American Government III and Political Science: Opinion, Elections, Media, Parties, Groups; Method, Ideology, Regimes, the World

This is Unit Nine of Social Sciences and History, part one of two: American government from public opinion to interest groups. Unit eight closed on a policy's journey through the institutions. This part turns to the people around them, and it carries one idea: the rules shape the outcome. A poll's answer depends on its sample. A turnout figure depends on its denominator. A state's electoral votes go whole to the plurality winner, which is the exam's sample question five. Plurality rules make two parties. And whether a group can act at all depends on the incentive it offers. Ask what rule is at work, and the item answers itself. By the end you will be able to name a poll's flaw. To say what turnout depends on and who votes. To answer sample question five. To name a media effect. And to say why plurality rules make two parties and what cures the free rider.

Five entries on opinion and polls: where opinion comes from, what a scientific poll requires, naming a flaw, how approval moves by branch, and who listens.

Where opinion comes from.

SSH 0801 Agents of Socialization

Public opinion is a snapshot of how experience and belief make people feel about a candidate, law or issue, and attitudes form in childhood. We learn politics from agents of socialization: family, schools, friends, religious organizations, and the media; political socialization is learning a system's norms through others. With that information we choose an ideology and government's proper role.

The scientific poll.

SSH 0802 A Scientific Poll: Sample, Randomness, Margin

A scientific poll builds a representative and random sample, each person having an equal chance of selection, so responses resemble the population's, and it carries a lower margin of error, how far results may sit from true preferences; phones, online and social media are the methods. Timing, social pressure, ignorance and human nature distort even scientific polls.

Naming a poll's flaw.

SSH 0803 Push Polls, Bradley Effects, Exit Polls: Naming a Poll's Flaw

The exam describes a poll and asks what is wrong with it, and the anchor's key terms supply the names. A straw poll is informal and non-random. A push poll is biased campaign information presented as a poll to change minds, a campaign device rather than a measurement. A leading question is worded to draw the desired answer. The Bradley effect is the gap between a poll and an election when respondents gave the socially desirable answer rather than a true one that might read as racist. An exit poll interviews voters leaving the polling place. A favorability poll measures positive feeling about a candidate. A call asking whether you would still support the candidate knowing he was indicted is a push poll. A candidate leading by six and losing by two, with respondents fearing to seem prejudiced, is the Bradley effect. Ask whether the poll measures, persuades, or mispredicts, and why. The trap is calling a push poll a bad poll; the anchor says it is not a poll at all. The second trap: a straw poll can be honest and still worthless.

Approval by branch.

SSH 0804 Approval: Why the Three Branches Move Differently

Presidential approval begins high and drops with events. Congress's swings more with events and partisanship and sits far lower, hovering, the anchor says, between ten and twenty percent. The Supreme Court's is most stable, being less visible, though controversial decisions move it. The percentages are the anchor's undated characterization.

Who listens to polls.

SSH 0805 Who Listens to Polls, and When

Polls matter most at elections: candidates who poll well draw coverage and donations. A mandate, high approval, lets a president push Congress. House members track opinion with two-year cycles. Opinion does not move senators' votes, but it costs them seats, and whether justices follow the public is unclear. Diffuse support is belief that the country and its laws are legitimate.

Seven entries on voting and elections: registration's three laws, turnout's denominators, who votes, money, nomination, Election Day, and the sample question on electoral votes.

Registration.

SSH 0806 Registration: 1965, 1993, 2002

The Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty-five barred denying the vote by race. Some states require registration thirty days ahead; some allow same-day, and online and automatic registration are spreading. Motor voter, nineteen ninety-three, added registration to government applications; the Help America Vote Act, two thousand two, required accurate rolls. Residency requirements mean living in a state a set time first.

Turnout's denominators.

SSH 0807 Turnout by Three Denominators

Turnout depends on the denominator. Against the voting-age population, citizens over eighteen, a little over half vote. Against the voting-eligible population the figure is slightly higher. Against registered voters it is highest, eighty-seven percent in the anchor's undated figure. Some believe democracy needs many voters, others only informed ones. America trails nations that register automatically or compel voting. Here the rule is the denominator.

Who votes.

SSH 0808 Who Votes, Who Does Not

Citizens over sixty-five, with high income and advanced education, are very likely to vote; those under thirty are less likely. Registration hurdles and many yearly elections depress turnout, and early voting and mail ballots answer one-day weekday voting. After Shelby against Holder, states left preclearance and some required photo identification. The anchor reports the change without verdict.

