AP Government Review for Unit III: Chapter 8, 9, 11, 7
1. Contrast plurality and majority elections.
2. What factors have contributed to the U.S. having a two-party system?
3. How has party control in the period since 1968 differed from the previous eras?
4. How might the pattern described in #3 above affect policymaking?
5. Contrast realignment and dealignment. Give an example of each.
6. What are the three elements of a political party?
7. Why are the parties in the U.S. not centrally controlled from the top down?
8. Define national convention and national committee.
9. Define platform and ticket.
10. What are three impacts or roles of minor parties?
11. Contrast split- and straight-ticket voting. Describe the pattern of split-ticket voting from the 1950s to the present.
12. Define superdelegates.
13. What are three factors that contributed to political parties being less powerful than they were?
14. What are two pieces of evidence that support the idea that political parties are less powerful than they were?
15. Even though parties are less “powerful” than they were, why would it be inaccurate to say they are unimportant?
16. What happened to the Democratic and Republican Parties in the 1960s-1980s?
17. What do presidential elections since 1992 suggest about the number of Democrats and Republicans in the country?
18. Why is it hard for moderate politicians to get their party’s nomination?
19. Contrast caucus and primary election.
20. When and why did the parties start shifting from caucuses to primaries?
21. Contrast open and closed primaries.
22. Contrast proportional and winner-take-all systems for awarding delegates in presidential nominations.
23. Why are Iowa and New Hampshire so influential in presidential elections?
24. Why did the parties start putting South Carolina and Nevada earlier in the nomination year?
25. Define frontloading.
26. Define incumbency advantages.
27. Briefly describe some incumbency advantages that all members of Congress have.
28. Briefly describe incumbency advantages that only member of the House of Representatives would have.
29. Describe how often incumbents get re-elected to Congress, and what the pattern has been the last 50 years.
30. What is retrospective voting? What usually happens in midterm congressional elections?
31. Who enforces campaign finance laws?
32. How is the amount of money a person can donate to a candidate different from how much a group can donate?
33. What did the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act do?
34. Why is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC important?
35. Before 2008, how were presidential general elections paid for?
36. What has happened to public financing in presidential elections since 2000?
37. What does a PAC do?
38. Why has “outside” spending (separate from the candidates) increased dramatically in presidential elections?
39. Contrast interest groups, PACs, and lobbyists.
40. What are campaign donors like PACs seeking?
41. Whom do most PACs represent?
42. Why might some interest groups have millions of members and some have far fewer?
43. How do “public interest” groups differ from other interest groups?
44. What does it mean to say something is a “linkage institution”?
45. What is grassroots lobbying?
46. What are some ways that interest groups and lobbyists interact with Congress?
47. How can lobbyists directly influence policymaking?
48. What does the “revolving door” refer to?
49. What are three forms of mass media?
50. How does investigative journalism differ from simple reporting?
51. How did journalism change in the 1960s? How did it change in the 1990s?
52. Why is it hard to have substantial limits on American media?
53. Who enforces laws related to the media?
54. Briefly describe slander and libel.
55. Define prior restraint.
56. What is the significance of the case New York Times v. U.S.?
57. How is the presentation of news in the U.S. affected by the fact that it is almost exclusively by corporations?
58. Define the gatekeeping, framing, and scorekeeping functions of the media.
59. Explain the bully pulpit concept.
60. Describe source bias and neutrality bias.