The Five Units
The AP U.S. Government exam is built from five units with fixed weight ranges. Every bill in the corpus is mapped to the units it demonstrates. Weights verified against the College Board CED effective Fall 2026.
Unit 1 · 15–22% of the exam
Foundations of American Democracy
The philosophical underpinnings of the Constitution: democratic ideals, forms of representative democracy, the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention's compromises, separation of powers, and federalism.
Unit 2 · 25–36% of the exam
Interactions Among Branches of Government
The heaviest-weighted unit: Congress and the legislative process, the presidency, the federal judiciary, and the bureaucracy — and how the branches check, empower, and frustrate one another.
Unit 3 · 13–18% of the exam
Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
The Bill of Rights, selective incorporation through the Fourteenth Amendment, the balance between liberty and order, and the ongoing struggle to extend equal protection.
Unit 4 · 10–15% of the exam
American Political Ideologies and Beliefs
How Americans form political attitudes: core values like individualism and free enterprise, political socialization, polling, and how liberal, conservative, and libertarian ideologies map onto policy.
Unit 5 · 20–27% of the exam
Political Participation
The second-heaviest unit: voting rights and behavior, elections, political parties, interest groups, campaign finance, and the media as linkage institutions between citizens and government.