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From Class 2 - trustee, delegate, participatory democracy, pluralism, elitism Know the different theories of democracy and be able to identify examples when you see them. - Dahl’s definition of democracy (IDEAL) - The assumption that all people have an equal opportunity to make their...

From Class 2 - trustee, delegate, participatory democracy, pluralism, elitism Know the different theories of democracy and be able to identify examples when you see them. - Dahl’s definition of democracy (IDEAL) - The assumption that all people have an equal opportunity to make their views known, equal opportunity to vote, and an equal opportunity to learn about the policies affecting them. - Ex of this is women's suffrage where when women were able to have the right to voter participation went up. We can specifically see this when - Founders’ Perspective - Public opinion is an element of the government but not a replicated opinion. So congress was created to refine public opinion which is public judgment. - The Constitution tries to block opinion in order to promote public judgment. The courts , the electoral college, and the senate and house are the judgement. - Ex; The electoral college tries to prevent Demagogues who adhere to the public opinion without having any rationale to be put in office. Since the elections are not popular but instead electoral which electors delegate. - Delegate theory of representation - This is associated with participatory democracy where representatives should vote the way voters would vote if they could be present. Representatives should reflect public opinion and listen to the people no matter what. - This specifically relies on public opinion instead of public judgment. - What is a form of delegate theory of representation in the US? - Trustee theory of representation - Trustee theory if representation is associated with elitism and how people delegate someone to have a judgment for them. Elected officials vote for the long term interest of the people. Voters lack the information to know the long term effects of policies they are asking about and delegates are supposed to be the ones that have the expertise. - Ex; The public were against gay marriage until 2012 where the support went up after gay marriage was legalized. The public opinion did not agree with the public judgment. The government decided to legalized gay marriage not the collective of people. - Public opinion and public judgment - Democracies take into account public opinion. This is why some might correlate democracies are less likely to not be in wars and with prosperity. This tries to prevent total elitism where elites would do things in benefit of themselves instead of the public. However, public opinion is not always the right choice. - Ex; public opinion supported military intervention in iraq at first Until 2006. - Participatory democracy - Democracy is majority rule by disaggregated individuals, not groups.. Listen to the voters/opinion polls. Something like George Gallup and Thomas Jefferson  - Pluralism - See society as a collection of groups rather than unique individuals. No objective public good, just a diversity of good. Good government should compromise between different conceptions of the good. - Elitism - There are two types of elitism, the one through delegate theory of representation (Benign) and the one that those in power would want to benefit themselves. Karl Marx might identify them as capitalist and some might identify them as majority groups. But when thinking about democracy we think about the first one where delegates do what’s best for people, even if they don’t know it. - Ex; Listen to the experts in the federal bureaucracy From Class 3 - representative sampling, margin of error, random digit dialing, question wording effects, question order effects Know the challenges of completing a successful opinion poll and be able to identify examples of the vocabulary words when you see them. - Opinion Polling - The government should take into account what the people want, which polls can show what issues are important to voters and citizens. Polling allows politicians to accurately gauge what people want. However polls can go wrong. In 2016 where all polling opinion polls showed that Clinton was leading in the polls and will win battleground states. People did not feel like they had to vote because the polls said she was going to win. - Representative sampling - Representative sample is a randomly selected sample of subjects from a larger population of subjects. Polling the entire population takes up many time. Polling a set of the population which is representatives, allows researchers to get a general feel of the entire population. - An example of not representative sampling is the literary digest predicting that Roosevelt lost the election and also Truman lost the election. They sampled people were had the - Margin of error - All opinion polls have a margin of error. The margin of error acknowledges that there is a off chance that the sample does not represent the entire population. This have to deal with law of large numbers where larger sample of data, less likely sample value differs from true value of population - Push polling - Push polling is supposed to change opinion rather than measure it. This form of polling is usually done for commercial purposes. This type of polling can include question phrasing or information about opponents. - Random digit dialing  - A method for selecting people for involvement in telephone statistical surveys by generating telephone numbers at random. The problem with this is some lines might be disconnected, people might think its a scam, some might not just answer since they are busy. - question wording effects - Framing questions may omit information relevant to answer the question, including the trade offs. However, they can also influence the way someone responds to the question or might be too extreme/biased that someone would pick the middle option if it is offered. - Question Order Effects - The way you order your questions might be able to guide the respondent in how they are answering the question. For example asking someone if they are happy and asking if you approve of Obama's job as president, it would make someone feel a certain way to respond. This example is a form of priming where you are asking someone a question that would gear them up to answer the next question From Class 4 - political socialization, generational effects, life-cycle effects, most important influences on socialization, effects of education Be able to define them and identify examples of the words when you see them. - Political socialization - The process by which generations of people acquire political value. People can acquire their political value from anywhere. People usually do it with their family. Family is not something we chose, it is something we are born into. Since children are the most impressionable, they can learn it from their family. - Ex; Male children with sister more likely to be republican which can be due to the gender role they have to subdue - Political socialization also can be from Peers, education like college, - Ex; hillary clinton become a democrat in college - Generational effects - Certain events shape entire generations. Not the same as being a different age since you can experience something with your generation that you fully retain since you were older while someone that was a month old would not. Generation effect is the common experience from people of that generation that shifted your view and everyone else - Ex; silent generation might have specific view about the great depression and be more democrat than someone that lived through that same events - Since the silent generation were most impressionable since they were young - Ex; Baby boomers is more support for marijuana than gen x - Baby boomers are the generation of the hippies - Ex; Same-sex marriage  - Support differs among groups with gen z being the highest since it was during their time - Life cycle effects - Some issue positions tend to change with age. Some issue position tend to change with age - Ex; someone that is younger and has kids might want funding for public schools and dont care if property taxes go up. But if they are like 70 have no more kids in the household they don't care - Ex; Some say that when you grow older, you care more about the economy - Selection effect - Peers, school, religion, location, and media influences have large selection effects. With a selection effect, the influence of a variable is due to people choosing exposure to that variable. Family would be the most influential in early days since caregivers are not something a kid can selected. - Most important influences on socialization - The most important influence on socialization is family.* Refer to political socialization.* During the Prepubescent years, you listen to what your parents tell you and also what the government does do because you see both as an authoritative figure - Ex; Black teenagers are more likely to agree with their parent than hispanic teens so they might have similar - Ex; in class Longitudinal studies - High school seniors and their parents were surveyed in 1965 and in 1997 - Male children with sister more likely to be republican - This could be because they were instructed into gender roles - Children would more likely to agree with their parents when they were younger. - Effects of education - Education during K-12 might not have as much influence as college. Children have to learn and are pushed to it. students don't always listen, agree or retain. This has to deal with choice. However, since college is what someone chooses to expose themselves to, they are able to do so. From Class 5 - Know how people divide along ideological and partisan lines by class, education, race, religion, and region. Know recent (since 2016) changes. - Do people align with identities - Voters are mostly sociotropic (benefiting everyone instead of the individual) not pocketbook voters. Narrow self-interest does not consistently predict opinion  stances. For example, Rich people are less likely to prioritize economic issue and a sizable minority support raising their own taxes - Subjective class - Class is subjective when we view opinion. There are about Lower class: 9%, working class 47%, middle class 41%, upper class 3%. This is subjective since someone might interpret the meaning of class differently. When cant use objective class since classifying people based on income is complicated due to regional differences. - However on economic issues americans are philosophically anti-government and operationally pro government. When you say that the government should decrease taxes even though its means cutting social services. But people support social services. - People think that there is not have and have nots like Britain,. They believe that people make bad life decisions. - The nation is divided into have and have nots, 1988 26% while in 2015 45% - Only 16% of american think we are class conscious. - Income increases associated with cultural liberalism and internationalism - When looking at non-economic policy, upper class people are more liberal than working class - Class or income does not show party affiliation since its evenly split - However, Recently increasing upper class support for democrats - - - Education - Education have a greater impact than income for social issues - Democrats are more likely to be better educated than republicans with most of republican base know having high school diploma - Race - white s evenly divided on segregation in 1964 but only 5% supported it in 1978. Shows how things pass over time due to policy and events like civil rights. Racism is a big problem agreements have changed over time, Black people supported this less in 2009 due to the election of obama. - Affirmative action and wording effect - When affirmative action is worded a specific way support differs among groups with black people supporting it the highest. - Age - Young people are more likely to embrace new trends from gay rights, marijuana, immigration, to outsourcing - Religion - Evangelical christians In the 1970s to the 90s the most rapidly expanding religious denominations. Most active with conservatives, But now they are decreasing and maybe because of their religious and political views  - Before evangelical thought that the bible was truly accurate. Despite decreasing support for Biblical inerrancy, support for abortion and gay marriage low among evangelical Christians - The more you go to church the more your conservative - However this differs with catholics and jewish people since they are more likely to support democrats. - Region - The south differs from other regions of the country even when controlling for other variables like race and religion - The south is still conservative - With white southerners