CHAPTER 7 POTENTIAL TEST QUESTIONS

Since the 1930s and the New Deal, African Americans have been overwhelmingly ____________ in their party identification; women are somewhat more likely to support ____________ candidates; and Jews are among the ____________ Party's most loyal constituent groups.

Democratic; Democratic; Democratic

The first "party system" in the United States consisted of

Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans.

What was George Washington's relationship with political parties in early America?

He hated political parties.

A current officeholder is called

Incumbent

What method of policy making has become popular as a means of direct democracy?

Referendum

Which of the following is the best example of direct democracy in practice in the United States today?

Referendum

From the Civil War to the 1960s, the _________was a Democratic stronghold.

South

After thirty-six years of dominating U.S. political life, the Republican Party lost power after

The Great Depression Began

who benefits from the American system of private funding of campaigns?

Wealthy interest groups

What has been a common way for interest groups, corporations, and political parties to aid a candidate while avoiding campaign finance laws?

Work with 527 Committees and 501c(4)s to run campaign ads and promote issues

A proportional-representation electoral system is

a multiple-member district system that gives each political party representation in proportion to its percentage of the total vote.

Joe walks into his voting station and the election judge asks him which party's ballot he would like to vote on today. Joe is in

an open primary state.

The Republican Party was formed

as a coalition of antislavery forces.

The right of candidates to spend their own money on running for office

is protected by the First Amendment right of free speech.

Which of the following is not usually considered a function of political parties?

lobbying

The process by which a party selects a single candidate to run for an elective office is defined as a

nomination.

527 committees are

nonprofit independent groups that receive and disburse funds to influence elections.

The number of a state's electoral votes is determined by the

number of members it has in both houses of Congress.

A psychological tie to a political party is the definition of

party identification.

If the winner of an election is whoever receives the most votes, regardless of the percentage of votes received, the candidate has been running under a ________ system.

plurality

In the U.S. federal system, the responsibility for organizing elections

rests largely with state and local governments.

One important cause of the United States' two-party system is

single-member electoral districts.

Until recent years at least, ____________ have been the principal agents responsible for giving citizens the motivation and incentive to vote.

the major parties

The speaker of the house is actually selected by

the party that holds the majority of seats in the House.

527 and 501C(4)s are groups that play a significant role in American politics because

they spent more than $1 billion in the 2008 campaign.

Historically, the United States has always been a ____________-party system.

two

Compared with political parties in Europe, parties in the United States have always seemed?

weak

Which of the following is a task of the Democratic and Republican National Committees?

Raising campaign funds

Partisan ties in the United States have __________ in recent years.

declined

In 2003, Californians voted out Governor Gray Davis. This election was unusual because

he lost in a rare recall effort.

Which of the following differentiates an interest group from a political party?

An interest group seeks to influence government on a narrow range of issues, whereas a party attempts to win elections.

Who was the founder of the Democratic Party?

Andrew Jackson

Which are organizations established by corporations, labor unions, or interest groups to channel the contributions of their members into political campaigns?

Political action committees

what determines which candidates will receive the major parties' official nominations for all offices but the presidency.

Primaries

Which of the following widely used systems has the effect of diminishing the power of American party leaders?

Primary system

which of the following is not one of the three types of factors that influence voters' decisions at the polls?

The electoral system used to select candidates

Which of the following reasons best explains the short lives of third parties?

Their causes are usually eliminated by the ability of the major parties to absorb their programs and to draw their supporters into the mainstream.

Since the creation of our current two-party system, when was the last time a third-party candidate won the presidency of the United States?

Third parties have never won the presidency since the inception of our current system.