AP GOV UNIT III
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Created by:
elimchayseng13 on October 14, 2012
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125 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 527 Committees | Advocacy groups that can receive and spend unlimited amounts of money in elections as long as they do not coordinate with candidates' campaign organizations or political parties in support of or opposition to a candidate. |
| Hard Money | Funds, contributed directly to candidate campaigns, that are subject to government regulation. |
| Soft Money | Funds contributed to political parties for get-out-the-vote drives, party-building activities, and issue advertising that was not subject to contribution or expenditure limitations as long as it was not used directly for candidate advertising. |
| Bipartisan Campaign Reform | Also known as McCain-Feingold, this federal law placed limitations on soft-money contributions by political committees and prohibited corporations and labor unions from advocating for or against a candidate via broadcast, cable or satellite prior to presidential primaries and the general election. |
| Daisy Ad | A famous ad, produced by Democratic presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson' s campaign against Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, that appealed to voters' fear of a nuclear attack. |
| Electoral College | The 538 electors who choose the president and vice president by majority vote. |
| Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) | A federal law originally passed in 1971 that limited the amount of money that individuals, political parties, and political groups could contribute to campaigns. |
| Federal Election Commission (FEC) | The institution that oversees campaign finance, including campaign contributions and candidate expenditures. |
| Kennedy-Nixon Debate | The first-ever televised presidential debate between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy in 1960. |
| Super Tuesday | A Tuesday, usually in February or March, when a large number of states hold their presidential primary elections. |
| Swift Boat Ad | An ad produced by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, challenging Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War record, that aired during the 2004 election. |
| Tea Party | A grassroots movement with conservative leanings that emerged in 2009 to protest government taxing and spending policies. |
| Ad Watches | Media and academic efforts to analyze campaign ads and point out their inaccuracies. |
| Attack Ads | Campaign ads that disparage the opposing candidate's qualifications, character, image, record, and issue positions. |
| Battleground States | States that are highly contested where either candidate could win in a presidential election. |
| Candidate Image | Those aspects of a candidate's background, experience, and personal qualities that are presented to the public in order to influence people's voting decisions. |
| Caucuses | Meetings of party members at which delegates to the nominating convention are selected; these delegates then decide on the party's nominee, who will run in the general election. |
| Convention Delegates | Party regulars who attend the national nominating conventions and choose the presidential nominee. |
| Debates | Formal meetings between candidates running for office, typically moderated by an impartial party, that allow candidates discuss issues and policy positions. |
| Front-Load Primaries | Primaries that states hold early in the process in order to increase their influence over who secures the presidential nomination. |
| General Election | An election, typically held after the political parties have chosen their nominees through caucuses or primaries, that decides who will hold an office, such as a congressional representative or president. |
| Gerrymander | To draw congressional districts in such as way as to give one political party the advantage in electing its candidates. |
| Horse Race Coverage | News-media election coverage that emphasizes who is winning and losing the race. |
| Incumbency Advantage | The advantage generally enjoyed by sitting members of the House of Representatives in getting reelected to office due to better organized campaigns, greater name recognition, more funding, and support from interest groups. |
| Initiative | A process whereby voters propose and pass laws to amend the state constitution or place a proposal on an election ballot. |
| Mashup | A digital presentation that combines material from a variety of sources, such as voter-produced campaign videos that combine existing footage of candidates with original content. |
| Meetups and Tweetups | Meetings of voters during campaigns that are organized through social media. |
| Microtargeting | Use of computers and mathematical models to identify people's vote preferences based on a variety of factors ranging from their partisan preferences to their purchasing history. |
| Midterm Elections | Elections held in nonpresidential election years that often are viewed as a referendum on the performance of the sitting president or the party controlling the House or Senate. |
| National Nominating Conventions | Meetings held by political parties to formalize the selection of their candidates for president and vice president and to establish a party platform |
| Party Indentification | A person's affiliation with a political party that can be a strong predictor of his vote choice in an election. |
| Photo Ops | Staged events designed to depict a candidate favorably in the media. |
| Podcasts | Digital audio or video pieces distributed by political campaigns, parties, and interest groups about a candidate, issue, or event that can be accessed conveniently on a computer or handheld digital device. |
| Political Action Committee (PAC) | Funds associated with business or labor organizations or with politicians and created in order to finance candidates' campaigns. |
| Postconvention "Bounce" | A temporary increase in opinion-poll standings experienced by presidential nominees immediately following the national nominating convention. |
| Primaries | Elections in which party members vote for delegates to the nominating convention; these delegates then choose the party's nominee, who will enter the general election. |
