Political Process Questions

1. What is public opinion?

2. What are the two most important factors in determining a person’s politics?
3. Define mass media.
4. What constitutes a person’s peer groups?

5. What are ways in which elections are not good measures of public opinion?
6. What is a straw poll?
7. What are the five steps in the polling process?

8. What is an interest group?

9. What are the four functions of interest groups?

10. What is the difference between a PAC and a SuperPAC? (Might be worth looking up
Steven Colbert SuperPAC and watching his short video)
11. What are the jobs of the FEC?

12. What is a political party? What are today’s primary parties in the US?
13. Who created the first American political parties?
14. What is gerrymandering?
15. What is a multiparty system? A one-party system?
16. What are the two primary factors that affect party membership? (Not to be confused with
the factors that influence a person’s politics- they are similar, but not the same!)
17. Where did the Republican Party come from?
18. How did Republicans lose power in the 1920’s?
19. What set the ideals for Democrats moving forward out of the Great Depression? (This
question and previous question deal with how the two parties switched ideologies)
20. Identify and briefly describe each of the four types of 3rd parties.