AP Gov Unit 3 Test Review Flashcards

Two Party System

The U.S. has a fundamentally locked 2 party system. In order to switch away from this 2 political party system, we would have to implement a proportional representation system (in which the proportion of seats of a party matches the proportion of votes they receive). Additionally, in order to move away from the 2 party system, we could implement ranked choice voting, where rather than voting for only one candidate, you ran the candidates. If majority doesn’t win, then you move on the the next ranking.

Political Parties

Political parties serve as one of the most fundamental “linkage institutions” in U.S. politics (they connect citizens to the government). They are groups that try to influence the government by electing their members to government offices. Washington had warned us about the dangers of parties, but they organize and simplify our elections

Winner-take-all

The U.S. ended up with a 2 party system due to our “winner-take-all” system. In order to win, you need the plurality, not majority, of votes (only the presidential elections needs the winner to have the majority of votes of the electoral college). Thus, the 2 party system is highly encouraged because 3rd party candidates haven’t been able to win seats due to these election rules. It’s not strategic to vote for a 3rd party candidate, because you are likely wasting your vote.

Political Party Roles

-Craft leaders to run for public office (to become a national politician, most people start local and work their way up from there)

-Create competition amongst candidates (since you never want to have 2 candidates of the same political party running against each other for the same position)

-Inform the public on policies and issues

-Make policy and govern

Recruiting Candidates

Political parties look for people to recruit. Recruitment criteria includes being loyal to their party platform (because you don’t want to waste resources for the candidate to switch up) and to be able to raise a LOT of money. Recently, it’s become progressively harder and harder to find willing candidates because people are so mean on social media or people are scared of their past digital footprints being dug up.

Nominations (Primaries & Caucuses)

Once parties find candidates, they determine which person to run by holding a nomination (primary or caucus) (at first, you’re just a candidate, and then when you’re picked, you become a nominee). Parties do this because they do not want to have two candidates of the same party running against each other for the same position. In a primary election, people vote between people of the same political party. A caucus is the same idea, but instead of traditional voting booths, the politicians set up booths and talk to the public.

-Closed Primary: when you show up to vote, you receive the ballot for the political party that you’re registered to be a part of

-Open Primary: when you show up to vote, you can request either the Democrat or Republican ballot

Political parties mobilize voters

It’s important for political parties to mobilize people to vote because even if people would for you, that’s useless if they don’t actually vote, so the parties need to go out there and make sure people vote. Parties do this by calling voters, going door to door, mailing notices. They have data collected on voters so that they can accurately predict party affiliation to ensure that they don’t unintentionally mobilize voters of the opposing party. Republicans tend to be very good at mobilizing voters

National Convention

The national convention is convened by the RNC and DNC (the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee) and it is where official candidates for president and vice president are nominated. The point of the national convention is to have a “fancy pep rally” for politicians and to serve as a media event where the parties can lock down their general party stances/rules/platform.

National Committee

The national committee are the people who run the party day to day. Particularly, they raise soft money for party candidates.

Soft Money

Soft money is money that isn’t directly given to candidates but is instead given to political parties (ex. running ads against the Republican party in order to help a Democratic candidate’s campaign). The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) banned soft money spends, but because of Super PACs, it didn’t make that big of an impact

Parties and Policies

Most of our focus in politics today is composed of wedge issues (issues that are very fundamentally different between Republicans and Democrats; tend to fire up their bases more), making politics very polarized. Some common wedge issues are immigration, military spending, social programs, tax policies, economic intervention, and abortion

1st Party System

After the ratification of the constitution. The Federalists were more urban and the Democratic Republicans (previously this group had been the Anti-federalists) were Southern and rural. Even today, we still have an urban vs. rural political split!! We vote based off of our economic interests, and federalists supported tariffs and a national bank, whereas Democratic Republicans wanted less government intervention. In the 1820 election, federalists died out

2nd Party System

Democrats vs. Whigs. The Whigs hated Andrew Jackson, and they were not very successful (they could only get 2 presidents in office and they both died in office). The mistake that the Whigs made was that they ran 3 people of the same political party against each other. They died off when the Northern Whigs wanted to abolish slavery and the Southern Whigs didn’t

