American Government Exam Three: Public Opinion, Elections, and Media

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering public opinion, polling mechanics, voter turnout, electoral systems, campaign finance jurisprudence, and media politics for American Government Exam Three.

Normative Question (Public Opinion)

A fundamental inquiry into whether government policy should strictly reflect public opinion, spotlighting the core tension between direct democratic responsiveness and elite deliberation.

Delegates (Representation Model)

Elected officials who vote strictly according to the expressed preferences of their constituents, treating public opinion polls as binding directives.

Trustees (Representation Model)

Elected officials who rely on their independent judgment, expertise, and conscience to make policy choices, operating on the premise that voters selected them for their wisdom.

Politicos (Representation Model)

Elected officials who follow a hybrid approach by acting as delegates on high-profile, highly visible issues and as trustees on technical, low-salience policy matters.

Random Sampling

A scientific polling principle requiring that every single member of the targeted population has an equal chance of being selected for a survey.

Margin of Error (MOE)

A statistical range (typically $\pm 3\%$) reflecting sampling error; for example, if Candidate A is at $48\%$ and Candidate B is at $46\%$ with a $3\%$ MOE, the race is considered a statistical tie.

Push Polling

A disguised campaign technique that uses loaded, biased questions intended to sway and manipulate voters' opinions rather than accurately measure them.

Social Desirability Bias

A phenomenon where survey respondents report answers they believe are socially acceptable rather than revealing their authentic beliefs.

Literary Digest Poll (1936)

A historic polling failure that erroneously predicted Alf Landon would defeat Franklin D. Roosevelt because its sample of $2.4\text{ million}$ people was drawn from automobile registrations and telephone directories, disproportionately sampling affluent Republicans during the Great Depression.

Bradley Effect

An anomaly observed in the 1982 Tom Bradley campaign where white voters tell pollsters they are undecided or voting for a non-white candidate due to social pressure, but secretly vote for the white candidate in the ballot booth.

Political Efficacy

A citizen's internal or external belief that their political participation makes a meaningful difference, serving as a primary driver of high voter turnout.

Single-Member Simple Plurality (SMSP / FPTP)

An electoral system in which the candidate receiving the most votes (a plurality) wins the entire district seat, mathematically discouraging third and minor parties.

Proportional Representation (PR)

An electoral arrangement wherein legislative seats are distributed to political parties according to the overall percentage of the national vote they win.

Duverger's Law

The political principle establishing that single-member simple plurality (SMSP) electoral systems lead systematically to a two-party system due to strategic voting against 'wasted' third-party votes and steep ballot access barriers.

Ross Perot (1992)

An independent third-party candidate who won $19\%$ of the national popular vote on a reform platform, ultimately compelling the major parties to incorporate federal deficit reduction into their platforms.

Progressive Era Electoral Reforms

A series of institutional reforms—including direct primaries, non-partisan local elections, secret (Australian) ballots, and civil service exams—that dismantled corrupt urban party machines but unintentionally depressed voter turnout by breaking mobilization networks.

The Daisy Ad (1964)

An iconic Lyndon B. Johnson presidential campaign commercial that associated Barry Goldwater with the threat of nuclear apocalypse, successfully leveraging fear over substantive policy discussion.

The Willie Horton Ad (1988)

A controversial George H.W. Bush campaign ad run against Michael Dukakis that used prison furloughs and racial priming to depict Dukakis as weak on crime.

Chiafalo v. Washington (2020)

A Supreme Court ruling affirming that individual states possess constitutional authority to enforce elector pledges and penalize or replace 'faithless electors' in the Electoral College.

Buckley v. Valeo (1976)

A landmark Supreme Court decision ruling that campaign spending is protected speech under the First Amendment ($\text{Money} = \text{Speech}$), invalidating limits on candidate personal spending and overall expenditures while keeping direct contribution limits to prevent corruption.

McConnell v. FEC (2003)

A Supreme Court decision upholding major components of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA / McCain-Feingold), including restrictions on soft money donations to national parties and limits on corporate pre-election issue advertising.

Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC (2007)

A Supreme Court decision narrowing BCRA by striking down restrictions on corporate and union issue advertisements near elections unless an ad cannot reasonably be interpreted as anything other than an express appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010)

A landmark Supreme Court ruling that struck down BCRA bans on independent expenditures by corporations and labor unions, holding that independent political spending is constitutionally protected speech.

SpeechNow.org v. FEC (2010)

A D.C. Circuit Court ruling following Citizens United that invalidated contribution caps to independent expenditure organizations, giving birth to modern Super PACs.

Agenda Setting

The media's ability to determine which political issues the public thinks about by controlling the allocation and volume of news coverage.

Framing

The angle, narrative perspective, or contextual lens through which a media organization presents a news story, shaping how the public interprets that information.

Priming

The media process of calling attention to particular issues, thereby establishing the standards and baselines by which citizens evaluate political figures and policies.

Trial Balloon

An anonymous, deliberate policy leak to the media designed to evaluate public reaction before a policy or appointment is officially introduced.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

A classic political film that popularized the legislative filibuster and created the definitive cinema archetype of uncorrupted civic idealism fighting against entrenched institutional graft.

A Face in the Crowd (1957)

A political film examining how charismatic media personalities can exploit television to generate populist demagoguery and manufacture political power.

The China Syndrome (1979)

A drama concerning a nuclear reactor incident that premiered weeks prior to the Three Mile Island accident, mobilizing nationwide anti-nuclear sentiment and reshaping energy policy.