Unit 5 - Political Participation

Demographic Factors in Voter Turnout

• older people, women, more educated, white and black people, and Christians are the demographics that are most likely to vote

Rational Choice Voting

Voting based on your own self-interest

People vote on policies as they see them most directly affecting them. Sometimes this can be in line with the common good, but sometimes it is not.

Retrospective Voting

Voting is based on previous actions/performance from a party, candidate, or policy type.

Simple retrospective evaluations: direct experience with policy outcomes Mediated retrospective evaluations: depend on some intermediary

Prospective Voting

Voters choose candidates or parties they believe will represent them best in future policy.

i.e. Women choosing to vote for Democratic Candidates to safeguard their rights to bodily autonomy.

Party-line voting

Voting based on party affiliation/support instead of the actual policy/candidate.

People’s opinions are heavily influenced by party. They might vote blindly for candidates of their preferred party or vote for measures solely because they are endorsed by their party.

15th Amendment (1868)

Expanded the right to vote to black men

19th Amendment (1920)

expanded the right to vote to american women

23rd Amendment (1961)

gave residents of DC electors

26th amendment (1971)

lowered the voting age to 18

Indian Citizenship Act (1924)

recognized native americans as citizens and extended them voting rights

Interest Groups

• An organized group of individuals that make policy-related appeals.

• Write bill language for state/local legislation

• Gather information they can provide to elected officials + bureaucracy.

• Pressure Congress and Bureaucracy.

• Iron Triangles.

• Increases pluralism and allows citizens to shape policy between elections

Political Parties

• Exist to get officials elected and win control of government.

• Recruit and nominate candidates

• Run Primaries

• Get out the vote

  • provide “cues” to voters

• Facilitate Electoral Choice

• Influence National Government

• Facilitate collective action

  • Articulate and coordinate policy

• Through seniority they structure the leadership environment

Elections

• Allow citizens to vote for people they hope will carry out policies they want.

• Allows citizens to decide who is in power and show their ideological preferences.

• Government is more likely to pass laws that expand voting and states are the governments that restrict voting

Media

• Provide information so people can make decisions and stay involved in politics.

• Three Types:

  • Print

  • Broadcast Media

    • TV

    • Radio

  • The Internet

• Lowers information cost to get news about political and other happenings

Lobbyists

People who try to persuade politicians to support specific legislation/focus on issues on behalf of an interest group.

PACS

• Political Action Committees raise and distribute funds for political campaigns.

• PACS: can only accept limited amounts of money from known groups - can coordinate with a campaign

• Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act: put spending limits on PACS

Super-PACS

• Super Pacs were created after the 2010 lawsuit Citizens United vs. F.E.C.

• Super-PACS: unlimited amount of anonymous money - no coordination with a political campaign at all (politician has no control over the message)

Independent Expenditures

• An expenditure for some kind of communication for or against a candidate which is put out by an unaffiliated entity that did not coordinate with the campaign.

Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act

• Aka McCain–Feingold Act or BCRA

• 2002 act that put more regulations on political ads and soft-money contributions to politicians to make it clearer who is paying for what in a campaign.

Citizens United v. FEC

• The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act  (2002) made it illegal for corporations or non-profits to engage in electioneering communication for 60 days before an election or 30 days before a primary

• Citizens United challenged cause they wanted to release their slander movie “Hillary the Movie” but couldn’t cause it was too close to the election (as per BCRA regulations)

• Court Ruled in favor of Citizens United

  • Limits on donations = censorship

  • Cannot collaborate with candidates on political communication (Super-PACs)

Closed Primary

• voters can only vote for nominee if they are registered as party members

Open Primary

• voter does not need to belong to party to vote for party’s nominees

Blanket Primary

all candidates regardless of party are on the same ballot and voters can only choose one

Election of 1912

• 4 candidates: Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Eugene Debs

• 3 progressive candidates split the vote and led to Wilson winning

Press Conferences

• Formal briefings and communication between administration staff and the press.

• This allows for a flow of information between the administration and the press and allows for the press to push the president’s administration on the hard issues and get answers for the public that would not otherwise come out of the administration.

Federal Communications Comission

• Regulatory commission for broadcast media to prevent monopolies and set standards for what can air.

• Regulation of broadcast media effects what we consume on a daily basis. If the FCC decides to regulate more strictly, then our media exposure is more filtered, and vice versa.

• The importance of media in shaping public opinion makes the role of regulating it endlessly important. In the wrong hands, this regulation can become political censorship which can be a mechanism of fascism.

Mass Media

• Media platforms and sources that reach widespread audiences beyond just the educated elite.

• Mass media has made information more accessible to the public but has also made it harder to decipher fact from fiction. This has created an ever-increasing political divide with opinions being based on entirely different views of reality.

Narrowcasting

• A practice by news channels to cater to very specific view points and populations, narrowing the type of news and opinion they broadcast.

Selective Exposure

• People choose news sources that cater to their own views and thus are only exposed to reporting that reflects their own worldview.

• The propensity of people to filter out opposing views coupled with the ease with which algorithms funnel us to content that does agree with us causes massively harmful echo chambers.

Policy Agenda

• “the list of subjects or problems to which government officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time”

• The policy agenda can be influential to what the public focuses on. This can be weaponized to inflame largely non-existent issues and to stall action of really important ones

“Agenda Setting” Theory

• A theory that news outlets can manipulate the level of importance of certain issues with selective emphasis on specific stories. Thus, the way news is organized can influence the public’s agenda and ranking of political problems.

• This can similarly have an effect on what is top of mind for the public. More than just influencing opinions, agenda-setting can dictate what we have an opinion on.

The State of the Union Address

• A speech given by the president in front of the government to sum up the preceding year and set out goals for the next one

• This gives the president a platform to speak about priorities and instill confidence in the nation. It perhaps isn’t the most accurate representation of the administration but can greatly shape public opinion.

• mandated by the constitution

Broadcasting

• A type of media that is sent out via signal to personal devices such as radios and TVs. Makes information much more accessible to common people.

• Broadcast media has lowered the barrier of information access so that the public can get news without having to sit down and read complex articles. This is a double edged sword, however, because it means that an uneducated public is given half pieces of information on which to form an opinion, leading to more disinformation and the espousing of increasingly radical opinions with no actual facts to back them up.

Why can’t third parties compete?

1. All or nothing government (electoral college system) leads to two-party systems (Duverger’s Law)

2. Difficult to have a candidate that can take both democratic and republican stronghold states, which would be necessary to oust the main candidates without handing victory to the other side

Electoral College

• 538 electors = to the number of congresspeople + delegates from DC

• 270 to win

Crisis of Voter Turnout

• The US has a major voter turnout problem, with 100 million eligible Americans choosing not to vote.

• Increasing disillusionment with our democratic system

• Growing miseducation on political issues, especially in younger generations.