Chapter 19 Self-Check Quiz

This quiz covers the major concepts of Chapter 19. There are 12 multiple-choice questions and 4 short-answer questions. Answers and explanations are at the end.

Multiple Choice

1. Which of the following best describes the "three faces" of a political party?

a. Federal, state, and local b. Party-as-organization, party-as-identification, party-as-government c. Conservative, moderate, progressive d. Voters, donors, officeholders

2. Duverger's Law predicts that:

a. Parliamentary systems tend toward two-party equilibrium b. Single-member-district plurality voting tends toward two-party equilibrium c. Proportional representation tends toward two-party equilibrium d. Authoritarian systems tend toward two-party equilibrium

3. The two effects through which Duverger's Law operates are:

a. Mechanical (small parties get few seats) and psychological (voters anticipate this and vote strategically) b. Constitutional and statutory c. Cultural and economic d. Federal and state-level

4. The Republican Party was founded in:

a. 1789 b. 1828 c. 1854 d. 1932

5. The Sixth Party System is most commonly dated as beginning with:

a. 1932 and FDR's New Deal coalition b. 1968 and Nixon's election c. 2008 and Obama's election d. 2016 and Trump's election

6. The "party decides" thesis, as articulated by Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller (2008), holds that:

a. Voters, not party leaders, decide presidential nominations b. Party insiders coordinate to effectively choose nominees in the post-1972 primary system c. Convention delegates decide nominations through floor maneuvering d. The candidate with the most money always wins

7. Which of the following primaries provides the strongest test of the "party decides" thesis as a counterexample?

a. The 2008 Democratic primary b. The 2012 Republican primary c. The 2016 Republican primary d. The 2020 Democratic primary

8. The 2024 election produced which of the following voter-coalition patterns?

a. White college graduates and white non-college voters voted similarly b. Hispanic voters supported Republicans by their largest margin in modern history c. The education gap among white voters reached approximately twenty points d. The gender gap disappeared

9. Which state was the first to adopt Ranked-Choice Voting for federal races?

a. Alaska b. California c. Maine d. Vermont

10. The Burlington, Vermont 2009 mayoral election is cited by RCV critics because:

a. The election was canceled due to ballot errors b. The Condorcet winner (the candidate who would have beaten any other candidate head-to-head) lost c. The voting machines failed d. Turnout was unusually low

11. The most successful third-party presidential candidacy of the post-WWII era, by share of the popular vote, was:

a. George Wallace in 1968 (13.5%) b. John Anderson in 1980 (6.6%) c. Ross Perot in 1992 (18.9%) d. Ralph Nader in 2000 (2.7%)

12. The Tea Party movement (2009–2014), the Bernie Sanders coalition, and the MAGA movement share which of the following structural characteristics?

a. All three formed independent third parties b. All three are explicitly multi-racial coalitions c. All three pursued change through major-party primaries rather than third-party formation d. All three originated in academic political theory

Short Answer

13. Distinguish between the "mechanical" and "psychological" effects of Duverger's Law. Give one specific example of each operating in a recent U.S. election.

14. Describe two of the major internal tensions within the contemporary Republican Party (early 2026) and two of the major internal tensions within the contemporary Democratic Party. For each tension, identify which faction is associated with which position.

15. Explain why the 2016 Republican primary is often described as a test of the "party decides" thesis, and contrast that primary with the 2020 Democratic primary as a competing data point.

16. Steel-man both the case for adopting Ranked-Choice Voting and the case for retaining first-past-the-post. Reference at least one specific empirical example for each side.

Answer Key

Multiple Choice:

1. b. The party-as-organization (the formal entity), the party-as-identification (the psychological label voters carry), and the party-as-government (the officeholders sharing the label) are the three faces.

2. b. Duverger's Law specifically applies to single-member-district plurality voting systems.

3. a. The mechanical effect is structural (small parties get few seats relative to their vote share); the psychological effect is behavioral (voters anticipate this and abandon small parties strategically).

4. c. 1854. The Republican Party emerged from the splintering of the Whigs over slavery.

5. b. 1968. Nixon's election with a Southern Strategy that began the long realignment of the South toward the Republican Party.

6. b. The thesis holds that party insiders — donors, elected officials, activists, and key constituency leaders — effectively coordinate to select nominees, even without formal control of the convention.

7. c. The 2016 Republican primary, in which Donald Trump won the nomination despite opposition from much of the party establishment.

