Politics In America - Ch. 5 - Vocabulary
Terms
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- public opinion
- aggregate of preferences and opinions of individuals on significant issues.
- survey research
- gathering of information about public opinion by questioning a representative sample of the population.
- halo effect
- tendency of survey respondents to provide socially acceptable answers to questions.
- salient issues
- issues about which most people have an opinion.
- socialization
- the learning of a culture and its values
- diffuse support (for the political system)
- goodwill learned towards governmental authority learned early in life.
- generation gap
- differences in politics and public opinion among age groups
- gender gap
- aggregate differences in political opinions between men and women
- suffrage
- legal right to vote.
- property qualifications
- Early American state requirement of property ownership in order to vote.
- white primary
- Democratic Party primary elections in many southern counties in the early part of the twentieth-century that excluded black people from voting.
- poll taxes
- taxes imposed as a prerequisite to voting, prohibited by the 24th Amendment.
- literacy test
- examination of a person's ability to read and write as a prerequisite to voter registration, outlawed by Voting Rights Act (1963) as discriminatory.
- 19th Amendment
- The 1920 constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote.
- 26th Amendment
- The 1971 constitutional amendment guaranteeing 18-year-olds the right to vote.
- "Motor Voter Act"
- Federal mandate that states offer voter registration at driver's licensing and welfare offices
- turnout
- number of voters who actually cast ballots in an election, as a percentage of people eligible to register and vote.
- registration
- Requirement that prospective voters establish their identity and place of residence prior to an election in order to be eligible to vote.
- political elimination
- belief that politics is irrelevant to one's life and that one cannot personally affect public affairs.
- protests
- public marches or demonstrations designed to call attention to an issue and motivate others to apply pressure on public officials.
- civil disobedience
- form of public protest involving the breaking of laws believed to be unjust