The Populist Party, also known as the People's Party, was created initially as a farmer organization to discuss about the economic problems the government has caused for farmers. Later, they turned political as they discovered that they had more needs such as a secret ballot, income tax, etc. However in 1896, they didn't have enough money to run again, and thus, the party slowly diminished.
Popular sovereignty is the idea that the people within a geographic territory should be able to make decisions about how they are represented or governed. The idea is to maintain the consent of the people through elected representatives. Therefore the notion of popular sovereignty is represented in the notion that "The people that live in a territory should choose whether to allow slavery or not."
Answer: These questions are answered based on a country's economic system.
Obviously the poor had no money, so the bosses of say New York would pay clueless immigrants to vote for them in elections to keep them in high city offices and to continue holding power.
