Vocab Chapter 5 & 7

Front 1

Public Opinion

Back 1

Commonly the concept of public opinion is taken literally to mean the opinion of the public. While this is not incorrect, it constitutes a rather naïve understanding of the concept. A more sophisticated conception must acknowledge the element of publicity in public opinion.

Front 2

Characteristics of Public Opinion

Back 2

salience, stability, direction, intensity

Front 3

Ways Public Opinion affects majoritarian democracy

Back 3

According to the classical majoritarian model, the government should do why a majority of the public wants, Indeed, polls show that 70 percent of Americans think that the views of the majority should have "a great deal" of influence on the decisions of politicians. Majoritarian Model assumes that a majority of the people holds clear, consistent opinions on government policy.

Front 4

Ways public opinion affects pluralist democracy

Back 4

The Pluralist model assumes that the public is of then uninformed and ambivient about specific issues, and opinion polls frequently support the claim.

Front 5

Sampling

Back 5

sampling is concerned with the selection of a subset of individuals from within a statistical population to estimate characteristics of the whole population

Front 6

Polling

Back 6

recording the opinion or vote of.

Front 7

Skewed Distribution

Back 7

An asymmetrical but generally bell shaped distribution (of opinions) its mode, or most frequent response, lies off one side.

Front 8

Bimodal Distribution

Back 8

A distribution of opinions that shows two responses being chosen about as frequently as each other.

Front 9

Normal Distribution

Back 9

A symmetrical bell shaped distribution of opinions centered on a single mode, or most frequent response

Front 10

Stable Distributuion

Back 10

A distribution of opinions that shows little change over time.

Front 11

Political Socialization

Back 11

The complex process by which people acquire their political values.

Front 12

Primary Principle

Back 12

What is learned first is learned best

Front 13

Structuring Principal

Back 13

What is learned first structures later learning

Front 14

How family affects socialization

Back 14

Family affects socialization because family is where you learn about social, religious, economic, an political values that help shape the child's opinion.

Front 15

How Schooling affects socialization

Back 15

Elementary school introduces authority figures outside of family members. They also teach the national slogans and symbols.

Secondary school offers more explicit political content in their curricula, including course in recent US historically about American government and politics.

Front 16

How Community affects Socialization

Back 16

Community affects socialization because most of the time this group of people may be close to your age, and this results in automatic peer pressure.

Front 17

How Education affects political behavior

Back 17

Education affects political behavior in great way because it is in school when most children really grasp the understanding of government and how it is broken up. In the public school system there are supposed to be no biases but that is impossible because the teachers belong to specific political parties so they are going to automatically try to voice their opinion throughout he curriculum. While in Private school ,you can pretty much teach what you want.

Front 18

How income affects political behavior

Back 18

Normally a family with more money is going to vote for a party looking out for their interests, and those interests are automatically going to be different from those of a middle class family or a poor family.

Front 19

How Race affects political behavior

Back 19

Race affects political behavior because believe it or not humans are biased and some are racist. It just happens to be that a lot of the 1% (very wealthy) are racist and don't really care for others who are not of same race or economical status.

Front 20

How religion affects political behavior

Back 20

Religion affects political behavior not so much in America as other places. There are places in the world where their whole government is based off of religious beliefs and when some people of that nation do not agree with this beliefs, war starts.

Front 21

How gender affects political behavior

Back 21

Gender affects political behavior because there are actually people out there who still don't believe in qual opportunities, and rights for all. and whatever party supports women's rights you can bet that women are probably going to vote for that party.

Front 22

Sun Belt

Back 22

Regions of South and SW that have seen population boom, areas tend to be Republican while cities are more liberal.

Front 23

Bible Belt

Back 23

Regions in the South and Midwest that have very religious people, more conservative.

Front 24

Rust Belt

Back 24

Areas in Midwest that have seen high rates of unemployment due to factories shutting down.

Front 25

Issue Framing

Back 25

Issue framing in a political context, means presenting an issue in a way that will likely get the most agreement from others. In a mediation process, this process is quite different, and involves identifying core issues between two disagreeing parties, so that issues and facts related to issues may be discussed and resolved.

Front 26

Political Participation

Back 26

Actions of private citizens by which they seek to influence or support government and politics.

Front 27

Conventional Participation

Back 27

Relatively Routine Political behavior that uses institutional channels and is acceptable to the dominant culture.

Front 28

Unconventional Participation

Back 28

Relatively uncommon political behavior that challenges institutions and dominant norms.

Front 29

Examples of Unconventional Participation and Conventional Participation

Back 29

Voting, and writing letters to public officials- Conventional Participation.

Staging sit down strikes in public buildings and chanting slogans outside officials' windows- Unconventional Participation.

Front 30

Direct Action

Back 30

Unconventional Participation that involves assembling crowds to confront business and local governments to demand a hearing.

Front 31

Supportive Behavior

Back 31

Actions that express allegiance to government and country.

Front 32

Influencing Behavior

Back 32

Behavior that seeks to modify or reverse government policy to serve political interests.

Front 33

Class action suit

Back 33

A legal action brought by a person or group on behalf of a number of people in similar circumstances.

Front 34

Voter turnout

Back 34

The percentage of eligible citizens who actually vote in a given election.

Front 35

Suffrage

Back 35

The right to vote

Front 36

Franchise

Back 36

The right to vote

Front 37

How suffrage has expanded over time for certain groups

Back 37

The fifteenth Amendment adopted shorty after the Civil War, prohibited the states from denying the right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude".

Womens suffrage was next. The 19th amendment was passed in 1920.women often resorted to unconventional political behavior, in order for this to happen.

The last thing to happen was when the voting age was lowered to 18 years old.

Front 38

Progressivism

Back 38

A philosophy of political reform based on the goodness and wisdom of the individual citizen as opposed to special interests and political institutions.

Front 39

Direct Primary

Back 39

A preliminary election, run by the star government, which the voters chose each party's candidates for the general election.

Front 40

Recall

Back 40

The process for removing an elected official from office.

Front 41

Referendum

Back 41

An Election on a policy issue.

Front 42

Initiative

Back 42

A procedure by which voters can propose an issue to be decided by the legislature or by the people in a referendum.

Front 43

Standard Socioeconomic model

Back 43

A relationship between socioeconomic status and conventional political involvement: people with higher status and more education are more likely to participate than those with lower status.

Front 44

Reasons for low voter turnout

Back 44

US has lower voting rates than other countries because registering to vote is on you, if you don't register its your fault.