Honestly, it depends on what helps you to revise and learn things. Since Politics is an essay subject, I would maybe advise to go through lots of past papers and do essay plans & notes for what you would write for each answer. Read through the questions first, then jot down some ideas that first come to your head. After, you can go through your notes and add extra detail or points that you didn’t think about the first time round. This is really good for like a certain topic (for example, House of Lord reforms and whether it was democratic or not). I did some of these last year and it really helped me to separate the arguments like this (I did it as mind maps, but tables and things work really well too).

If you like flashcards, Quizlet is a really good website and app to use to make your own flashcards (and use other people’s). I’ve done this since GCSE and I literally just go through the textbook, type the headings/definitions on one side, and write the description on the other. If there’s a lot of content, I will usually break it down into a couple of flashcards. Quizlet is really useful because it has different settings to learn and test yourself on them, and has games you can play with the flashcards, so it’s really interactive.

Writing is effective for your memory, especially if you’re a kinaesthetic learner. So you write your notes now, condensed from the textbook, and then after you’ve done that, go through the notes you’ve made and condense them further, or go through them and write down what you can remember. I find repeatedly writing things (or saying them out loud) helps the content to stay in my head.

Maybe you need to learn quite a few definitions. You could use post-it notes for these and stick them around your room, your house, anywhere where you think you spend a lot of time, so that you’re always seeing them and always reading them. You could write the term on one side and the definition on the other, or you can just do it on the same side. If you do the first, you could put it in, say, the bathroom, and you test yourself so that you cannot leave that room until you’ve gotten the right definition, for example. 

I don’t necessarily think you have to be “super smart” to do well in Politics, because it’s very subjective and you can practically say anything and it will be right (that’s what I’ve found anyway). Definitely keep up to date with the current political climate, because you can always use them in your examples. For essay structure, I have always religiously used the Point, Evidence, Explain, Link (PEEL) method for my paragraphs, and it hasn’t really let me down so far (though I think that will change in uni). For instance, in one paragraph, my point would be one of the arguments I have for/against the essay question. I’ll use a piece of evidence to prove that point (e.g. backbench MPs do have influence in Parliament - many MPs rebelled against Tony Blair on issues of uni fees and Iraq). Then I’ll explain this piece of evidence: what does it show? What effect does this have? (Blair couldn’t control many of the MPs in his party, which means that he would have had to make a lot of concessions in order to gain the support of his party.) This is optional, but I usually like to sum up my paragraph with a short, sweet sentence about what the point was and link it back to the essay & argument. (This demonstrates how backbenchers can hold power over their party leader/PM and can influence legislation passed in Parliament.)