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| Describes government by the few, in which the individuals in power are not titled nobility but capture power either through military action or through a political party. |
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| A type of government in which all citizens participate personally in making government decisions. |
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| When citizens look to the future while voting, taking into account each candidate's campaign promises; each election becomes an occasion to decide the future direction of public policies. |
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| Those people legally entitled to vote for an officeholder. |
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| Voting on the basis of past policies rather than guessing at the results of future policies. |
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| A preliminary contest that narrows the number of the parties' candidate and determines who will be the nominees in the general election. |
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| Final election that selects an office holder. |
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| Proposed law or state constitutional amendment placed on the ballot in response to a citizen petition. |
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| An initiative or a referendum that often provide a basis for political action. |
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| Voters who care so deeply about some particular issue that their votes are determined by a candidate's position on this one issue. |
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| Desire to be elected or reelected to office. |
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| The aggregation of people's views about issues, situations, and public figures |
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| The end result of all the processes by which social groups give individuals their beliefs and values |
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| the belief that the citizen can make a difference in politics by expressing an opinion or acting politically. |
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| The chance variation that arises in public opinion surveys as a result of using a representative, but small, sample to estimate the characteristics of a larger population. |
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| The distortion caused when a sampling method systematically includes or excludes people with certain attitudes from the sample. |
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| Small groups of people brought together to talk about issues or candidates at length and in depth. |
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| The error that arises from attempting to measure something as subjective as opinion. |
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| The time and mental effort required to absorb and store information, whether from conversations, personal experiences, or the media. |
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| A group of people particularly affected by, or concerned with, a specific issue. |
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| A system of beliefs in which one or more organizing principles connect the individual's views on a wide range of particular issues. |
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| Activists and officeholders who have well-structured ideologies that bind together their positions on different policy issues. |
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| Ordinary people for whom politics is a peripheral concern. |
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| Another term for the right to vote. |
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| The efforts of parties, groups, and activists to encourage their supporters to turn out for elections. |
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| Ballots that indicate no choice for an office (e.g. for president in 2000), whether because the voter abstained or because the voter's intention could not be determined. |
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| Ballots that have more than one choice for an office (e.g., for president in 2000), whether because the voter cast a ballot for more than one candidate or wrote in a name as well as making a mark. |
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| All people in the U.S. over the age of 18, including those who may not be legally eligible to vote. |
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| Those legally eligible to vote who have registered in accordance with the requirements prevailing in their state and locality. |
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| A shift in the behavior of a group that results from a change in the group's composition, rather than a change in the behavior of individuals already in the group. |
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| The degree to which individuals are integrated into society-extended families, neighborhoods, religious organizations, and other social units. |
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| Issues (such as flag burning, gun control, abortion, obscenity, prayer in school, capital punishment, gay rights, and evolution) that reflect personal values more than economic interests. |
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| elections held for the purpose of selecting or instructing national convention delegates. |
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| Meeting of candidate supporters who choose delegates to a state or national convention. |
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| Certain party leaders-members of the U.S. House and Senate, governors, members of the national committee-who became automatic or ex-officio delegates. |
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| Public moneys (from $3 check-offs on income tax returns) that the Federal Election Commission distributes to primary candidates according to a pre-specified formula. |
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| People who regularly participate in politics; they are more interested in and committed to particular issues and candidates than are ordinary citizens. |
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| Money contributed by interest groups, labor unions, and individual donors that is not subject to federal regulation. |
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| Political organizations formed primarily to influence elections and therefore exempt form most federal taxes. |
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| Cast by electors, with each state receiving one vote for each of its members in the House of Representatives and one vote for each of its members in the House of Representative and one vote for each of its members in the Senate. |
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| The total vote cast across the nation for a candidate. |
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| Any voting procedure in which the candidate with the most votes gets all of the seats or delegates at stake. |
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| A person's subjective feeling of affiliation with a party. |
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| The associations voters make between the parties and particular issues and values. |
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| Legislature who members serve full-tie and for long periods. |
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| The allocation of House seats to the states after each decennial census. |
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| Drawing new boundaries of congressional districts, usually after the decennial census. |
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| Drawing boundary lines of congressinal districts in order to confer an advantage on some partisan or political interest. |
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| The latest date on which a candidate who wishes to be on a primary ballot may file official documents with and/or pay required fees to state election officials. |
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| A House or Senate race with no incumbent (because of death or retirement). |
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| A congressional district certain to vote for the candidate of one party. |
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| The electoral advantage a candidate enjoys by virtue of being an incumbent, over and above his or her other personal and political characteristics. |
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| Name given to representatives' and senators' free the use of the U.S. mail for sending communications to constituents. |
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| Efforts by members of Congress help individuals and groups when they have difficulties with federal agencies. |
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| Efforts by members of Congress to secure federal funding for their districts and to help constituents when they have difficulties with federal agencies. |
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| Positive electoral effect of a popular presedential candidate of congressional candidates of the president's party. |
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| Voting in which nearly all members of an ethnic or racial group vote for the same candidate or party. |
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| majority-minority district |
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| District in which a minority group is the numerical majority of the population. |
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| affirmative action redistricting |
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| The process of drawing district lines to maximize the number of majority-minority districts. |
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| means of communication that are widely affordable and technologically capable of reaching a broad audience. |
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| Licensing condition promulgated by the FCC requiring any station that gave or sold time to a legally qualified candidate for public office to make equal time available to all such candidates on equal terms. |
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| FCC regulation, enforced between 1949 and 1987, that required stations to air contrasting viewpoints on matters of public importance and to give public figures who had been criticized on any of the station's programs a free opportunity to reply. |
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| Cable and satellite TV, fax, e-mail, and the Internet-the media that have grown out of the technological advances of the past few decades. |
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| Occurs when the media affect the issues and problems people think about, even if the media do not determine what positions people adopt. |
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| Purported ability of TV to raise a foreign tragedy to national prominence by broadcasting vivid pictures. |
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| Occurs when the media affect the standards people use to evaluate political figures or the severity of a problem. |
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| The way in which opinions about an issue can be altered by emphasizing or de-emphasizing particular facets of that issue. |
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| Rule of thumb according to which stories with certain characteristics are chosen over stories without those characteristics. |
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| A piece of film or video which shows a candidate speaking his or her own words. |
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