Poly Sci Fed Ch. 9 part 1

Primaries

A closed primary is one in which voters must affiliate with a party before casting a vote (either by registering before the election or on the day of the primary). Closed, semi-closed, and open primaries. In a blanket primary, voters are given the ballots from all parties and allowed to cast votes for any party's candidates as long as they cast only one vote per elective office. Currently some states use a modified version of a blanket primary, known as the nonpartisan blanket primary. Primaries can weaken the party's eventual nominee when he or she faces opponents in the general election.

Reform and the Erosion of Party Control

A critical factor in the success of machine politics was party control of voting. local parties in the late nineteenth century printed their own ballots, called party strip ballots, which listed only their candidates, and gave them to voters on their way into the polling places

more steps to party identification

A more formal step of party identification is stating party affiliation when registering to vote. At the next level of participation, voters can become active in the party at the town, county, state, and federal level.

What Are Political Parties? 1

A political party is a group of individuals who join together to choose candidates for elected office—whether by informal group voting or a formal nominating process. Parties operate through national, state, and county committees; members include party activists, citizen volunteers, and elected officials. A party's main purpose is to win elections in order to control governmental power and implement its policies; this fundamental goal distinguishes parties from interest groups.

examples of Third Parties

A second example occurred in the late nineteenth century, when farmers were in an uproar about declining crop prices, the lack of available credit, and the constricting use of gold rather than silver as the collateral for U.S. currency. Splinter parties rose up around these issues. A little over a decade later, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt ran for president as the Progressive Party candidate.

Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and the Emergence of the Democratic Party

After winning the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson used his victory to transform his fledgling political party into a viable long-term organization known as the Democratic-Republicans (most candidates shortened the name to Republican), while the supporters of Adams and Hamilton united around the Federalist Party. The Democratic-Republicans soon split over the nomination process for president, specifically Andrew Jackson

andrew jackson as president 1

As president, Jackson worked closely with Van Buren to knock down the gates that stood in the way of public access to party decisions, to make their political party more accessible to the general public, and to attract the votes of an ever-expanding nation. They even shortened the name of the party to the Democratic Party to signal that they were building a new kind of political party organization. By 1832, the end of Jackson's first term in office, politics had changed in fundamental ways because of the nation's rapid geographic and population growth.

What Are Political Parties? 2

At the national level, the party issues its platform during presidential election years. use the term party in the electorate to describe the general patterns of voters' party identification and their behavior on Election Day. the party as an organization is created, with internal structures that guide how the party functions

Obstacles to Third Parties and Independents

Because third-party candidates can act as spoilers, the two major parties do everything they can to discourage them. Consequently, voters who consider themselves Independents do not have the opportunity to vote for candidates who might be closest to them in terms of policy preferences.

1828 processes

By 1828, the nomination process had begun to change, with nominations by parties located at the state level, in legislatures and state conventions, rather than the national Congress. parties enlarged the number of people involved in making the decision about who could run for president.

patronage system

By the late nineteenth century, a system emerged whereby the politician became the "patron" of the businessmen and workers who were on the payrolls of the federal or the state governments. Jobs built party loyalty, and those hired often had to declare their political allegiance to the politician who arranged for the job and promise to vote for him. Such a system is commonly referred to as a patronage system. The key element in this system was the loyalty of supporters who voted for the boss's preferred set of candidates on Election Day. Voter support in this kind of system was so reliable and predictable that it became known as machine politics; it ran like a well-oiled machine.

Party organizations try to exert control over the primary election process in several ways

First, state laws govern party ballot access—literally, who can actually get on the primary election ballot. Second, although party organizations remain technically neutral during the primary election season, they can steer donors toward their preferred candidates and away from candidates who do not agree with their goals.

donald trump as republican

His nomination prompted a backlash among a significant number of "establishment" Republicans who either passively refused to endorse him or actively opposed him throughout his campaign.

Anthony Downs

In 1957, the scholar Anthony Downs argued that voters whose views fall between the two parties were actually represented in a two-party system. His median voter theorem proposed that, in a two-party race, if voters select candidates on the basis of ideology and everyone participates equally, the party closer to the middle will win. In this way, moderates have a great deal of potential political influence in a two-party system.

presidential primary & caucus

In a presidential primary, voters cast a vote for a particular candidate, but what they are really doing is choosing delegates who will support that nominee at the party's national nominating convention. In a presidential caucus, which serves the same nominating purpose, the process is less formal and more personal in that party members meet together in town halls, schools, and even private homes to choose a nominee. The candidate who wins a majority of the delegates from the primary and caucus elections is selected at the national convention as the party's nominee for president.

andrew jackson as president 2

In the presidential election of 1832, the National Republicans nominated Henry Clay, a U.S. senator from Kentucky, to run against Jackson. Henry Clay lost that election to Jackson. Clay encouraged opposers of Jackson to form the Whig Party, which objected to what they viewed as Jackson's abuse of presidential power for partisan gains. From 1832 to 1856, the Democrats and the Whigs dominated American politics and presidential elections.

geolically extreme campaign activists

In today's highly partisan atmosphere, it seems as though the political center has almost entirely disappeared. The current polarization in the two-party system increasingly appears to contradict Downs's expectations about convergence to the middle.