3rd Party System

There is a new Republican party, which nominated Lincoln, and the Civil War breaks out. After the Civil War, suffrage is increased, but barriers like the Jim Crow laws still remain

4th Party System

-Gilded and Progressive eras

-The Populist party (poor people’s party; weird because it encompassed urban poor and rural poor) arose, which hurt the Democrats, so they merged together. (Since it’s so hard for a 3rd party to win, they have to hurt one of the parties so badly that they have no choice but to merge → that makes them a successful 3rd party)

-Republican party is in very large majority and it dominated American politics

-Democrats are in the South and Republicans are in the North

5th Party System

-The Great Depression was so bad and Hoover (Republican president) made a lot of people very angry due to his little government intervention at the time of economic crisis

-After, FDR was elected and he became a “miracle politician” because his New Deal promised a new way of life

-The “New Deal Coalition" made Democrats very popular

FDR New Deal Coalition

Unionized workers, college educated upper middle class, Southern farmers, Jews, Catholics, and African Americans. Most of the people in these groups are still Democrat EXCEPT Southern farmers

6th Party System

-Current/contemporary American system

-Republicans have flipped to the South and Democrats have flipped to the North (Nixon’s Southern strategy)

Nixon’s Southern Strategy

3rd parties can’t win in American politics, so in order to be successful, they have to hurt one of the major political parties enough that they have to absorb them. Example: George Wallace campaigned for segregation, and he captures the Democrats (currently in the South at this point), so Nixon adopted this viewpoint. to the Republican party, and wins over the South.

Electoral Realignment

A permanent change of the demographic of parties. Happens every ~30 years. Occurs due to new political issues (Ex. COVID or AI), economic or political crisis, and mobilization of new voters. Electoral realignments are marked by critical elections, where everything snaps. The most important critical election was the 1932 FDR election, where Democrats flipped to the North and Republicans flipped to the South.

Elections

Fair and accessible elections are the heart of Democracy. There are tens of thousands of positions up for office! General elections are presidential elections (every 4 years) and midterm elections (Congressional elections between presidential years)

Ballot

The ballot used to be a card, and voters would have to use a pin to poke holes out to indicate their vote. Controversy: it was super easy to punch a hole too big or too small, and it was difficult to determine if it was intentional or not. This controversy became especially exacerbated in the 2000 presidential election, so in 2003, the Help Americans Vote Act introduced computerized voting systems

Redistricting

Typically done after a census (typically every 10 years). Redrawing of election districts

Gerrymandering

-Redistricting to favor one political party. Completely legal, however, there are some rules (every district has to have the same number of people and can’t intentionally reduce the power of a protected class, but this can get ambiguous because, for example, gerrymandering against Democrats could mirror racial gerrymandering against blacks)

-Cracking: taking a small group and splitting them up

-Packing: packing all of the small group into one district so they have no representation in other districts

-On a map, if districts follow squares and geographic landmarks, there’s probably very little gerrymandering. However, if there are wiggly lines and crazy shapes, there is probably a lot of gerrymandering. Compare Republican versus Democratic split in the presidential elections (NOT affected by gerrymandering) and house of rep. elections to determine the amount of gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering and Lawsuits

After gerrymandering is done, there are always lawsuits, but the Supreme Court always gives them to the state courts. Exceptions (Supreme Court only gets involved when it’s really bad and obvious):

-Baker v. Carr- One man, one vote; Tennessee made districts the same geographic size, but the populations were different, so the Supreme Court ruled against this

-Shaw v. Reno- REALLY REALLY bad and blatantly obvious racial gerrymandering

“Invisible Primary”

You have to prove to the political party and country that you can get enough attention (raise enough money and get people to remember your name) to even have a shot before the actual primary

Front-Loading

States have been trying to push their primaries/caucuses earlier and earlier. The advantage to having an earlier primary is that you get the most media attention if you go first. (Presidential candidates spend way too much time in Iowa)

Delegates

It wouldn’t make much sense to do presidential primaries through a popular vote, because the president isn’t chosen via popular vote, so parties give each state delegates that are supposed to emulate the electoral college. They also have superdelegates, which are also picked by the party, and they are not bound to the voting results of their state. After 2016, laws have been passed to limit superdelegates, so they have been weakened.

