5.1 - voting rights and models of voting behavior

• Franchise: who has the right to vote

  • Constitution doesn’t say who does and doesn’t have the right to vote (states and Congress can make laws about that anytime)

    • States decided that only property-owning 21+ white men could vote (minority of people)

  • Franchise was extended to all 21+ white men (not property-owning) under Jackson’s presidency up until civil war

  • Post-civil war amendments recognize right to vote for more people

    • 15th: black men can vote

    • 17th: direct election of Senators (didn’t expand who can vote, expanded opportunities for using voting power)

    • 19th: women can vote

    • 24th: abolished poll taxes (tore down barriers to political participation)

    • 26th: lowered voting age from 21 to 18

  • States still have some barriers that make it harder for certain groups to vote (the laws are constantly being challenged in court system), also have laws limiting some groups from voting (Ex: convicted felons)

• Voting models: the way people vote

  • Rational choice voting: when people vote based on self-interest after carefully studying issues and platforms

    • Making an informed decision based on looking at all the info

  • Retrospective voting: when people vote based on the recent track record of the politician(s)

    • Ask themselves if the politician did bad things in office (if not then they elect them back)

  • Prospective voting: when people vote based on predictions of how a candidate/party will perform in the future

    • Ask themselves if the politician will do bad things in office

    • Consider how proposed policy will affect lives after the election

  • Party-line voting: when people vote based on their political party (vote for everyone in a particular party)

5.2 - voter turnout

• Most Americans have the right to vote but not everyone who can vote actually does

• Structural barriers: policy or law that prevents people from voting or encourages people to vote

  • Ex: voter ID laws

    • Republicans say they decrease fraud risk

    • Democrats say voter fraud rarely happens in the first place so they only exist to prevent minorities from actually voting

• Political efficacy: belief about whether or not your vote matters

  • Ex: being a Republican in an always Democrat state (like CA) can make it feel like your vote doesn’t matter

  • Ex: voting for someone but that someone does bad things in office decreases likelihood of you voting again

  • Ex: when the people you vote for do well you will vote again

• Demographics: age matters, older people vote more

  • Senior citizens vote the most (understand political system better, they have more at stake, a lot of policy is directed at them so they want to get the policies that favor them passed)

  • 18-21 year old’s vote the least (don’t understand issues, don’t know how to vote/register to vote)

• Type of election: national (especially presidential) have higher voter turnout

  • 66% voted in 2020 presidential election, 53% voted in 2018 congressional midterm election

• Party identification/ideological orientation: conservatives vote Republican, liberals vote Democrat

• Candidate characteristics: vote if they think the candidate is likeable/trustworthy/honest

• Political issues: if you don’t like a Democratic policy, then you vote Republican

• Religious beliefs/gender/ethnicity: your demographic influences how you vote

  • Ex: Trump tried to appeal to white evangelical Christians because they have a lot of voting power

5.3 - political parties

• Linkage institution: societal structure that connects people to their government or the political process

  • Mechanisms between the people and our elected officials so that they know which laws the people do and don’t support so we can communicate with them

  • Act as intermediaries between average people and policy-makers

  • Types are: political parties, interest groups, elections, media

• Political parties: organization that is at least partly defined by a certain ideological belief that puts candidates forward for election

  • Democratic is mostly liberal, Republican is mostly conservative

  • Main goals of both parties is to put forward candidates that will win elections and thus pass policy favorable to their ideology and draw districts that favor the party

  • What parties do: mobilize and educate voters, party platform, find candidates, campaign management

    • Mobilization and education of voters: need to get party members to actually vote for the party candidate, calling/emailing/going door to door, canvassing campaign

      • Canvassing campaign: calling people and/or going to people’s houses to persuade them to vote for their candidate

    • Writing/publishing party platform: tells people to elect their candidates if they want the policies listed

      • Party platform: lists the kinds of policy that the party hopes to pass

    • Find quality candidates: make sure the candidate has certain characteristcs

      • Characteristics: likeable, already has significant following, can unite different segments of the party, has money/is able to raise money

    • Provide campaign management support for their candidates: help candidate get elected (fundraisers, media strategies, etc)

  • Aligning yourself with a party gives you the resources to run for office

  • Party also plays a role after elections (not just before and during) by things like congressional roles/committees

5.4 - change in political parties (how and why)

• Party interactions with candidates has changed

  • Past: party matters more, candidate is secondary

  • Now: party is secondary, candidate matters more

  • Media allows candidates to speak directly to supporters without party

    • Weakened party’s role in candidate nomination

• Platforms change to appeal to more people in the electorate

  • Platform doesn’t contradict ideology

  • Shifted emphasis and changed messaging to appeal to more people and coalitions

  • Coalitions: demographic group (millennials, evangelical Christians, retired people, etc)