Political Factions: Federalist Versus Antifederalist

James Madison predicted the rise of factions, groups of individuals who share a common political goal and ally with each other on a temporary basis to accomplish that goal. In the debate over ratification, those who argued for the Constitution called themselves Federalists. proponents of a strong national government (led by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams) and strong state governments (led by Thomas Jefferson)

other electoral systems work differently

Many democracies assign the number of seats a party wins according to proportional representation, based on the percentage of votes it receives in a particular election. This type of electoral system encourages smaller parties to form around specific issues and to field candidates for office. parties govern by forming coalitions. In the United States, however, the single-member plurality system encourages a two-party system, and the two-party system in turn encourages political debates that ask Americans to take a "for" or an "against" position on an issue

Parties in the Electorate

Most simply, a person can claim to be a member of a party by stating that he or she identifies with it, for example, by saying "I am a Republican." Voters identify with parties for several reasons. The simplest is the belief that the policies put forth by one party will serve their interests better than the policies proposed by other parties in the political arena. Another reason to join a party stems from family or social environment, in which being a member of a party is similar to other personal characteristics

Northern and southern Democrats were united against the abolitionist movement, but for different reasons

Northern Democrats recognized that if the slavery question came to the forefront of politics, the nationally dominant Democratic Party would be split between the North and the South. Southern Democrats opposed abolishing slavery outright or limiting its expansion because the plantation economy of the South was heavily dependent on slave labor. The Whig Party was also divided along northern and southern lines for the same reasons.

Parties in Government

Parties also serve to organize members of Congress and state legislatures into cohesive groups, known as party caucuses, which consistently vote, year after year, for the policies that the parties promise in their platforms. The party in government is made up of the elected officials who share the same party affiliation and work together to accomplish the party's electoral and policy goals.

third parties continued

Political parties depend on interest groups who agree with their policy stances to help mobilize voters; without them, that job becomes much more difficult. Candidates who are elected from third parties have little influence in legislatures because parties shape the internal power structure there. Independents have no party organization to join in the legislature. Independents must pledge to support one of the two major parties in order to sit on committees and perform their other responsibilities as legislators

progressives

Progressives launched grassroots campaigns for direct primaries run by the state for nominating party candidates. Although states were relatively slow to adopt direct primaries, eventually this system became the dominant means of choosing party candidates. The effect of direct primaries was to greatly reduce the control that party bosses and machines had over the choices offered in elections.

republican nominating process

Republicans have no requirements as to the racial or gender composition of a state's delegates, and they have no superdelegates. However, they did add a category of bonus delegates to the 2012 nominating process. in general, bonus delegates are often elected officials and loyal party activists.

Party Alignment and Ideology

Shifts in party allegiance can occur when there is an external shock to the nation, such as an economic depression or a foreign military attack. Shifts can also occur when public attitudes change considerably and one party appears to respond more quickly to those changes than another.

democratic nominating processes

The Democratic Party has had a tumultuous nominating process due to some key rule changes in the 1970s and 1980s. Activists believed that the unit rule (winner-take-all system) allowed conservative white men to dominate the nominating process. For the 1976 election, the Democrats formally instituted proportional representation; that is, the number of delegates that a candidate receives is based on the percentage of the vote received in the primary or caucus,

The Antislavery Movement and the Formation of the Republican Party

The Democratic Party's general strategy for opening a larger gateway for citizen participation in politics inadvertently encouraged alternate groups and political parties to emerge on the political scene. In 1833, William Lloyd Garrison formed the American Anti-Slavery Society to press for the abolition of slavery. the abolitionist movement grew large and vocal enough to pressure the Democrats and Whigs to take a formal position on slavery, especially the extension of slavery into western territories

the tea party

The Tea Party movement, although not officially a political party, illustrates how third parties can force the two major political parties to be more responsive; in this case, the Tea Party has given voice to more conservative voters.

Identify which issues divided the first political parties

The basic division between the Federalists and the Antifederalists over the ratification of the Constitution survived into the Washington administration to become factions; by the time of Jefferson's election in 1800, the factions had become political parties. Between 1800 and the Civil War, various parties rose and fell, but since the end of the war, the two major parties—the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—have dominated the American political system.

Explain why two parties dominate the U.S. political system

The effects of the two-party system are to limit voter choices to "for" and "against" and to discourage third parties, although the issues third parties arise to address are frequently adopted by one of the major political parties.

party machines

The expansion of party machines was fueled by a huge influx of new immigrants in the late nineteenth century who mostly settled in large cities of the North and Midwest. In turn, parties served as a type of gateway for immigrants to become integrated into American political life

national committee

The main job of the national committee is to do everything possible to elect the party's presidential nominee every four years, which requires strengthening all party organizations from the national down to the local levels. Each major political party has a committee dedicated to raising money for incumbent House and Senate members.