Electoral College

-Each state gets a number of votes based on the number of people in Congress (Senators + House of Representative members), so minimum = 3 votes

-”Winner-take-all”: each state gives all electors to the candidate who recieves the most votes in that state

Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929

Prior to the Permanent Apportionment Act, as a state’s population grew, they would get another house representative. But, in 1929, we decided that we’re not going to add anymore, we’re just going to rearrange the seats we already have because we ran out of space. So now, there’s only so many seats to go around, and since each state has to have a minimum of 3, if you live in a smaller state, your vote matters a lot more statistically than if you live in a state like TX or CA. This is a big reason why there is a lot of controversy against the electoral college.

Campaigns

Organized effort to win an office; takes A LOT of people, money, and effort

Grassroots campaigns

Campaign strategies of grassroots campaign include knowing on doors, leaflets. Grassroots campaigns are organizationally driven and labor-intensive, trying to get the people fired up

Media-Driven campaigns

Media driven campaigns utilize a lot of money spent on ads and media representation.

Journey to president

Exploratory committee → start fundraising → begin campaign primary → become nominee at convention → begin general election campaign → win electoral college → inauguration

Media and campaigns

Paid media is when campaigns pay for media representations (ex. buying ads). Ads could be promoting their own candidate, or could be attacking the opposition. Free/earned media is when the candidate does something cool, and the media shows up to cover it (as a campaign, you want free media unless your candidate did something bad)

Microtargeting

Campaigns target social media ads to people with very specific beliefs; very carefully targeted messages through social media history and algorithms

Elections and Finances

Elections in the U.S. have always cost A LOT of money, but that amount has increased. If we wanted to change that, we could change the limits on the amount of time that you can campaign (right now, you can campaign for however long you want). A huge chunk of campaign money is just spent on ads

Federal Election Campaign of Act (FECA)

Created the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which investigated campaign finance mishaps. The FEC is bipartisan and is responsible for enforcing campaign finance laws for federal elections. The FECA also created the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, which is a public funding option, which most candidates do not take because that means that they would have limits on their funding. The FECA requires full disclosure (as a candidate, you must report where money came from and what it was spent on) and limited contributions (limits on the amount an individual can contribute)

Buckley v. Valeo

Spending money on behalf of a candidate is partially protected speech. The ruling of Buckley v. Valeo kept all the things from the FECA EXCEPT that candidates can spend as much of their own money as they wish on their campaign (ex. if Elon Musk ran for president, he could spend as much of his money as he wanted to on his campaign). This makes it easier for wealthier people to run and harder for poorer people.

Citizens United v. FEC

Citizens United made a negative video about Hillary Clinton. The ruling in Citizens v. FEC determined that limiting an individual’s spending on political speech is a violation of 1st amendment rights, so therefore, Citizens United should also have the right to speech based on the idea of “corporate personhood” (corporations being treated as people legally). Controversial because it destroys the FECA; people see it as a way to buy politicians because there are campaign finance laws, so you can’t donate $10 billion, but can run $10 billion worth of independent ads.

Sources of Campaign Funds

-Individual donors (there are laws on the amount that individual donors can donate).

-Political Action Committees (PACs)

• Group that raises and distributes money to candidates

• Similar to clubs, but they give money to people who help them

• There are still limits on the amount of money that PACs can donate to a candidate, but they can donate more than just an individual donors
  - Super PACS: can’t contribute directly (only through soft money), but they don’t have limits on the amount they can contribute

-Independent spending

• 527s: nonprofit independent groups that also deal with issue awareness; register people to vote; they cannot explicitly coordinate with a candidate; ideally nonpartisan; watched over by the IRS

• 501(c)(4): partisan; can spend as much money as they want on a campaign, but can’t work directly with candidate campaigns; must do something nonpolitical (ex. planned parenthood); watched over by IRS

Freedom of Press

In the U.S., we have freedom of press constitutionally protected. In 1734, John Peter Zenger faced charges of seditious libel (acting against the country/government & writing something false and damaging to reputation while knowing it is untrue). An American jury found Zenger not guilty, so even at this point in our history, we understood the importance of being able to say something, which has carried into today. (this precedent is becoming more and more dangerous because now, with the emergence of AI and new technologies, anyone can start a news site)

Media and politics

Media serves as a linkage institution. Traditional press included newspapers. Then, in the early 20th century, investigative journalism emerged, where journalists intentionally snoop and try to discover scandals (ex. The Jungle, which exposed meatpacking plants). As new media has arose (radio, TV, internet), political news has become national with broad, far-reaching news stories (which is kinda bad because you hear things from other states that makes you made → more political polarization).