8. c. The education gap among white voters reached approximately twenty points in 2024 (a sixteen-point swing from 2000 to 2024 among white college graduates alone).

9. c. Maine adopted RCV for federal races by 2018 (after a 2016 ballot referendum and constitutional litigation).

10. b. The Burlington 2009 election produced a winner who was not the Condorcet winner — that is, a candidate who would have lost in a head-to-head race against the eventual winner-by-elimination.

11. c. Ross Perot's 1992 candidacy at 18.9% remains the largest third-party share since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.

12. c. All three were factional movements that pursued change through the existing major parties rather than through third-party formation. This is a structural feature of the U.S. system that Duverger's Law and the other institutional barriers reinforce.

Short Answer:

13. The mechanical effect of Duverger's Law is structural: in single-member-district plurality voting, a party with 15% of the national vote that is not regionally concentrated wins zero seats, whereas a proportional system would give it 15% of seats. The psychological effect is behavioral: voters who understand the mechanical effect anticipate it and vote strategically, abandoning small-party first preferences in favor of viable major-party candidates ("voting for the lesser evil").

A recent example of the mechanical effect: in 2016, the Libertarian Party (Gary Johnson) received 3.3% of the popular vote and won zero electoral votes, House seats, or Senate seats. A recent example of the psychological effect: polling on Bernie Sanders supporters in the 2016 Democratic primary showed many ranked Sanders highest in personal preference but reported voting for Hillary Clinton in the general election against Trump, knowing a third-party vote would not produce a Sanders-aligned outcome.

14. Republican tensions: (a) National-conservative versus libertarian — the MAGA wing favors industrial policy and tariffs; the libertarian wing favors free trade and free movement of capital. (b) Isolationist versus interventionist — the MAGA wing has been skeptical of NATO and large-scale Ukraine aid; the traditional foreign-policy establishment favors continued American leadership and alliance commitments.

Democratic tensions: (a) Progressive versus moderate — the progressive wing (Sanders, the Squad) favors Medicare for All and the Green New Deal; the moderate wing (Problem Solvers, Center for American Progress) favors incremental ACA expansion and decarbonization through tax incentives. (b) Identity-focused versus class-focused — the identity-focused wing argues racial and gender justice should be central to Democratic messaging; the class-focused wing (Shor, Teixeira-influenced analysts) argues the party has lost ground with working-class voters by appearing to prioritize cultural over economic concerns.

15. The "party decides" thesis (Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller 2008) holds that party insiders effectively coordinate to select presidential nominees in the post-1972 primary system, even without formal control of conventions. The 2016 Republican primary tested this thesis severely: Donald Trump won the nomination despite the opposition of most major Republican elected officials, donors, and movement-conservative intellectual leaders. Endorsement data shows that Trump received fewer establishment endorsements before any state had voted than any modern Republican nominee. The party-as-organization could not stop him.

The 2020 Democratic primary, by contrast, supported the thesis. After Biden's poor early-state showings, a coordinated establishment endorsement (Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and a string of Black mayors and members of Congress) coalesced after his South Carolina victory, and the field consolidated rapidly behind him. The party-as-organization could and did effectively coordinate. Together, the two primaries suggest the "party decides" thesis is not dead but is conditional — operating under some conditions (smaller fields, strong establishment unity around an acceptable candidate, candidates running on the party's existing ideology) and not under others (large fields, divided establishment, candidates running explicitly against the party-as-organization).

16. Case for RCV: Ranked-Choice Voting eliminates the spoiler problem and allows voters to support their genuine first preferences without strategic-voting penalty. The Alaska 2022 special election, in which Mary Peltola defeated Sarah Palin, represented an outcome where the eventual winner had broader transitive support across multiple ranking levels — exactly the kind of consensus-building outcome RCV is designed to produce. Maine's 2018 ME-2 result similarly produced a winner (Jared Golden) who had majority support after second-round transfers.

Case for FPTP: First-past-the-post is simple, immediately understandable, and produces clear winners without the complexity of multiple counting rounds. The Burlington 2009 mayoral election produced what RCV critics call a paradoxical outcome — a candidate who could have beaten any other candidate head-to-head (the "Condorcet winner") lost under the elimination rules. In a low-trust environment, where voters need to understand and accept election outcomes, the additional complexity of RCV may produce results that voters cannot easily explain or trust. Burlington's subsequent repeal of RCV (later partially restored) suggests voters in some jurisdictions experience this trade-off as a net negative.