has become a "minority majority" nation.

FALSE

As people become more socialized with age, their political orientations grow weaker and more subject to change.

FALSE

Demography is the study of public opinion.

FALSE

Federal law permits up to 3.5 million immigrants to be legally admitted to the U.S. each year.

FALSE

Groups with political clout tend to be more liberal than groups that lack access to political power.

FALSE

In the United States, a census is taken every five years.

FALSE

Most of our knowledge and opinions about politics is learned through formal, in-class learning.

FALSE

Public support for gays and lesbians among conservatives and liberals suggests that we are experiencing a political culture war.

FALSE

Ronald Reagan famously argued that "government is the solution to our problem."

FALSE

The "new parent" as it is known to scholars of political socialization is the college or university.

FALSE

The "paradox of mass politics" is that Americans fail to remember what they see on TV.

FALSE

The U.S. Census is conducted every 20 years

FALSE

The larger the sample, the larger the sampling error.

FALSE

The majority of Americans are more likely to vote than to participate in other forms of political participation.

FALSE

The study of public opinion is the science of population changes.

FALSE

Which of the following statements about immigration in the U.S. is TRUE?

Federal law permits up to 1 million new immigrants to be legally admitted to the U.S. every year.

Scientific public opinion polling first began in 1932 by

George Gallup.

Which of these groups tends to be the most conservative?

Groups with political clout

The most recent wave of immigration since World War II has consisted primarily of

Hispanics and Asians.

The largest racial/ethnic minority group in the United States is

Hispanics.

Which of the following demographic groups in the most liberal group in America?

Jews

Who said America "is not merely a nation but a nation of nations"?

John F. Kennedy

Which of the following statements about the differences between liberals and conservatives is FALSE?

Liberals are more likely to favor military intervention around the globe; conservatives are less willing to commit troops to action.

Which of the following is TRUE in regard to the voting habits of African Americans and Hispanic Americans?

Members of these groups are more likely to vote than whites of the same income level.

Which of the following statements regarding religion and ideology is FALSE?

Most Jews tend to be more conservative than liberal.

The authors of The American Voter would agree with each of the following statements EXCEPT the following:

People who think in ideological terms are most likely to switch parties from one election to the next.

Which of the following is true of income and political participation

People with higher incomes are more likely to donate money to campaigns, to contact politicians, to attend public meetings, and to sign petitions than individuals at lower income levels.

________ is the distribution of the population's beliefs about politics and policy issues.

Public opinion

Which of the following statements about public opinion polling is FALSE?

Sample sizes are getting smaller, not larger.

The ________ Act required that as of 1987, employers document the citizenship or legal immigrant status of their employees or face substantial criminal penalties for failing to do so.

Simpson-Mazzoli

Which of the following is NOT supported by empirical data on attitudes toward gays and lesbians?

Support for gays and lesbians is reflective of a political culture war in which liberals and conservatives are completely opposed to one another.

A "minority majority" refers to a situation, likely to begin in the mid-twenty-first century, in which non-Hispanic whites will represent a minority of the U.S. population, and minority groups, together, will represent a majority.

TRUE

A coherent set of beliefs about politics, policy, and government is called a political ideology.

TRUE

A sample refers to a small proportion of people chosen to represent a whole population

TRUE

Almost half of most Americans have no opinion on the scope of government, according to survey data from 2000.

TRUE

Although voter turnout has declined recently, other forms of participation such as contributing money and contacting officials have actually increased.

TRUE

Americans tend to oppose the idea of big government but favor it in practice.

TRUE

Americans who have higher socioeconomic status are more likely to participate in politics.

TRUE

Citizens over 65 comprise the fastest growing age group in the United States.

TRUE

Decades of survey data show that more Americans choose the ideological label of conservative over liberal.

TRUE

Exit polls are used in an attempt to predict electoral winners with speed and precision.

TRUE

In 2005, researchers reported in the American Political Science Review that they have evidence that suggests a genetic link in determining political attitudes.

TRUE

Liberals, in general, believe we should spend less on military spending.

TRUE

Public support for gays and lesbians has been increasing among all ideological groups over the last couple of decades.

TRUE

The 2000 census found that for the first time, Hispanics outnumbered African Americans as the largest minority population in the U.S.

