AP Government Chapters 6-9

Which of the following is consistent with the mandate theory of elections?

Barack Obama's claim that his victory in the 2012 election means that the public wants to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Which of the following is a consequence of the rise of television broadcasting?

Candidates are more capable of running for office on their own by appealing to people directly through TV.

How does civil disobedience differ from a protest?

Civil disobedience involves intentionally breaking a law; a protest involves intentionally getting attention from the media.

Which of the following best describes Barack Obama's campaign message in the 2012 election?

"I did as well as could have been expected under the circumstances"

Which of the following statements indicates a high level of political efficacy?

"one vote can make a difference; i want my vote to be the difference maker."

Some people have called the American electoral process

"the permanent campaign"

In 2012, the amount an individual is legally allowed to contribute to a candidate's campaign was

$2,500

How many states employ a winner-take-all system in which all their electors are awarded to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes statewide?

48

Donations to ________ groups do not have to be reported unless a donor gives money specifically for a political ad.

501(c)

The 2008 election was the first time that ______ voted at the same rate as whites.

African Americans

Which demographic group currently most closely identifies with the Democratic Party?

African Americans

What is the effect of aging on political participation?

Aging increases political participation

Which of the following was one of the requirements of the Federal Election Campaign Act?

All candidates for federal office must disclose who contributed money to their campaigns

In comparison with citizens of most other established democracies around the world, how are Americans different?

Americans are less likely than citizens of other democracies to report that they have participated in protests.

In 1934, Congress created which body to regulate the use of airwaves?

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Which president forged the New Deal coalition?

Franklin Roosevelt

If the president was selected by popular vote instead of by the Electoral College, which of the following cities would a presidential campaign be least likely to visit?

Green Bay, Wisconsin

If no candidate receives an Electoral College majority, the election is decided in the

House of Representatives

What is the most common reason given for not voting by US citizens who are registered to vote?

It's hard to take time off of work or school

Which statement best describes the functioning of party machines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

Parties provided jobs to urban electorates in exchange for votes and kickbacks.

The years 1860-1928 saw the ascendancy of which party?

Republicans

What 2012 candidate lost momentum when he could not remember the names of the three federal cabinet departments he would eliminate?

Rick Perry

Which of the following helps to explain why voter turnout is lower in the US than in other democracies?

The US hold elections midweek.

Of the following statements about the 1936 Literary Digest poll, which predicted Roosevelt's defeat for reelection, which is true?

The poll oversampled the upper middle class and the wealthy.

What is demography?

The science of human populations

Why do presidential candidates tend to focus their efforts on battleground states?

The winner-take-all system makes battleground states more relevant to a campaign.

Suppose your candidate is in a tight election campaign and has limited time and money. What expenditures would pay off best in gaining electoral votes?

You should spend both time and money in battleground states that may go for either party.

Which of the following is a consequence of the rise of narrowcasting?

Young adults are less likely than other age groups to use newspapers and broadcast media as news and information sources.

Which of the following is the best definition of protest?

a form of political participation designed to achieve policy change through dramatic and unconventional tactics

The "minimal effects hypothesis" suggests that the media have which of the following?

a marginal effect on public opinion

What is an event called that is purposely staged for the media and that is significant just because the media are there?

a media event

An investment candidates today MUST make is in

a staff to set up and run technologies such as Facebook and Twitter accounts

Which of the following best describes how Mitt Romney presented himself in the 2012 presidential election?

a successful businessman who can apply his skills to fixing the economy

The media's emphasis on the country's slow economic growth in 1992, rather than the good news of low inflation and interest rates, helped set the stage for Bill Clinton's win over the incumbent president, George H. W. Bush. This is an example of what?

agenda setting

Increasing public attention to specific problems is a core feature of the media's _________ power.

agenda-setting

You run the US Census Bureau and are interested in improving the response rate of communities that are usually undercounted. Which of the following actions would best help you achieve your goal?

attempting to reach a non responsive households by telephone and by door-to-door canvassing in English and in Spanish

Why is participation in the census so important?

because the information the census collects helps to determine how more than $400 billion of federal funding each year is spent

Which of the following is a cost of voting?

becoming informed

Why is it sometimes difficult for citizens to engage in policy voting?

candidates can be intentionally vague about their issue stances

Television has enabled voters to rely less on political parties and social groups to make their decisions about candidates and more on their own assessment. According to the text, this is because television allows

candidates to be seen up close and personal

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail," penned by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963, is a classic defense of which form of political protest?