TV

Looks and the way that you move/interact becomes very important in politics now because people can actually see how you move (ex. fidgety; good looks). The big 3 TV networks are ABC (American Broadcasting Company), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), and NBC (National Broadcasting Company). In 1980, CNN created the first 24 hour news program (in Mr. Wylie’s opinion, this is bad because there’s not really 24 hours worth of news everyday, so journalists found very scary stories, and we start to see a rise of fear in the U.S., like with the Satanic Panic)

Internet

A huge majority of Americans rely on the internet as a news source. The benefit to online news is that journalists can fix mistakes / edit the story if new evidence is found, but it’s kind of pointless because people are typically too lazy to go back and reread a revised news article; this also encourages journalists to pump out news stories faster, which could lead to more mistakes being made

Horserace journalism

The media watches over our elections, and in the U.S., we have a lot of horserace journalism, which is where the media treats American politics like a race rather than focusing on actual policy. Horserace journalism makes political races feel like sports (WHO’S WINNING? WHO’S AHEAD IN POLLS?), contributing to why we have “teams” in politics. The problem is that people shouldn’t be basing who they vote off of who’s popular or ahead in polls, they should vote based on policy.

Media as a gatekeeper

You don’t know that you should be upset about something until a news story about it breaks. Agenda Setting is when media runs a story on something and they get a lot of popular support or opposition, which can spark change because the government doesn’t do anything about an issue until it goes viral and people become aware about it

Media as a watchdog

The media looks at people and politicians and tells us what they’re doing wrong. Before the Vietnam War, American press coverage was very positive and patriotic, but during Vietnam, people started finding out that the press was covering the government’s dirty lies. Now, the press and investigative journalists want to uncover the next big scandal, but the politicians do not want the next big scandal to be about them (this leads to a weird kind of banter between politicians and journalists). Soundbites are when the media takes a small snippet of what the politician was saying and taking it very out of context.

Congress and press coverage

The Congress is not super important in the media because there’s so many of them, so people watching can’t have heroes, villains, and teams. So, Congress made their own network called C-SPAN (which is usually super boring)

Presidents and press coverage

Unlike Congress, the president typically has no problem getting tons of attention on the news. Particularly, FDR was considered the king of American political media and he was super popular on the media

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Ensures that ratings (R, PG-13) are accurate and prevents monopolies (but don’t know how well they’re doing… Disney?)

Equal Times Provision

Requires that if you have a program that brings on candidate A and gives them time, the program must offer to also have candidate B on because giving them airtime is kind of like a donation. ONLY APPLIES TO ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMS, not news

New York Times v. United States

A study was conducted on the Vietnam War (which was meant to remain confidential, and then be released to the public later on). The Pentagon was lying to the U.S. about what they were doing in the war, so the people who conducted the study secretly photocopied it and took it to the press (they gave it to a reported from the New York Times, which published the articles). More newspapers, like the Washington Post also began publishing about the Pentagon Papers. Nixon claimed that this was espionage because it was putting the country’s safety at risk. The court sided with the New York Times and the Washington Post, claiming that Nixon’s attempt to censor the media was unconstitutional based on the 1st amendment. Supreme court ruled that the government can’t stop media from publishing something just because it makes them look bad. Ruled that Prior Restraint is unconstitutional (the government stopping media from publishing something before it’s published)

Interest Groups

(AKA lobbies, special interests, pressure groups)

James Madison wrote in Fed. 10 about factions. He thought that since the U.S. is a large republic, all factions’ ideas would be present in a free market and the government would employ the best idea. Interest groups are valuable to democracy in general because they educate and mobilize us (ex. if someone didn’t care a lot about politics, but they cared a lot about one niche issue, the interest group can let them know which candidates would be best for that issue). However, not all interest groups are equally represented. The ones that are most powerful today aren’t the ones that have the most people, they’re the ones that are the richest. Typically, poor people (especially marginalized poor people like the homeless) aren’t represented because they don’t have time or money to lobby and they don’t have as much access to politicians.