Money.

SSH 0809 The FEC, Contribution Limits, and Super PACs

The Federal Election Commission controls federal donations and makes finance transparent through contribution limits and disclosure. Supreme Court decisions, Citizens United among them, voided sections, letting businesses and organizations run ads, and produced super PACs, which raise unlimited funds if uncoordinated with campaigns; PACs raise campaign money, and shadow campaigns run without the candidate. Part two carries the free-speech argument.

Nomination.

SSH 0810 Primaries and Caucuses; Closed, Open, Top-Two

State parties nominate by primary, a fast private ballot, or caucus, a public town-hall meeting mostly reserved for presidential years. A closed primary admits only the party's registered voters; an open primary any registered voter of any party; top-two advances the two leaders regardless of party. Delegates carry results to conventions, and a platform states the issues important to the party.

The general election.

SSH 0811 Election Day to the Electoral College

Election Day falls in early November, but the Electoral College, the constitutionally created group chosen by the states, formally elects the president in mid-December. Congressional incumbents win or lose with their party's presidential candidate, the coattail effect, and midterms fall in the even years between. A chronic minority's party cannot win under its state's distribution.

The sample question.

SSH 0812 Winner-Take-All and the District Exception: The Electoral Vote Rule

Sample question five asks how a state's electoral votes are awarded, and the key is that they go to the candidate who wins the most votes in that state. The anchor's key term says it in those words: under the winner-take-all system all electoral votes for a state are given to the candidate who wins the most votes there. In most states electors cast their ballots for the plurality winner, and a state's number of electors equals its representatives plus its senators. The exception is the district system: two states, Nebraska and Maine, give two votes to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each congressional district. Choose the option that says the state's votes go to the candidate with the most votes in the state. Distractors say a national popular vote decides, that votes are split in proportion, that Congress chooses, or that a majority is required. The trap is proportional splitting; no state does it. The second trap is majority: the anchor says plurality, the most votes, not more than half. The rule shapes the outcome, and here the rule is winner-take-all.

Six entries on voters, direct democracy and the media: why voters choose, initiative and recall, the media's four roles, their evolution, their regulation, and naming an effect.

Why voters choose.

SSH 0813 Why Voters Choose: Party, Issues, Past, Pocketbook

Campaigns must win undecided voters and turn out party voters; primaries turn on name recognition and issues, general elections on mobilization, with television for emotion and the Internet for interaction and fundraising. Most voters follow party; others weigh issues, a candidate's record or promises, their finances, or the candidate's physical characteristics. Incumbents hold war chests, franking and gerrymandering, the anchor's three.

Direct democracy.

SSH 0814 Initiative, Referendum, Recall

An initiative is a law or amendment voters place on the ballot; a referendum a yes-or-no vote on a government proposal; a recall voters' removal of an official. Measures need signatures, state approval, and a ballot election, and businesses and the wealthy use the process too. Uninformed voting can produce bad policy, the anchor warns.

The media's roles.

SSH 0815 Four Roles of the Media

The media are all communications carrying information to citizens: print, radio, television, the Internet. Conglomerates owning many outlets can approach monopoly and narrow the flow. The media entertain, watch for corruption, set the agenda, and promote the public good, and a beat is the coverage area assigned to a journalist. In each role the media signal when citizens should act.

The media's evolution.

SSH 0816 From the Party Press to Soft News

Newspapers were vital in the Revolution; in the party press era loyalty governed coverage; at the twentieth century's turn muckraking and professional norms arrived after yellow journalism's sensationalized scandal. Radio reached most families by the nineteen thirties, a presidential channel; television followed, used in crises; social media now speak directly. Younger viewers prefer soft news, in the anchor's undated account.

Regulation.

SSH 0817 The FCC, Equal Time, and the Fairness Doctrine's End

Press freedom is not absolute: no libel in print, no slander in speech, no troop movements or undercover operatives. The Federal Communications Commission fines or revokes licenses; broadcasts may not be obscene, indecency airs only late at night, and candidates get equal time; the fairness doctrine of nineteen forty-nine is now defunct. Sunshine laws open documents, and reporter's privilege is not complete.

Naming a media effect.