    • Have significant voting power if they vote as a block

  • The things that candidates talk about say what coalitions they’re trying to appeal to

• Party structure changes

  • Party realignment: party realigns itself, happens after badly defeated elections

    • Ex: Republicans lost very badly during Depressions elections so they realigned their party platform

    • Ex: Republican Lincoln freed the slaves so black people aligned with them, Republicans didn’t pass civil rights laws and there was a lot of poverty so black people switched and aligned with Democratic

  • Campaign finance laws

  • Communication and data management technology: there’s such advanced technology that parties can use to get data on people and use it to get them to align with them

    • Ex: Project Orca (app to tell campaign that they voted, party could see where less people were voting so they could do last-minute stuff to get people to vote) in Romney’s campaign in 2012

      • Project Orca tech didn’t work

    • Orca was a response to Obama’s Project Narwhal (could target emails/texts based on not just demographics but also psychographics)

      • Demographics: external traits (race, gender, ethnicity, age, religion, etc)

      • Psychographics: internal traits (personality, attitudes, aspirations, desires, etc), why a voter votes the way they do

5.5 - third party politics

• Third parties are never going to win an election because America has a two-party system

• Winner-takes-all system: the candidate that wins the state (for presidential elections) gets all of the state’s electoral college voters in all states except ME and NE

  • If a candidate wins by a very slim margin, that candidate gets all of the electoral votes (what really matters when determining presidency)

  • Most Americans identify themselves with one of the main two parties so they usually vote with them so the small third parties can never get enough votes

  • People don’t vote for third parties because people feel like it’s a wasted vote (which it is)

  • Only way to change it is to create proportional system (percent of vote won is the percent of electors you get)

• Incorporation of third-party agenda into main party platforms:

  • Third parties are the conscience of the nation because they focus on a narrow set of interests and are usually extreme with those so they appeal to less people

  • If their focus issue is important enough that Americans support it then it’s usually taken into one of the major parties because they realize people support it and they want those people to support them

  • Ex: populist party wanted to uphold farmers’ interests and they wanted unlimited silver coinage so they had a lot of rural support, Democrats saw how much support they had so they incorporated unlimited silver coinage into their own platform and a lot of the rural community voted Democrat

5.6 - interest groups influencing policy

• Interest group: group of people who gather around a policy issue to persuade policy makers to pass legislation favorable to their group

  • Usually revolve around a narrow interest

• What interest groups do: educate people, lobbying, draft legislation, pressure and work with legislators and agencies

  • Educate voters and office holders on their issue: there are a lot more issues that people care about than elected officials could develop expertise for, interests groups develop expertise on a specific issue and tells it to elected officials

  • Engage in lobbying: meet with policy makers to try to influence them to pass legislation in their favor

    • Ex: balloon lobby group got most anti-balloon laws removed

    • Lobbyists are usually experts because they fixate around something super specific

  • Draft legislation: hire staff to draft policy proposal and present it to sympathetic legislators that can introduce it in Congress and help it get passed

  • Mobilize members to pressure and work with legislators and agencies:

    • Ex: ask to email representatives about their bill, plan demonstration for media attention

• Iron triangle: strong and mutually beneficial relationship between interest groups, congressional committees, and government agencies

  • Committees are especially helped by interest groups (provide with policy information and campaign donations if they’re sympathetic to the group’s goals)

  • Issue networks: many interest groups come together to achieve a policy (short term)

• Hindrances and helpers to interest groups:

  • Inequality of political and economic resources

    • A main thing interest groups do for policy makers is donate so they usually favor well funded interest groups

  • Unequal access to decision makers

    • Small funding means it’s harder for someone to listen to you and work with you

  • Free rider problem

    • When large group benefits from hard work of the interest group but not a lot of that large group actually works towards the benefits by joining the interest group

    • The members pay the bills but the legislation helps a lot of people that aren’t doing anything to help

5.7 - groups influencing policy outcomes

• There are any different groups that are able to affect change in the political system

• Single issue interest groups: focus on one specific issue and devote all resources to just that

  • Ex: NRA, AARP, NAACP

• Social movements and protest movements are also important but there’s no hard line between the two (often overlap)

• Prohibition movement: mostly women, wanted to ban alcohol because they didn’t like how they were treated by their drunk husbands

  • Little organization (in beginning) so they marched

    • Ex: Carrie A. Nation - destroying bottles with her hatchet in one hand and Bible in the other

  • Eventually they organized enough to pass 18th amendment

• Civil rights movement: civil rights of black Americans

  • Civil disobedience: used by MLK, breaking unjust laws on purpose to display the injustice of those laws