civil disobedience

A __________ often requires voters to declare party affiliation on their voter registration forms, which for political parties is something akin to the government collecting information for them about who likes their product.

closed primary

When can a party change its platform?

during the national party convention

What must precede a major-party realignment?

economic crises

If the poor participated at higher levels in the political process, what might happen?

government programs to alleviate economic inequality would likely be higher on the political agenda

Party dealignment is associated with a rising number of

independents

The voters most likely to engage in ticket splitting are

independents

The Electoral College introduces a bias into the campaign and electoral process because

less populated states are overrepresented

Paradoxically, as technology has enabled the media to pass along information with greater speed, news coverage has become ________.

less thorough

Which of the following statements about the influence of education on political attitudes and behavior is false?

less-educated citizens are more likely to vote than better-educated citizens

From 1955 to 1976, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daly ruled one of the most powerful political ________ in US history.

machines

Television, radio, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and other forms of communication are collectively referred to as the

mass media

One impact of the Internet on political campaigns is that

more people are making political donations

The ___________ is the formal governing body of political parties.

national party convention

The Democratic and Republican candidates for president are formally nominated by the

national party conventions

One of the various ways in which parties contribute to the democratic governance is by

nominating candidates

Where do some critics place the blame for Americans' lack on political knowledge?

on Americans themselves, for not remembering much about what they are supposed to through the media

The official, though ambiguously written, party ________ is ratified by delegates and leaders at the national party convention every four years but given little serious attention.

platform

The issues that attract serious attention from public officials and other people actively involved in politics at the time are collectively referred to as ______ agenda.

policy

The US national chairpersons for the Republicans and the Democrats recently agreed that their biggest headache was

raising money

What technique is the key to the accuracy of public opinion polls?

random sampling

The McGovern-Fraser Commission made the delegate section process of the Democratic party more democratic by

requiring delegate selection procedures to be open

The primary interest of publicly owned media is _________; the primary interest of privately owned media is _________.

serving the public interest; making a profit

The appearance and increase in _________ was an unintended result of an amendment in 1979 to the original Campaign Reform Act, which allows parties to raise and spend money on voter registration and other campaign materials without limits on spending or the size of contributions that they can accept.

soft money

The loyal opposition in the era of Democratic President Andrew Jackson was the Whig Party, made up of two distinct factions, ____________.

southern planters and northern industrialists

Which states tend to have higher voter turnout?

states with Election Day voter registration

In states with caucuses, _________.

supports of candidates attend a series of open meetings to express presidential preferences.

With politicians relying on journalists to get out their message, and journalists relying on politicians to keep them in the know, their relationship can best be defined as which of these?

symbiotic

Because states are the key battlegrounds of campaigns, candidates often find themselves

tailoring their appeals to the particular interests of a state

The cozy relationship between politicians and the press in the twentieth century lasted until when?

the Vietnam War and Watergate

The textbook discusses three important agents that can socialize Americans to participate in the political process. What are they?

the media, the schools, and the family

Which sector of the economy do conservatives generally favor as the source of solutions to solve America's policy concerns?

the private sector

According to many network executives, many in the American public are not well informed in this high-tech age because of

their own personal choice

What major concern did the 2000 presidential election between Gore and Bush highlight regarding the role of third parties?

third parties' spoiler role in elections

Reapportionment occurs once a decade, after every census. Why?

to reallocate seats in the House of Representatives, based on each state's proportion of the population

If you were running a campaign with a relatively unknown candidate, you would want to allow plenty of time for your candidate to

travel extensively in Iowa before the caucuses

An intentional news leak for the purpose of assessing the political reaction to that news is called a

trial balloon

Which of the following makes it harder to vote by increasing the costs associated with voting?

voter ID laws

Andrew Downs' rational choice theory is a popular idea among political scientists. It postulates that

voters and politicians will generally act in their own self-interest

When do blacks participate in politics more than whites?

when their levels of education are equal to those of whites

Research suggests that the overriding bias in the news is one toward stories that

will draw the largest audience

European democracies have more parties in positions of political power than does the United States because of their

winner-take-all systems

Why do winning candidates claim a mandate even though political scientists generally discredit the mandate theory of elections?

winning candidates want to justify their policy proposals by claiming that the public supports them.