| Primary Election | An election that decides who will be a political party's nominee for an office in the general election. |
| Recall | An election that allows voters to remove an elected officeholder |
| Referendum | A process whereby the state legislature refers a proposal to citizens who vote to either approve or reject the measure. |
| Retail Policies | Campaign activity, also known as field operations, in which candidates engage in person-to-person encounters with potential voters. |
| Social Media | Digital media platforms that allow users to create and share content easily and that have been used in elections to share candidate information and videos, organize events, and collect campaign donations. |
| Sound Bites | Brief phrases uttered by candidates that are designed to be compelling and fit into news stories. |
| Super Delegates | Delegates to the Democratic National Convention who are party luminaries, members of the Democratic National Committee, governors, and members of Congress. These delegates do not have to run for delegate in caucuses or primaries. |
| Video-Sharing Platforms | Digital media that allow people to post campaign-related videos and share them with others through links, e-mail, and social media |
| Wedge Issues | Issues that cut across party lines and that can be used by candidates to attract voters who affiliate with the opposition party. |
| Wikileaks.org | An organization that exposes the secrets of governments, corporations, and other institutions. |
| Agenda Setting | The power of the media to tell the public what subjects and issues to think about. |
| Attack Dogs | Journalists whose stories about government and politics are highly negative and focus on blunders and disasters, scandals and corruption. |
| Beats | Institutions, organizations, and subjects that a reporter is assigned to cover regularly. |
| Blogs | Online diaries whose authors post information, including ideas and opinions. |
| Communication | The process of transmitting or exchanging information. It can involve asserting, arguing, debating, deliberating, contacting, pressuring, appealing to, cajoling, and addressing. |
| Framing | The central idea or theme with which media personnel organize a story and thus give it a point of view. |
| Indexing | When journalists index the news to the debate about an issue and policy among officials and politicians. |
| Information | Facts, knowledge, and views that people communicate about subjects and events. It encompasses news, opinion and commentary, and the contents of entertainment |
| Investigative Reporting | Intensive research by journalists usually into subjects that those involved don't want exposed. |
| Lap Dogs | Journalists when the government's perspective (overwhelmingly) dominates their news stories |
| Mass Media | Well-established communication formats, such as newspapers and magazines, network television and radio stations, designed to reach large audiences. |
| Mobilize | To encourage, even inspire, individuals to engage in political behavior and action. |
| New Media | Forms of electronic communication made possible by computer and digital technologies. |
| News | Reports by journalists of selected events commonly involving violence, conflict, disasters, and scandals. |
| Objectivity | In news reporting, impartiality and fairness, and the reporting of facts without opinion and including different sides of an issue. |
| Priming | When media (news stories) ascribe responsibility for a problem to a person or institution. |
| Scoops | News obtained ahead of other reporters. |
| Sound Bites | Brief phrases uttered by candidates that are designed to be compelling and fit into news stories. |
| Sources | People, often in government, who, for one reason or another, provide reporters with information. |
| Spin | To interpret information to support one's point of view, or at least to put the best face on events. |
| Watchdogs | Journalists when their news stories hold people in power accountable by scrutinizing and reporting their statements, activities, claimed accomplishments, and failures. |
| Wire Services | Agencies, particularly the Associated Press (AP), that cover and transmit news stories from throughout the world to their subscribers, resulting in similar coverage in many of the news media. |
| Access | The opportunity to meet with and communicate with policymakers |
| Free-Rider Problem | A situation in which people can benefit from an interest group's accomplishments without joining it. |
| Grassroots Lobbying | A strategy pursued by interest groups to influence elected officials by having their constituents contact them. |
| Interest Group Entrepreneurs | People who see the need for and create an interest group. |
| Interest Groups | Organizations that, on behalf of an interest or ideal, try to influence politics and public policies. |
| Iron Triangles | Congressional committees or subcommittees, bureaucratic agencies, and interest groups that together dominate policymaking in a policy area oftentimes with little visibility. |
| Latent Interests | Shared goals that an interest group can organize people to pursue. |
| Lobbying | Activities that lobbyists perform, such as informing, persuading, and pressuring in order to influence policymakers to support a group's interests. |
| Lobbyists | Representatives of interest groups who try to influence public officials. |
| Material Incentives | When people join a group for the goods and services it provides. |
| Overlapping Membership | The theory that when people belong to several interest groups, they encourage negotiation and compromise and thereby limit any one group from dominating areas in which its interests are paramount. |
| Pluralism | The theory that interest groups' competition leads to policy balance through compromise and negotiation. |
| Political Action Committees (PACs) | Organizations for raising and contributing campaign funds. |
| Public Interest Groups | Organizations that work for the common good as they define it, such as, for consumers, the environment, or the family or reform of government. |
| Public Relations | Techniques designed to promote an interest group's activities, image, and policy preferences positively. |
| Purposive Incentive | When people join a group to accomplish its goals. |
