Public Opinion, Media (Chapter 10), Political Parties, Interest Groups (Chapter 11), CMPIGN, Elections, Voting

(Chapter 12)

This only a guide. Make sure to study all Tables and figures of each chapter. Also make sure to know all key terms at the
end of each chapter. Use My PoliSci Lab and Powerpoint slides for the lectures.

Public Opinion

What is Public Opinion?
What are the ways public opinion is made known in a democracy?
What is the considered the most effective way of making your opinion known to an elected official?
What is Public opinion polling?
How do we determine public opinion?
George Gallup
sample of the population
sample biais
sampling error
random digit dialing
validity
What is political socialization?
What are the common American values?
What is liberal and a conservative ideology?

Know the socialization agents. Which is the most powerful?

How does age, sex, education levels, race, and region tend to influence opinions?

Mass Media
Where do most Americans get their political information?
What is the most important source of political information
The 3 Sources of Media Power
Is there bias in the media? What techniques do journalist use to mitigate bias coverage?
Adversarial Journalism

Political Parties

The three places where we can find political parties:

8 Functions of the Political Parties



Political party defined
Define ideology
How are political parties different than interest groups?
Who voted in 2012 elections? (Demographic data) What can be said of how the electorate is changing?

The History of Political Parties: the first parties? Who created the Democratic Party? Whigs? Republican Party?
What are the party eras in American history?

Why are third parties disadvantaged in the American political system?
10 Dominant Characteristics of the American


What weakened Party Organization?
What are critical elections? Realignment? De-alignment? Who tend to be Independents? Why did so many
Americans become Independent voters?

Participation

Know the voting trends for all the various demographic groups.
What are the major suffrage events?

What were/are the major barriers to voting?
Compare US voting rates to Western European rates.
Gender gap
Describe how most Young Voters view issues compare to older voters.
Describe the Latino Vote.

Interest Groups
Why do people join interest groups? (There are three main reasons.)

Iron triangle
Issue networks
Pluralism