Voting & Elections
Terms
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- civic skills
- ivic skills include personal communication skills, knowledge of political systems, and the ability to critically think about civic and political life
- Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act
- Largely banned party soft money, restored on long-standing prohibition on corporations and labor unions for using general treasury funds for electoral purposes, and narrowed the definition of issue advocacy.
- closed primary
- a primary in which only registered members of a particular political party can vote
- retrospective evaluation
- Evaluating a candidate based on past performance
- focus group
- a small number of people who share some demographic characteristic.
- hard money
- Political contributions given to a party, candidate, or interest group that are limited in amount and fully disclosed.
- issue voting
- choosing a candidate in an election on the basis of his or her proximity to your position on an issue or issues you consider important.
- coordinated spending
- Coordinated or "On behalf of" [O.B.O.] expenditures are funds that are spent by party committees in connection with the general election campaign of a candidate for federal office. These expenditures are not considered contributions because they are not given directly to the candidate or his/her committee, but rather are spent on his/her behalf.
- framing
- The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements. (p. 407)
- prospective evaluation
- Predicting candidates' stands on future issues by positions they take on issues, by their overall ideological stances or by their party affiliations/
- soft money
- political contributions made in such a way as to avoid the United States regulations for federal election campaigns (as by contributions to a political action committee)
- nomination convention
- a meeting where delegates from each state cast their votes for political candidates
- caucus
- A private meeting of members of a political party to select candidates.
- independent spending
- can be made in unlimited amounts on behalf of campaigns with the lone caveat being that the IE staff cannot have any contact with candidates or their campaigns. Independent expenditures typically take the form of television ads but can also encompass polling, direct mail, phone banks and other persuasion tools.
- superdelegates
- Party leaders get vote, and do not have to promise/pledge to anyone
- issue publics
- subsets of the population who are better informed than everyone else about an issue because it touches them more directly and personally
- party label
- information shortcut for voters to take their cues from party. Party label provides useful information for both performance voting (voting for the party in control when things are going well and vice versa) and issue voting (the typical positions of Republicans and Democrats differ in predictable ways on many issues).
- party identification
- individuals who claim attachment to a party. Party identification creates a subjective feeling of affiliation, a psychological attachment, and emotional tie. This affects how information is processed. This power is declining because of ticket splitting and the rise of the independent voter.
- open primary
- a primary in which any registered voter can vote (but must vote for candidates of only one party)
- candidate image
- The personality of a candidate, their likeability