less democratic than republican - Gender - Since 1988 women have been 10% more likely to identify as democratic…. The reason because of men moving towards republicans - Women more strongly opposed to the US of the use of physical force than men. Women are more likely to oppose war. However they are just about the same to support abortion which is the same across gender. - Women have higher voter turnouts with higher education also playing a factor in high turnout rate. - Abortion - Most americans take a middle of the road approach even in red states - Now republicans and democrats are more extreme in how abortion should be seen instead of abortion up until the 8 week From Class 7 - Know the different information shortcuts, Somin’s critique of them, and be able to recognize examples of them. - People that are more informed tend to be inflexible in their views - Political Parties (80% of people uses this) - The party labels give somewhat accurate information about where a candidate stands on a lot of issues. The more polarizing/uniform/homogenous the party the more information you would know where the party stands. It gives voters a clearer choice due to this. - Somin’s critique - He believes that sometimes people can be ignorant with basic kinds of basic differences between the parties. Necessarily does not know what voters will go with even though both parties have similar views. HE also acknowledges that ignorant voters can be exploited where the candidate can change their position in order to win the majority. - Also a political party can say that they strive for an issue or help an issue be implemented but due to the voters not being informed, they do not know if it is the truth.  - This does not work on a state or local level and is different when they are more than two parties or with primaries where the party candidates are going against each ohter - This mostly works with informed voters since their views are least likely to change - *People wont recognize that their party are doing bad * - Rational Irrationality where people are biased about their parties and would not evaluate their party though they are doing bad - This shortcut should also include the criticizing of parties - retrospective voting (15% of people uses this) - Voting rather times are bad or good. The primarily works for incumbents. If the times are good during their presidency you vote for them and/or people within their party if their term is limited. - The economy is the most important part of retrospective voting. This is when people look at whether times are good or bad however does not apply when the country is in war. - Somin Critiques - Voters do not acknowledge the existence of major policies like in 2003 people did not know Bush implements a prescription drug benefit plan. This partially has to do with how most voters are not informed so they would not be able to determine whether the social outcome are results from public policy or those that occur naturally that are outside the incumbent control. Also policy effects can take a long time to take its effects. - Voters cant determine who they should blame or how much responsibility should the incumbent have. Example, in 2010 people thought that Obama bailed out banks but it was Bush who passed the $700 billion TARP bailout. People voted for Trump though he did not take the right precautions for COVID-19 which could have avoided our economy from shutting down. - Also people are biased towards their own party. Trump voters think the economy under Biden is bad but think when republicans were in office the economy was good but it was not.. - Changing the party the new party is not always better - Issue politics and online information processing - Opinion Leaders (from the somin reading) - Voters can respond to “cues” issued by political activists, of value orientations similar to their own. However they are more extreme in their views and are only trying to seek the attention of voters especially the ones that are uninformed. They would do this by exaggerating political events and problems. Additionally, opinion leaders are probably chosen to reinforce citizens pre existing prejudices so voters are not challenged by the information they are receiving. From Class 8 - Know the different theories of who wins primaries, and evidence for and against each theories (do we need to know about parties nominating extreme candidates - Issue voting - Based on what policy that a candidate runs, people are able to vote based on issues. This worked when parties used to campaign for candidates instead of candidates campaigning for themselves. For example, in the 2016 republican primary trump was able to run on an economic campaign that was not similar to the party. - This is said not to work anymore because candidates appears on the party line where voters are not able to distinguish people in their party on a political spectrum - Ex; They can tell you where Trump is placed and tell you a difference but not with Obama vs Hillary or Joe Biden vs Elizabeth Warren. Could not place them on a left-right spectrum or saw no difference - Additionally, might vote based on group identity - Biden’s coalition was more typical of the party than Sanders - Biden voters were more atypical of the party with being racially diverse, older, and less far left - Horse race coverage - The media covers who is ahead and who is behind (polls) and voters use this to determine who to vote for. You get positive coverage when you are doing better than what you are expecting. When you are viewed positively, you get more followers from voters since you are not gonna vote for someone that had no chance. Appearance of objectivity – no liberal/conservative bias in discussing strategy and polls. - House race is an expectation of who is going to win - Ex; Trump was able to benefits on the horse race based on the substance he said - When Trump got more media coverage because of the bizarre things that he said which started to lead him in the polls. He got more media coverage than other republicans put together. Trump got 78% of CNN coverage in his first two months but wasn't because he was doing ahead in the polls, he was talking about anything. Ted Cruz was ahead in polls of him but only had 7 minutes of coverage. - Ex; Biden in the 2020 primaries after super tuesday. - Horse race coverage does not know how to respond when a candidate is purely using the substance that they say to get ahead of the polls and how