SSH 0818 Hypodermic, Minimal, Cultivation; Framing and Priming: Naming the Effect

The exam describes how media affect citizens and asks which theory or process it names, and the anchor gives three theories and three processes. Theories, in historical order from the nineteen twenties: the hypodermic theory, that information is placed in a citizen's brain and accepted; the minimal effects theory, later research finding little effect; cultivation theory, more recent, that media build a citizen's worldview through the information presented. Processes: agenda setting, choosing which issues get attention; framing, giving a story a context or background; priming, predisposing viewers to think a particular way. The network running the drought story first every night for a month is agenda setting. A story casting the tax as a burden on families rather than revenue for schools is framing. Viewers judging the mayor on safety after a week of crime coverage is priming. Ask whether the claim is about which topic, what context, what standard of judgment, or how much effect. The trap is framing against priming: framing changes the story's context; priming changes the viewer's standard for judging what comes next. The second trap is the order of the theories; the anchor moves from strong effects to minimal to cultivation.

Six entries on parties and groups: why plurality rules make two parties, a party's three parts, realignment, polarization, interest groups, and the free rider's cure.

Why two parties.

SSH 0819 Why Plurality Rules Make Two Parties

The two-party system had consolidated by eighteen sixty. Electoral rules, plurality or first-past-the-post voting, where the most votes win regardless of share, push the country toward two parties, while proportional representation gives seats by vote share; minor parties mostly serve as spoilers dividing coalitions. The anchor names no law; the witness credits the mechanism to Duverger. The rule shapes the outcome again.

A party's three parts.

SSH 0820 Electorate, Organization, Government: A Party's Three Parts

Parties exist chiefly to elect candidates, so identification is loose and organization bottom-up: precincts and counties register and mobilize, state and national levels elect major candidates and shape ideology. Party-in-the-electorate is the identifying public, party organization the formal structure, party-in-government the elected identifiers who must deliver, and a political machine trades favors for votes. Elected officials also worry about reelection.

Realignment.

SSH 0821 Realignment and the Critical Election

A party realignment is a shifting of alliances within the electorate; a critical election is one that marks a sudden, clear, long-term shift in voter allegiances. Reapportionment reallocates House seats among states; redistricting redraws the maps, and a safe seat is drawn so one party wins comfortably. Realignment is gradual. A critical election is a marker.

Polarization.

SSH 0822 Divided Government, Sorting, and Polarization

Divided government, a legislative house held by the executive's opponents, makes policy goals hard to reach, and bipartisanship is cooperation through compromise. The parties have polarized over decades, shifting from moderate toward extremes, fighting more and more divided within. Possible causes are sorting, voters switching parties as parties shift, and better gerrymandering; neither suffices alone. The anchor's judgment on consequences is its own.

Interest groups.

SSH 0823 Public Interests, Private Interests, Particularized Benefits

Interest groups may be broad or single-issue; businesses, corporations and governments register to lobby, a legislative liaison representing a city or university; membership organizations run on dues; associations join firms in an industry. Public interest groups seek goods that accrue to all; private interests lobby for particularized benefits, narrowly distributed and usually accruing to the wealthier. Socioeconomic status predicts who joins.

Free riders.

SSH 0824 Free Riders and Three Incentives: Naming the Cure

The exam gives a group's device for recruiting members and asks what problem it solves and which incentive it is. The problem is collective action: people free ride, taking benefits without bearing costs, especially when they see their own participation as not critical. Leaders answer with incentives. Material incentives are substantive monetary or physical benefits. Solidary incentives rest on people's wish to associate with those like them. Purposive incentives appeal to support for the cause itself. Small, wealthy and well-organized groups overcome the problem more easily, and disturbance theory holds that an external event can mobilize a group. Members receiving a discount card is material. The chapter's monthly dinners keeping members coming is solidary. Paying dues out of belief in the cause is purposive. A pipeline proposal producing a landowners' association overnight is disturbance theory. Ask what the member receives: a thing, company, or a cause. The trap is calling every benefit material; the anchor limits material incentives to monetary or physical ones. The second trap is the free rider as a villain; the anchor treats free riding as rational when a public good will exist regardless.

Look at what you can now do. You can name a poll's flaw, and you know a push poll is not a poll at all. You can say turnout depends on its denominator, that the old, the rich and the educated vote most, and that three laws govern registration. You can answer sample question five: the plurality winner takes all a state's electoral votes, and only Nebraska and Maine divide theirs. You can name a media effect by asking which topic, what context, what standard, or how much effect. And you can say plurality rules make two parties and that a thing, company or a cause cures the free rider. In every case the rule shaped the outcome, which is the idea this lecture opened with. Part two opens on the pathways of influence, then turns to political science: method, ideology, regimes, and the world.