4.1 Midterm Predictions

1. Why was it strange for the Democratic candidate to win in the Pennsylvania district?
Trump won the district by 20 percentage points, and the turnout was fairly high

2. On the chart, what is "Democratic swing"?
It is the difference between the results of the special election and the district’s partisan lean. Partisan lean is the average difference between how the constituency voted and how the country voted overall in the last two presidential elections, weighing the 2016 election at 75 percent and 2012 at25 percent.

3. Which special elections so far have had the largest Democratic swing?
Alabama U.S. Senate (at 31), Kansas 4th (at 23), and Pennsylvania 8th (at 22)

4. How is the generic ballot polling different from the results so far in these special elections?
Generic ballot polls are from registered voters or sometimes all adults rather than likely voters, and the actual results are from who actually did vote. As a result, so far, results indicate that generic ballot polling could be underrating Democrats in this year’s midterm.

(article: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-enthusiasm-gap-could-turn-a-democratic-wave-into-a-tsunami/)

5. What is the difference in the Republican and Democratic levels of interest in the mid term elections?
Democrats are showing more interest with 60 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Clinton voters indicating a high degree of interest in the 2018 midterms compared to fifty-four percent of Republicans and 37 percent of independents.

6. What steps had Republicans taken to try to defeat Connor Lamb in the Pennsylvania district?
They spent $9 billion and had Trump campaign there.

7. What has happened to President Trump's approval ratings this year?
There is a slight increase in approval.

8. What do you think that indicates about voters' attitudes towards Republicans?
Despite Trump's slightly better approval, there has not been a corresponding overall increase in favoring Republicans in Congress. Voters likely have either had the same opinion or develop worse opinions for Republicans overall.

(article: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/18/17136140/poll-2018-midterms-democrats-republicans-pennsylvania)

Comments

4.5 Lamar Alexander

1. What bill did Lamar Alexander co-sponsor, and why does he think it didn't get more attention in Congress? He co-sponsored a bill to stabilize the market of the Affordable Care Act. However, Trump officials prevented Congress from paying more attention to it. 2. Why does Judd Gregg say that Alexander does not fit in today's politics? Alexander favors compromise while the current trend in politics involves populism and extremism. 3. Why did Lamar Alexander decide to leave his job as a Senate leader? He wanted to take a bigger role in policymaking with health and education. He felt that the leadership role was confining him from moving ahead. 4. What significant event was the centerpiece of his campaign to win the governor election in the 1970s? He walked across the state, stopping at schools and engaging with people in their daily environments. 5. How do his aides describe Obamacare? They highly dislike it, describing it as a "horrible, terrible, awfu...

1.7 Does Campaigning Work?

1. What was the overall general finding of Broockman and Kalla’s analysis of campaign activities? Campaigning basically has no effect on people's general election choices. 2. What two time frames did Broockman and Kalla analyze in their study? They looked at within 2 months of the election and also at longer than 2 months before the election. 3. At what rate did they find that people were actually persuaded with campaign activities close to the election? The rate was about 1 in 800 people reached was persuaded. This is almost 0. 4. How were the results different in the study between activities months before the election, and those that occur close to the election day? Campaigning has almost no chance of persuading people when it is close to the election because almost everyone has already decided who to vote for, often based on parties, and cannot be moved by these methods. Earlier, campaigns are more effective in changing opinions, but ...

4.3 This Week in Civil Rights

1. What question will be added to the Census in 2020? It will ask people to say which people in the household are citizens. 2. How does the government justify this addition? They say it will give more information about the United States. 3. Why do people have a problem with this addition? It could decrease the responses of people who are immigrants, particularly those who are not legal residents, of the United States and thus give an inaccurate count of population while allocating funding and determining congressional districts. 4. Why is it important to states that the undocumented immigrants that live there answer the Census? 5. What limit is put on the Census bureau to prevent the problems people are concerned about? 6. How are both critics of Trump and the Trump administration technically correct about this particular question on the Census? In previous years, the question about citizenship has appeared on a survey that is only sent to a small percentage of...

Rachel F.'s AP US Govt. Blog

Search This Blog