    • Ex: refusing to give up white people seats at restaurants and busses

    • Led to passage of important laws though

• Groups playing a role in policy making: social/protest movements, interest groups, political parties, professional organizations, military, bureaucratic agencies, etc

  • Movements get the nation’s attention about issues that need to be changed

  • Interest groups draft potential legislation and present it to lawmakers

  • Political parties and bureaucratic agencies are involved in making the law

  • Bureaucratic agencies figure out the specific rules and details about implementing the law

  • If the law is not implemented properly then the cycle starts again

5.8 - electing the president

• If a president has only served one term then they usually are the only one running in their party (if they served 2 then both parties nominate new candidates)

  • Incumbent: sitting president, has advantages

  • Incumbent advantage

    • Has already won an election so they know how to go about it

    • The people know them/their name/how they act

    • Already has volunteers and fundraisers to help with another campaign

  Candidate first needs to get their party’s nomination (primary elections)

  • Primary elections: members of the a vote on which candidate they want to represent the party in the general elections, happen state by state so each state has slighly different laws

    • Open primary: any registered voter can vote in either party’s primary but not both

    • Closed primary: only people registered with the party can vote in those primaries

    • Caucus: like a primary but discuss and debate and then vote publicly, more time so only serious voters go

• Whoever wins the primary is presented at that party’s national convention

  • Present winning candidate and their choice for VP

• General elections: all party’s candidates run against each other

  • The people don’t actually vote for the candidates on the ballot, they vote for the candidate’s electors to vote for the president

  • Electoral college: constitutional way we elect the president (because Framers didn’t like participatory democracy)

    • Each state gets the same number of electors as they do representatives in Congress (DC gets 3 (bare minimum) by 23 amendment)

    • Most states have a winner-takes-all system with electors (all votes go to the candidate that wins even if it’s a really close margin, ME and NE split the electors)

    • Most electors vote with the state’s popular vote but some vote against it (faithless electors, rarely happens)

    • Sometimes there can be a candidate that wins more of the popular vote but doesn’t win the electoral college (because of winner-takes-all system)

      • Ex: Bush vs. Gore election (2000), Trump vs. Clinton election (2016)

    • Proponets: candidates have to campaign everywhere (not just a couple of big cities)

    • Opposition: only have to campaign to swing states

  • President needs 270 of 538 electoral votes to win - (slightly over) half

5.9 - congressional elections

• Happen every 2 years

  • All members of the House are up for reelection (2 year terms)

  • 1/3 of Senators are up for reelection (6 year terms)

• Midterm elections: congressional elections that don’t line up with presidential elections

• Congressional elections have less voters

• Incumbency advantage: sitting candidates have advantages

  • Is more prominent in congressional elections than presidential (90% of incumbents win reelection)

  • Name recognition: most people don’t know their congressional representatives but you may have at least heard the incumbent’s name)

  • Track record: have victories they can use to their advantage to show how well they’ve served their constituents

  • Established funding: once elected people spend time working on their next campaign, easier for incumbent because they’ve proven that they can win an election, staff that can advertise to people through mail and calls

  • Safe districts: super important, congressional representatives gerrymander their state’s districts to make sure that they (or at least their party) will win

• Have primary elections (like president)

  • Open, closed, caucus

5.10 - modern political campaigns

• Political campaigns have become increasingly complex over time

  • Washington said that he shouldn’t talk about his own candidacy because the people should make their own unbiased decision

• Political fundraising: super important for campaigns, spending has increased so much over the years

  • 14.4 billion spent in 2020 federal election

• Fundraising is increasing because: more time, more complex, advertising

  • Increasing length of election cycle: states fight to have earlier primaries so campaigning has to start earlier so more money is spent because there’s more time to be spending money

    • Biden was asked in 2015 to run in 2016 election and he said it was too late to start 1 year before

  • Increasing complexity: hire consultants to run campaigns, social media

    • Consultants

      • Campaign manager, public relations, fundraisers, etc

      • People that call voters to raise funds (canvassing)

    • Social media

      • Facebook has staff to help candidates spread their message (know how to target candidate’s messages)

      • Obama used psychographics and demographics to target his messages on social media

  • Advertising: billboards, social media ads, TV ads

    • See so many because they work

5.11 - campaign finance

• Have been some laws and regulations about money in campaigns

• Federal elections campaign act (FECA): created new commission called federal election commission (FEC) which had the power to regulate the amount of money being spent on campaigns

  • Established limits for how much money a person can give to a candidate and how much money a candidate can spend on their campaign