the media focuses more on the substance than the polls - Frontloading  - Winning the first early states- New Hampshire and formerly Iowa gets you the free horse race coverage since it can give a voter signal that they would win the primary. - Jimmy Carter actually first started this. After winning Iowa he gained media attention and more donations - However, the early states are not representative of the country. Iowa and New Hampshire have less population and less diversity than the rest of the country - The south created super tuesday since they felt marginalized. - Biden and Hillary won the presidential nomination because of super tuesday which is later primaries than iowa and also how democratic primaries are proportional from each state (10% biden, 40% sanders, etc.. in georgia while 5% sanders in alabama) - Campaign affects - The media likes to focus on campaign choices and strategies and day to day events like Sound bytes and gaffes , Advertisements, Events, Debates - There is really no negative to beside if you are highlighted in a way that is not pleasing to a voter, it ruins your campaign - Ex; 2016: GOP primary – Christie vs. Rubio where christie called out rubio was using the same party line that we need to take down obama - UCLA THeory of Parties - Activists and interest groups favor some candidates. Endorsements by governors, senators, and representatives are sign of who these actors choose. Candidates with the most endorsements usually win, even when you control for money. - Ex; Biden did not run in 2016 because we was not going to get any endorsements especially from Obama - However, Trump did not have any major endorsements until he became the republican nominee - Ucla theory of parties predicts nominating the most extreme person who won't be perceived as extreme. “Nominate trojan horses.”They are not seem as extreme but underlying in their parties they have agreement. They will end up trying to pass extreme bill like the affordable care act - However, sometimes this does always work like with Biden in 2020 with a republican majority and a slim democratic majority in senate - Also these extreme candidates can end up losing especially in a congressional race (ex; california recall) From Class 9 - Know how the Electoral College works and how there can be discrepancies between the popular and Electoral Vote. Know about calcification and the evidence for it. (do we need to know about the persuadable voter) - How was the electoral college created - The electoral college was created during the creation of the constitution that departed from the articles of confederation. The creation of the electoral college was created due to how minorities, specifically those in the south on how the proportion of people vs slaves in the south gave the south a disadvantage in deciding the election. - To make up for this, they split up the legislators by the amount of congressional seats plus senate (2) seats. - Change of electoral college - At first electors would vote based on what they think the people want or by the government itself. However in the 1820s some states passed that electors' vote to reflect on the popular vote and it was all over the country by the 1850s. - Electoral college defined by the constitution - Every states get a number of electors equal to senators plus representatives - State legislatures decide how these electors vote - There is 538 electors - discrepancies between the popular and Electoral Vote - The popular vote overall gives that urban areas control the outcome of the election. Does not benefit states like Idaho where there is more land than there is people. States like California and New York but specifically cities would decide the election. - On popular vote, people are based on retrospective voting where people vote based on how society is within the - Electoral Vote gives states with smaller populations a chance to influence the election yet make close elections to happen. - Since most states are winners take it all, it's easier for elections to be won with no popular vote but win the popular vote. This happened first with John Quincy Adams in 1827 and happened two other times in the 1800s and did not appear in the 1900s until 2000 with Bush and 2016 with trump. - A reason why we say close elections are more likely to happen is due to the spoiler effect. The spoiler effect is people that vote for third party while they could be voting for people from primary parties. Ex; in the 2000 election in florida, Bush and Gore differentiated by only 500 votes but the third party got like 60,000. - Spoiler effect can have a good effect with the senate runoff in 2020 and 2022 where candidates would have to get over 50% of the vote. - Some might say that we can just switch to proportional voting but some states might be against that because they dont want to give electoral votes to someone that is opposite of their party.  - Electoral vote also put the election into the hands of swing states that are not representative of the rest of the country. They are more white, less college education, more preservationist - Calcification - Calcification is basically polarization but more extreme. It shows Increasing homogeneity within parties , Increasing heterogeneity between parties , Importance of identity inflected issues , Partisan parity within the electorate. This overall makes the stakes of winning elections very high since the other side is as far as you which both is in rich to win (they have to get the moderates) - Evidence - Retrospective voting is becoming less prominent when the electorate becomes more calcified and more partisan since they believe their party is good with the economy - The agreement of immigration was similar among parties in the 20th century but now thats over. - Partism parity where the age of election landslides are over - Issues are becoming polarizing even though they should not - For example; covid 19 - Elections are looking the same - Some states voted differently - The same is for 2016 vs 2012 but in 2020 vs 2016, the states are voting in a similar pattern - Like Iowa is voting red for every election and we see the same swing states From Class 10 - Know the results of the Citizens United decision and the difference between PACs and SuperPACs. Know who contributes to SuperPACs and what the advantages and disadvantages are. Know the major legal regulations on PACs. Know what public financing means and what has happened when it has been tried.