| Solidary Incentive | When people join a group for friendship and belonging. |
| "Checkers" Speech | A speech delivered by vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon during the 1952 presidential campaign. The speech was a defense against media reports that he had misused funds given to him by supporters. |
| Federalist No. 10 | James Madison's essay in the Federalist Papers that deals with the need to guard against the danger of factions whose interests might be at odds with those of the wider community. |
| Jacksonian Democracy | A period lasting from the election of President Andrew Jackson in 1828 until the outbreak of the Civil War, which featured the rise of mass-based party politics. |
| New Deal | The program instituted by President Franklin Roosevelt to lead the country out of the Great Depression; it included the creation of jobs and executive agencies to oversee the economic recovery. |
| Progressive Movement | Reformers who came together in the 1880s to fight party corruption and inefficiency that they felt was the legacy of party machines |
| Tea Party | A loosely organized, conservative-leaning grassroots movement that qualifies as a political party as candidates run for office under its label. |
| Whiskey Rebellion | In 1794, farmers on the western frontier protested against a tax on whiskey that was part of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's plan to eliminate the national debt; the rebellion was suppressed by an army dispatched by the newly formed national government. |
| Candidate-Centered Minor Parties | A minor party formed around a candidate who is able to rally support based on her own message |
| Candidate-Centered Politics | Rather than relying heavily on party support, candidates form their own campaign organizations when running for office. |
| Caucuses | Meetings held by party members to select candidates who will run for office. |
| Civil Service | Government employment that would be awarded on the basis of qualifications rather than party loyalty. |
| Critical Elections | An election where a minority party becomes the majority party following electoral victory and remains dominant for an extended period of time. |
| Cross Endorsement | The minor party practice of backing candidates who appear on a ballot under more than one party label. |
| Dealignment | A decline in party strength that occurs when party loyalty decreases and voters base their decisions on short-term, election-specific factor |
| Divided Government | A situation in which the chief executive is of a different political party from the majority in the legislature. |
| Enduring Minor Party | A minor party that has existed for a long time and regularly runs candidates for office. |
| Fusion Minor Parties | Also known as alliance parties, they are enduring or single-issue minor parties that engage in the practice of cross endorsement, backing candidates who appear on a ballot under more than one party label. |
| Issue Advocacy | Advertising campaigns that focus on legislative policies |
| Legislative Parties | Party committees that finance and manage congressional elections. |
| Mass Membership Organizations | Political parties that require people to pay dues to belong, which is not the case for American parties. |
| Minor Party | Also known as a third party, it is an organization that is not affiliated with the Democrats or Republicans, contests in a limited number of elections, and does not receive large pluralities of votes. |
| National Party Committees | The central authority in the organizational hierarchy of American political parties. |
| National Party Nominating Convention | A convention held by political parties to select their presidential candidate and develop the party's platform. |
| Partisan Identification | A person's long-term attachment to a particular political party. |
| Party Coalitions | Groups that have long-term allegiances to a particular political party and whose members vote for that party consistently in elections. |
| Party in Government | The organized party members who serve in office, such as members of the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress. |
| Party Machines | Partisan command structures headed by bosses who exacted loyalty and services from underlings in return for jobs and favors; machines were found primarily in cities. |
| Policy Platforms | Plans outlining political party positions on issues and the actions that leaders will take to implement them if elected to office. |
| Political Parties | An enduring organization under whose label candidates seek and hold office. |
| Primary Election | An election that decides who will be a political party's nominee for an office in the general election. |
| Proportional Representation (PR) Systems | Elections are held for multiple seats in a district, allowing seats to be distributed according to the proportion of the vote won by particular political parties. |
| Realignment | A major, enduring shift in party coalition loyalties that results in a change in the balance of power between the two major parties. |
| Single-Issue Minor Parties | A minor party that exists to promote a particular policy agenda. |
| Single-Member District Plurality System | Also known as first-past-the-post or winner-take all, the system in which the highest vote getter in a district in federal and most state legislative elections gains a seat in office. |
| Spin | The practice of providing an interpretation of events or issues that favors a particular side, such as the Democratic or Republican party. |
| Spoilers | A minor-party candidate who takes away enough votes from a major-party candidate to influence the outcome of the election while not winning the election himself. |
| Spoils System | Also known as patronage, a system in which voters were rewarded for their party loyalty and votes with jobs and favors dispensed by party leaders. |
| Two-Party System | A party system like that in the United States, where nearly all elected offices are held by candidates associated with the two parties that are able to garner the vast majority of votes. |
| Umbrella Organization | Party organizations that accommodate a wide range of groups and interests. |
| Legislative Campaign Committees | Party committees that finance and manage congressional elections. |
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