TRUE

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that by the middle of the twenty-first century, whites will comprise less than half of the majority of the U.S. population.

TRUE

The distribution of the population's beliefs about politics and policy issues is called public opinion.

TRUE

The number of college degrees that Asian Americans hold is twice that of the national average.

TRUE

The process of relocating seats in the House of Representatives every 10 years on the basis of the census is called reapportionment.

TRUE

The process through which young persons acquire political orientations as they grow up, based on inputs from parents, teachers, the media, and friends, is known as political socialization.

TRUE

Which of the following statements about processes of political socialization is TRUE?

The older children get, the more television displaces parents as the chief source of information.

Which of the following statements about Americans' political ideology is FALSE?

The younger the individual, the more likely that person is to be conservative.

Which of the following seems to confirm Morris Fiorina's argument about the extent to which Americans are or are not involved in a cultural war?

There is a growing acceptance of homosexuals among liberals, moderates, and conservatives

Which of the following is TRUE about most liberals in American politics?

They believe we should guard carefully the rights of defendants in criminal cases.

The most valuable method for understanding demographic changes in America is the

U.S. census

Which of the following differences is an example of the patterns referred to as the gender gap?

Women are more likely than men to support democratic candidates.

A political ideology is

a coherent set of values and beliefs about public policy.

Conservatives would tend to support each of the following EXCEPT

affirmative action.

Public opinion polls are only estimates because

all surveys have a sampling error.

The procedure for conducting ____________ includes randomly selected voting places around the country and asking every tenth person how they voted.

an exit poll

Voters who support a political candidate merely because they see others doing so is called the _____ effect.

bandwagon

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is a classic defense of

civil disobedience.

Random sampling in public opinion polling operates on the principle that

everyone should have an equal probability of being selected.

According to the classic study, The American Voter, done in the 1950s, most Americans fell into the category of

group benefits voters.

Sampling error describes

how close a sample estimate is to the real population value.

Concerns about reliance of pollsters on telephone surveys have recently been caused by

increased use of cell phones.

Whereas liberals tend to favor ____________, conservatives tend to favor ___________.

less military spending; more military spending

The _________ refers to the emergence of a non-Caucasian majority, as compared with a white, generally Anglo-Saxon, majority.

minority majority

According to the categories used in the classic study The American Voter, those who voted for a party out of routine or judged candidates strictly by their personalities were classified as

no-issue-content voters.

If the exact same methods are used to update the analysis of The American Voter study, one finds

only some increase in the percentage of ideologues in 2000 compared to 1956.

The process through which an individual acquires his or her particular political orientations, including his or her knowledge, feelings, and evaluations regarding his or her political world, is known as

political socialization.

In their research on politicians' use of public opinion polling, Jacobs and Shapiro found that

politicians track public opinion to help them craft public presentations and win public support for their parties.

The key to the accuracy of public opinion polls is

random sampling.

The technique used by pollsters to place telephone calls randomly to both listed and unlisted numbers is called

random-digit-dialing.

Ideology is determined more by _______ within religious groups than by religious denomination itself.

religiosity

Because it would be prohibitively expensive to ask every citizen his or her opinion on a whole range of issues, polls rely on what is called a(n) ________ of the population.

sample

A relatively small proportion of people who are chosen as representative of the whole is called a(n)

sample.

The "paradox of mass politics" refers to the fact that

the American political system works fairly well despite Americans' lack of political knowledge.

Reapportionment occurs after every census to reallocate seats in

the House of Representatives.

According to Morris Fiorina,

the U.S. is not in the midst of a major political culture war but, rather, is surrounded by a culture war between a small group of liberal and conservative elites.

Public opinion is

the distribution of the population's beliefs about politics and policy issues.

Public opinion is defined in the text as

the distribution of the population's beliefs about politics and policy.

The regular pattern by which women are more likely to support Democratic candidates than men is known as

the gender gap.

Random sampling is considered

the key to the accuracy of opinion polls.

The 1936 Literary Digest poll underestimated the vote for President Franklin Roosevelt by 19 percent because

the sample was drawn from telephone books and motor vehicle records

Demography refers to

the science of population changes.