• Buckley v. Valeo (non-required): spending money on campaigns is tied to free speech (can go door to door which would take a long time or you can cut down the time through ads) so spending can’t be limited, overturned that part of FECA

  • If no limits on how much someone can give to a campaign then the person with the loudest voice is the one with the most money so it’s constitutional to limit donations so it upheld that part of FECA

    • “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”

• Hard money vs. soft money

  • Hard money: contributions given directly to a candidate

    • What was being restricted by laws

  • Soft money: money donated to party or interest groups that buy advertising on the candidate’s behalf

    • Not subject to campaign finance laws

• Bipartisan campaign reform act (BCRA)

  • Increased the amount of hard money that a person can donate

  • Tried to regulate and show the soft money that was being spent

  • “Stand by your ad” provision: required candidates to say “I’m _______, and I approve this message” at the end of ads

• Citizens United v. FEC: limits on contributions from people and corporations are unconstitutional (violation of free speech)

  • Funding of ads and broadcasts can’t be limited

  • Political spending by corporations (and associations and labor unions) is a form of protected speech

  • Corporations with more money have most influence in politics

• Political action committees (PACs): raise money to influence the population to vote for their preferred candidate

  • Connected PAC: can only collect money from members of the organization (can be donated to candidates in limited quantities)

    • Formed by corporations or other entities (like labor unions)

    • Connected to certain organizations

    • Can raise unlimited amounts of money if individual caps are followed

  • Non-connected PAC: accept donations from the public and donate directly to a candidate

    • Formed independently of organizations (usually around a specific public interest)

    • Donations are limited by law

  • Super PAC: can accept unlimited donations but can’t coordinate directly with a candidate

    • Have increased presence after Citizens United ruling

    • Can be formed by anyone

    • Most controversial because they have the power to limit democracy and give the voice only to the rich

5.12 - the media

• Media is a linkage institution

  • Linkage institution: societal structure that connects people to their government or the political process

• The media reporting what the government is doing influences how people engage in politics

  • Why it was important to include free press in bill of rights

• Watchdog agency: holds the government responsible to the people

• Newspapers were always important since colonial times

• Telegraph (mid 19th century): news could be delivered much faster from a lot more places

• Radio (late 19th-early 20th century): first mass media, broadcast things into people’s homes

  • Used a lot by Roosevelt (fireside chats where he would explain his policies)

• Television (1950s-60s): news personalities came on TV nightly to tell them what happened that day

  • Important in public understanding of Vietnam war (reporters that were there showed that it wasn’t going as great as the president said)

  • Created a gap in trust of government

• Internet (late 90s) and social media (2000s): changed the way Americans get news more than anything else

  • Decide what news to consume (algorithms show the news we like)

• News events: important things that happen

• Investigative journalism: long-term, expose corruption in government and/or society

  • Progressive era: people like Upton Sinclair exposing flaws in meat packing industry

  • The people like it but politicians don’t

  • Put pressure on representatives to pass certain laws

    • Ex: Congress passed pure food and drug act after Sinclair’s book

• Election coverage/political commentary: know who is running for office

  • Horse race journalism: people want to publish polling numbers ASAP so the numbers fluctuate a lot so elections turn into popularity contests (not thinking about candidate)

5.13 - changing media

• Media outlets have changed in the way they deliver news (became more narrow and partisan over time)

  • Most news is there to encourage a particular viewpoint (biased)

• Media bias: has always been around but is becoming harder to detect with algorithms and other things

  • Algorithms only give you the stories you read a lot and so you keep reading that type and over time you start to believe those views and think that’s the only truth that exists

• Fairness doctrine: news outlets had to spend time researching different perspectives on important issues, can backfire though

  • Ex: people were talking about all the pollution and bad stuff caused by cigarattes so the companies told them to look at the pros of cigarettes to

  • Removed in 1980s

• Partisan radio shows started after the fairness doctrine was undone, and that led to partisan news stations

• Detecting media bias

  • Determine ideology of reporters: most tend to lean Democratic

  • Examine the character of the reporting: Democratic reporters show Democratic representatives as being bipartisan (working to compromise) and show Republican ones as stubborn and the opposite is true for Republican reporters

• Most media companies are for-profit so their main goal isn’t to properly inform people, they jsut want to make as much money as possible by keeping people watching

• Networks have changed programming to fit their audience

  • Ex: CNN appeals to liberals and FOX appeals to conservatives but both say they’re presenting facts in a balanced way

• Social media increases participation in activist causes by bringing awareness to them

  • Strong ties: bind person to cause through close relationships

    • Ex: black college students refusing to give up white seats, connected to other people personally so they join the others

  • Loose ties: vast and shallow

    • What social media is