Revision & Exam Practice for the “legacy” A Level qualifications including:

• Edexcel (Unit 3C – Representative Processes in the USA, Unit 4C – Governing the USA)
• AQA (Unit 3A – The Politics of the USA, Unit 4A – The Government of the USA)
• OCR (F855 – US Government & Politics)

How to use these questions for revision and exam practice:

1. For short-answer questions, write a 3 paragraph response using the PEEACH paragraph structure (P=point, E=evidence, E=explain, A=argument, C=counter argument, H=how does this answer the question?)
2. Once you have completed your question, read the indicative content and the mark scheme.
3. Complete the “Make It Better” (MIB) Task:
   1. Highlight the parts of the indicative content your were able to fully explain and exemplify in green.
   2. Highlight the parts of the indicative content you partially explained and/or exemplified in yellow.
   3. Highlight the parts of the indicative content which you did not include in red.
4. Using the mark scheme, award yourself a level and a mark – compare this to your target grade – are you on track to achieve this in the examination?
5. There is also a space for you to add additional notes and/or examples that don’t appear in the indicative content, or add better explanations, or include additional, points from the indicative content.

Which groups of voters support the Republican Party, and why? (15)

Indicative Content

Voters typically support the Republican Party because of a mixture of ‘push’ (from the Democrats) and ‘pull’ (to the Republicans) factors. Groups include:

• men – stereotypically divide from women on two clusters of issues: the use of violence, e.g. men are more in favour of gun rights and military solutions abroad; and surrounding the role of government, they favour less activist governments; both views are reflected in Republican values.
• rural voters – attracted by Republican identification with loose environmental protection and support for gun rights
• white voters –Southern voters and working-class white voters in particular alienated by the Democratic Party’s identification with minority causes
• elderly voters – recently have turned away from the Democratic Party, apparently in reaction to President Obama, possibly because of scepticism over the health care reforms and budget deficit solutions (see for example http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44802.html )
• business/wealthy voters – attracted by Republican tradition of low tax and business-friendly deregulation
• religious voters – attracted by Republican association with the values of the Christian Right