Economic and Corporate Interest Groups

Most common and most powerful type of interest group. Represent certain industries/companies. Tend to want less regulation and more money (most spending is done by oil/gas to fight against environmental interest groups, big pharma for drug trial grants, and insurance)

Labor Interest Groups

Kinda the opposite of economic & corporate interest groups. Not as powerful, but pretty strong. Typically want more regulation and are typically against immigration (because they’re against immigrants competing for jobs with Americans)

Professional Associations

Not as many of them, but they tend to be very powerful in their niche. Very big example is the American Medical Association (AMA)

Citizen Interest Groups

Claim to just serve the general good (no particular interests)

Ideological Interest Group

No specific policy; explicitly trying to get a party or ideology to win

Free Rider Problem

Occurs when an interest group offers “collective goods”, so people who aren’t members and don’t contribute still get those advantages. Collective goods could be informational benefits (ex. info from a newsletter), solidarity benefits (ex. friends, networking for career), material benefits (ex. ranges from trinkets to cheaper car insurance), and purposive benefits (benefits related to the interest group’s purpose)

“Netroot” Associations

Due to the internet, interest groups can form faster and much cheaper. The benefits of these netroot associations are that they can organize people from all over the world so that even niche interests can get representation. However, the downsides are that they can become extreme, there could be a lot more freeriders online, and they could be filled with bots rather than real humans

AARP

The most powerful and successful interest group in the U.S.. To have a successful interest group, you need a lot of time and money, which is something that old people have a lot of. The AARP comes with solidarity benefits (make friends when all your other friends die), material benefits (cheaper car insurance for members). First ones to do a “telephone tree”- one person sees something, and tells the other, who tells the other, who tells the other (which is why it’s political suicide to say something bad about social security, because old people WILL talk about it)

Lobbying

When you’re trying to influence someone high up in the government FOR PAY. There are rules on lobbyists. Lobbyists literally go sit in the lobby of Congress and once they get out, the lobbyists go and ask them for favors and talk to them about stuff. Thus, interest groups don’t “buy votes”, but they buy time to offer expertise to Congress. Lobbyists allow interest groups to have influence on legislation. There are rules on giving gifts to Congress, but they’re easy to get around and bribe (a common problem is art, since art doesn’t have a set market value/price). Congress members actually tend to like lobbyists because they’re super friendly & flattering and because they provide information that otherwise would have been super expensive for the politician to obtain. The main way lobbyists influence politicians is by writing simplified technical reports for info (the experts on policy write the reports and the experts on politics go out and make sure the politicians are reading their reports). Lobbying the president is very ineffective because it’s hard to get consistent access to him (this could be changing in recent times….) and lobbyists are NOT allowed to talk to federal judges (otherwise they will go to prison)

The Revolving Door

(not the Tate McRae song)

Happens very commonly, where politicians end their career as a politician and then immediately become a lobbyist (ex politicians make the best lobbyists because of their connections, but could introduce corruption). This is a huge and very prevalent problem, especially in the executive branch, not with the president himself, but with the people who work for the president.

Iron Trianges

College Board thinks: All government policy is the product of iron triangles

Interest Groups and the Courts

Lobbyists are not permitted to speak to federal judges. So, they can sue. Or if they can’t sue because they weren’t directly impacted, they could find someone else who is suing and pay for them. Or, they could pay for an amicus curiae brief (which is your pretend suit brief, which you send to the Supreme Court saying “this is what we would do if we were you!”)

Outsider Strategies

Insider strategies include lobbying. However, outsider strategies are mobilizing the opinions of the public in hopes that they can mobilize Congress. An example of this is institutional advertising, which seeks to make people think that the interest group is very moral (feel good ads)

Salience

An interest group is going to be more successful if their issue is low salience, which means that politicians don’t care about it very much. If your topic is high salience (like guns or abortion), it will be harder to change a politician’s stance