Party Organization

The modern political party is structured as a multilevel organization with units at the federal, state, and local levels. National committees are at the top of the party organization, and their members are chosen by each state party organization. The national committee is responsible for running the party's presidential nominating convention every four years. State political parties are the next level of party organization, and they are regulated by state law, so their responsibilities can vary by state.

The Structural Limits

The two-party system is built into the American electoral system, a single-member plurality system, in which one legislative seat (on a city council, in a state assembly, in the House of Representatives) represents citizens who live in a geographically defined district. To win that seat, a candidate usually needs only a plurality of votes, not a pure majority—that is, more votes than any other candidate, but not necessarily 50 percent plus 1. In the United States, many districts are noncompetitive—that is, one of the two major parties dominates.

Outline how political parties evolved in American politics

They have one primary purpose: to win elections in order to control government power and implement their policies. Parties organize the electorate by giving them choices of policies and candidates, and they also organize Congress and state legislatures into cohesive groups that consistently vote for the policies that they promise in their platforms. Parties nominate candidates for office in primary elections, which are open to all voters, although in some states voters must affiliate with a party before voting.

third parties

Third parties are minor political parties that present an alternative to the two dominant political parties in the American political system. They have been a part of the political system since the early nineteenth century. As frequently happens in American politics, however, third parties are absorbed into larger parties. The Confederacy dissolved after the war ended in 1865, but southerners resented northerners and the Republican Party because of both the South's physical and economic losses and the continued occupation of the South by northern troops

role of third parties

Though third parties have not fared well in national electoral contests, they sometimes find success in lower-level elections. Another example of a third party that found success in local elections was the La Raza Unida Party (LRUP) in the 1970s. Its founders' goals were to advance the economic, social, and political interests of Mexican Americans.

Define partisan affiliation and ideology

Voter realignments occur when the parties readjust the focus of their policies, typically as a result of a major event such as an economic depression or a military conflict. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s, liberals have generally aligned with the Democratic Party and conservatives with the Republican Party. The modern political landscape is marked by a partisan divide, with the parties taking on starker opposing positions and ramping up the rhetoric to the point that voters sometimes wonder if partisanship is taking precedence over policy making.

australian ballot

Voting procedures were also reformed between 1888 and 1911 as states adopted the so-called Australian ballot system, which originated in Australia in 1858, to replace the party strip ballots. The Australian ballot system introduced the secret ballot; each ballot listed all of the candidates from all of the parties who were running for office, and voters marked their choices in private. This reform greatly reduced party boss control over election outcomes.

the Pendleton Act

in 1883, the Pendleton Act reformed the civil service by requiring that government jobs be filled based on merit, not on political connections. This was the first of several laws that slowly transformed the federal bureaucracy from a corrupt insider organization to a neutral, policy-based organization.

In 1981, the Democratic Party made several other changes:

including requiring that each state's delegation comprise an equal number of men and women, and creating a category of delegates known as superdelegates. The superdelegates are not chosen through the primary voting process but rather are active members of the party who will be instrumental in turning out party voters in the general election.

One of the most important functions of parties

is to nominate candidates for office and then elect them, a process accomplished in two stages. In elections with more than one candidate seeking the party's nomination, states hold primary elections, in which voters determine the party's choice to run in the next stage—the general election.

party responsiveness

parties are most responsive to interest groups when they threaten to withdraw their support or start their own party organizations. Consequently, interest groups maintain their influence with political parties by constantly expressing their preferences on policies to party leaders and providing support only when the party is responsive to their concerns.

1972 reforms

the 1972 reforms required a certain percentage of each state's delegates to be women, African Americans, young people (defined as eligible voters under 30), and other underrepresented groups based on their proportion in each state's population.

republican nominating process 1

the Republican Party had rarely faced an internal demand for more diverse representation, so it had not significantly changed its nominating system. But in 2010, the Republican Party adopted proportional representation in its nominating system in the hopes of generating more competition and a lengthier campaign season, both of which would increase turnout and enthusiasm among Republican voters.

three developments eroded party organizations' control over government jobs and elections

the creation of a merit-based system of government employment, the introduction of ballot reforms, and a change in the way nominees for elected office were selected. All three reforms were led by Progressives, coalitions of Democrats and Republicans who believed that government had been captured by corrupt elites who were using government resources to enrich themselves rather than to serve citizens.

Challenges to Party Power from Interest Groups

the two major parties face challenges from established interest groups and from broader social groups formed at the grassroots of American politics. Over the past two decades, interest and social movement groups have become more tightly aligned with specific political parties, and that alignment has undermined their capacity to serve as independent checks on—or competitors with—political parties.