1st Half of History Notes

Conservative: A conservative person emphasizes a small powerful central government and thinks that tradition should be important in government. They also emphasize a strong national defense. Equality of Opportunity: This means that everyone has the same say in politics no matter what their background race or social status is. Free Enterprise: Free enterprise is a system where the market is free to do whatever it wants and the government rarely intervenes. Individualism: It is an emphasis on individual rights and limited government. It gives more freedom to the people and trusts them to make the right decisions. It gives economic freedom as well. Laissez-faire: Another system and idea that makes the markets free of governmental intervention and lets the market sway. It emphasizes economic freedom. Limited government: It means that the government's powers are restricted by a constitution or laws, to prevent them from assuming too much power. It gives the people freedom to pursue their own path as long as they follow laws. Liberal: It emphasizes people's freedom and a more modern way of looking at the government rather than the traditional way of looking at it that the conservative people tend to have. Political culture: It is the values that a government has within their system. The core beliefs and norms and freedoms that the government has. In the US it emphasizes liberty, pursuit of happiness, limited government, and freedom of speech. Rule of Law: All things are under the rule of law, including the government, and if they break it they will receive a punishment equal to the actions they committed. Our system emphasizes that equality is more important than the actual punishment and that the arrested person is innocent until proven guilty. This is to prevent people from receiving a false conviction or too harsh of a conviction. Political Socialization: This is how people acquire most of their political beliefs, it comes from family, where they grew up, their social circle and many other things. Baby Boomers: The generation from 1946-1964. It was such a big generation that it has had an influence on every generation, even still today. Their sheer size has shaped a lot of our country today. They tend to be on the conservative side of politics. Gen X: The generation from 1965-1980. This generation took place during the vietnam war so they tend to have a lot more skepticism towards the government than baby boomers because of the failure the government had during the Vietnam war. This still impacts voting today because these people carry the beliefs they had during that time today, which means they tend to be more liberal. Millenials: This is the generation from 1985-1996, and tend to have very different views. They all have their own opinions and beliefs because so much happened during this time period. This tends to be one of the first generations to support lgbtq rights as well and is most of the American workforce today. Silent Generation: from 1928-1945 this is one of the most conservative generations ever. The reason for this is because they were in their childhood around two wars that were a major success for the US government so they believed in more power to the central government. While they might not be directly affecting politics today most of them spread their political beliefs to the generations after them. New Deal Coalition: The new deal coalition is a democratic alliance formed by president fdr during the great depression that made an attempt to reduce poverty and increase equality in the united states. It ended up sparking the civil rights movement and was a good way to get the ball rolling for american freedom and was a core part of the democratic party. Approval rating: An approval rating is a rating given to politicians based on the public support they get. A higher approval rating means that the majority of the public seems to enjoy them. Benchmark polls: It is a poll sent out to the public to establish a baseline of the public opinion about different political things and they are used to see what their campaign strategy and how they sway the public. Entrance polls: They are given to a person before they vote and they ask who the person is intending to support, they can often be inaccurate though because someone could change their opinions inside the building. Exit polls: These tend to be more accurate than entrance polls as they ask the same thing but they are after the person leaves the voting building so they say who they actually support and voted for not just who they intend to vote for. Focus group: It is a research method used by public officials and it is a way to get a better understanding of the public opinion on issues and politics. They can often be inaccurate or cherry picked though because of the small amount of responses in each focus group. People also often can pick up on the fact that they are in a political focus group and they lie. Push polling: It is a poll that sends misleading or cherry picked information out to the public, it is often marketed as an official survey and then they alter the results or take out stuff to make the responses seem different then what they actually are to make a point about politics that is actually false. Random-digit dialing: It is a way to take a general example on a public opinion by dialing a random number. It used to work better but it doesn’t work as well anymore because of the public not having landlines or just not picking up the phone. Random sample: It is taking a random person from a certain sub population and asking them about their opinions on different political things. It can be successful and has success sometimes but it has limitations because like the random digit dialing, it can lead to people not responding. Representative sample: It is the overall system that has random digit dialing or random samples, and contains all the benefits that they have, but also has the limitations too. Sampling error (margin of error): It is the people counting the surveys taking in account how many people turned in the survey and the margin for error that they use gets smaller the more people turned it in. So the survey’s real percentage is calculated based on how many people turned it in. Tracking polls: It is a survey that is sent out every 3 to 7 days to calculate the constant stream of change in the public opinion in politics. It is used to track impacts that daily events can have on the public opinion. Bandwagon effect: It is when people support a candidate just because they think they are likely to succeed. It is similar to a bandwagon fan in sports where they support a team just because they won, not because they have a relation to them. Non-response bias: It is the fact that the people who don’t respond to surveys tend to actually all have different opinions then the people who do which can lead to inaccuracies in surveys because they all have the same opinions. Social desirability bias: It is when people respond to surveys with what they think will be socially acceptable based on who is sending the survey or who is answering with them, and this can lead to skewed results as well. Libertarian: It is a modern version of a liberal, which shares most of the same beliefs of individualism and limited government, but they also have some of the conservative beliefs too like the importance of family. In an ideal sense it is the best of both worlds. Moderate: It is a way of going about politics that doesn’t have any extreme opinions and focuses on making everything more tame. They believe that a balanced approach is the best way to fix issues.