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
