Sanjana's AP Govt Blog

1.  What was the overall general finding of Broockman and Kalla’s analysis of campaign activities?             Kalla and Broockman found that outreach activities don't have much of an effect on voters' choice of candidate in general elections. 2.  What two time frames did Broockman and Kalla analyze in their study?             They analyzed campaign efforts two months before the election and right before election day. 3.  At what rate did they find that people were actually persuaded with campaign activities close to the election?             Kalla and Broockman found that, if the campaign action happens within two months of election day, the average effect on voter preferences was effectively zero. About one in 800 people reached were persuaded, they estimate.  4. How were the results differ...

1. Why do conservatives want to hold this event at Cal-Berkeley?             Maybe the organizers really want to gather an audience that will listen to what the speakers have to say. Mostly, though, they want to lay down a marker at what they regard as a center of intolerance for conservative views. And they probably expect some disruptions that will, they hope, discredit their opponents.   2. What is the initial position a public university should take when they get a request to host a speaker?             Yes they can speak, but the school has to work out the logistics of the event first. 3. What are "content neutral" rules?             Content neutral means that the officials telling the organizers to move or reschedule their event are not basing their decision on what the demonstrators are going...

1. How popular were Clinton and Trump compared to past candidates for president?               Trump and Clinton were the No. 1 and No. 2 least-popular nominees on record, and it wasn’t particularly close. Trump and Clinton were in a slug-fest where the pivotal voters disliked both of them and — in many cases — ended up voting for neither. 2. How much did minor party voting increase from 2012 to 2016?             The Libertarian party candidate's support tripled to 3.27% of the the vote and the Green Party candidate tripled her support too to 1.06% of the vote. 3. How did Clinton's negative attacks on Trump, combined with minor party candidates, end up hurting her?             Exit polls indicate that a majority of voters were persuaded by Clinton’s arguments that Trump was unqualified and temperamentally uns...

1. What percentage of Americans voted in the 2012 election?  What percentage of registered voters voted in the 2012 election?             58.6% of Americans voted in the 2012 election; 84% of the registered voters voted.. 2. How do state requirements to register ahead of time prevent people from voting?             State requirements to register ahead of time prevent people from voting because they bar ex-felons from voting. Also, a lot of people simply miss the deadline for voting because registration dates vary from state to state. 3. What reason do most people give for not participating in the election?             Most people don't vote because they weren't interested in voting at all or didn't like the candidates or didn't care. A lot of people think that their vote doesn't matter. 4. How do families a...

1. Why is President Trump taking action over Labor Day Weekend?             This is because if Trump didn’t end DACA before September 5, a group of state attorneys general, led by Texas, threatened to sue to do it for him . 2. Who was the DREAM Act intended to benefit?             DACA is a program intended to protect DREAMers who are unauthorized immigrants brought to the US as children. 3. What did DACA do to help these same people?             While it didn’t give them a path to citizenship, DACA offered DREAMers a temporary grant of protection from deportation and a permit to work legally in the US. 4. What requirements do people have to meet in order to be eligible for DACA?             To apply for DACA, immigrants have to have come to the US before 2007, and have been 15 or...

1. What are the two sides in the argument over "sanctuary cities"?             The two arguments are that we should either resist aggressive anti-immigration policies or support them. 2. What does Chester mean by "distributism"?             He argues for the distribution of economic and political decision-making to very local levels, which means spreading power away from the national level to the local level. 3. How do liberals and conservatives tend to feel about devolution?             Conservatives generally favor more devolution while liberals advocate for ma stronger federal government. 4. Why do liberals find themselves increasingly supporting devolution?             Liberals find themselves increasingly supporting devolution, especially to cities, b...

1. What exactly does the ACLU advocate for?             The ACLU advocates to defend protester’s rights, always defending the right to free speech even for groups such as white nationalists. 2. How did the ACLU get involved in Charlottesville?             The ACLU defended the rights of the protesters in Charlottesville like when the city tries to revoke the protest permit of one of the rally organizes. 3. Why have liberals increasingly backed the ACLU in the last year?             With the rise of Donald Trump, liberals have increasingly backed the ACLU because organization vowed to hold the administration accountable in court. 4. What argument does the ACLU make about governments and free speech?             The ACLU argues that free speech rights must b...