Chapter 20 Quiz
A self-check quiz on the elections and campaigns material. Twelve multiple-choice questions and four short-answer questions. Answers are at the end; resist looking before you have made your own attempt.
Multiple choice
1. How many electoral votes are required to win the presidency? - A) 218 - B) 270 - C) 290 - D) 538
2. The District of Columbia has how many electoral votes? - A) 0 (DC has no representation) - B) 1 (one for each voting representative) - C) 3 (the minimum any state has) - D) 5 (proportional to population)
3. Which two states do NOT use a winner-take-all system for their electoral votes? - A) Alaska and Hawaii - B) Nevada and New Mexico - C) Maine and Nebraska - D) North Dakota and South Dakota
4. The 2024 presidential election: - A) Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral College - B) Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote - C) Harris won the popular vote and the Electoral College - D) The Electoral College was tied
5. Which of the following is NOT one of the canonical six battleground states for 2024–2028? - A) Pennsylvania - B) Wisconsin - C) Florida - D) Arizona
6. Approximately what percentage of U.S. House seats are genuinely competitive (rated Toss Up or Lean by Cook Political Report) in a typical recent cycle? - A) About 7% - B) About 25% - C) About 50% - D) About 75%
7. The Senate's three classes: - A) Are determined by partisan composition (one Democratic, one Republican, one independent) - B) Are arbitrary historical legacies; senators are assigned to keep the cycle balanced - C) Were established by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 - D) Are determined by state population
8. A "closed primary" allows: - A) Any registered voter to vote in either party's primary - B) Only registered party members to vote in their party's primary - C) The top two vote-getters of any party to advance to the general - D) The party committee to pick the nominee without a public vote
9. The case Chiafalo v. Washington (2020) held that: - A) States may legally require electors to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged - B) Faithless electors must be replaced before electoral votes are counted - C) The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is constitutional - D) Congress cannot regulate state primary elections
10. Which best describes the "permanent campaign" phenomenon? - A) The constitutional requirement that the President campaign continuously for re-election - B) Modern campaigning that begins immediately after election day and never stops - C) A federal election held every year for some federal office - D) Senate elections that span two cycles to elect a senator
11. The 2024 Democratic Party demoted Iowa from its first-in-the-nation status in favor of: - A) New Hampshire - B) Texas - C) Massachusetts - D) South Carolina
12. The "blue shift" in election counting refers to: - A) Mail ballots, which lean Democratic, being counted after election-day in-person ballots, which lean Republican - B) Election-day fraud benefiting Democrats - C) The Democratic-leaning shift in suburban voting since 2016 - D) The Senate's structural Democratic lean
Short answer
13. Explain in one paragraph why the Wisconsin tipping-point margin in 2020 was about 0.6 points despite Biden winning the popular vote by 4.5 points. What does this gap reveal about the Electoral College's effect on close elections?
14. Briefly describe the structural reason that Senate elections produce different competitiveness from cycle to cycle, and explain why 2024 was a "tough map" for Democrats.
15. Name the canonical six 2024-2028 battleground states. For each, name a single demographic feature that makes the state demographically balanced enough to swing.
16. State the strongest single argument for keeping the Electoral College and the strongest single argument for replacing it with a national popular vote. (One sentence each. Steel-man both.)
Answers
1. B (270). A majority of 538 = 270. The 538 total comes from 435 House members + 100 Senators + 3 for DC.
2. C (3). The Twenty-Third Amendment gives DC the number of electors equal to the smallest state, which is 3.
3. C (Maine and Nebraska). Both use a hybrid system where two electors go to the statewide winner and the rest go by congressional district.
4. A. Trump won both the popular vote (about 1.5 points) and the Electoral College (312–226). This was the first Republican popular-vote victory since George W. Bush in 2004.
5. C (Florida). Florida was a perennial battleground from 1992–2016 but moved decisively Republican; Trump won by 13 in 2024. The canonical six are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada.
6. A (about 7%). Roughly 30 of 435 districts are rated Toss Up or Lean in any given cycle. The structural reasons (geographic sorting, gerrymandering, incumbency) produce a House where most seats are uncompetitive.
7. B. The classes are arbitrary historical legacies. New senators are assigned to keep the system in balance.
8. B. Closed primaries restrict participation to registered party members. Open primaries allow any voter; semi-closed allows independents to choose; top-two ("jungle") puts all candidates on one ballot.
9. A. Chiafalo unanimously held that states may legally require electors to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged.
10. B. The "permanent campaign" describes the modern phenomenon of campaigning that begins the day after election day and never stops, with continuous polling, fundraising, and message-testing.
11. D (South Carolina). Democrats moved their first official primary to South Carolina (with about 60% Black Democratic primary electorate) for 2024. Republicans kept Iowa first.
12. A. Mail ballots, which lean Democratic in many states, are often counted after in-person ballots, which lean Republican. The result is that Republican leads in early counts shrink as mail ballots come in. This is "blue shift" — an artifact of counting order, not of fraud.
13. The popular-vote margin (4.5 points nationally) and the tipping-point margin (0.6 points in Wisconsin) are different measures of the same election. The popular-vote margin describes the country-wide preference; the tipping-point margin describes how close the election was where it actually mattered for the Electoral College outcome. The gap between the two is a measure of the Electoral College's "bias" relative to the national popular vote — in 2020, the system favored Trump by approximately 4 points, meaning a 4-point national popular win still corresponded to a near-tie in the decisive state. This gap reveals that close elections can be much closer (in terms of Electoral College vulnerability) than the national vote suggests.
14. The Senate has 100 seats split into three classes; only one class (33 or 34 seats) is up each cycle. Which seats are up — and in which states — varies by class. In 2024, the Class I seats included many Democratic incumbents from states that had moved Republican since the seats were last contested in 2018 (West Virginia, Montana, Ohio especially). The 2024 map was structured to give Republicans pickup opportunities even before any campaign-quality factors. By contrast, 2026 (Class II) puts more Republican incumbents in less-favorable territory.
15. Pennsylvania (large white-non-college population balancing Philadelphia's Democratic vote); Michigan (large Black population in Detroit balancing white-non-college areas); Wisconsin (Milwaukee/Madison balancing rural areas); Georgia (Atlanta and growing suburbs balancing rural Republican strength); Arizona (Phoenix metro and growing Hispanic population balancing Republican base); Nevada (Las Vegas/Clark County and union/Hispanic populations balancing rural Republican areas).
16. For: The Electoral College preserves federalism by forcing presidential candidates to build coalitions across states with diverse interests, rather than running up margins in a small number of population centers — and this geographic balance is essential to legitimating presidents to a continental republic of varied regional cultures. Against: The Electoral College departs from one-person, one-vote in ways that have produced five popular-vote / electoral-vote splits and three since 2000 — meaning the candidate preferred by most American voters has, in modern history, regularly lost the presidency, which is hard to reconcile with the basic democratic principle that elections should reflect the choice of the most voters.