Government Chapter 9: Political Parties

34. When did African Americans begin to change their allegiance from the Republican to the Democratic Party?

1932 presidential campaign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. create a new coalition based not on region or ethnicity, but on the suffering of those hurt the most during the Great Depression. This alignment sought to bring African American voters in as a means of shoring up support in major urban areas and the Midwest, where many southern Black people had migrated in the decades after the Civil War in search of jobs and better education for their children, as well as to avoid many of the legal restrictions placed on them in the South. Roosevelt accomplished this realignment by promising assistance to those hurt most by the Depression, including African Americans.

18. Who was the first Republican president?

Abraham Lincoln

17. Who was the first Democratic president?

Andrew Jackson

62. What is the Tea Party?

Born in part from an older third-party movement known as the Libertarian Party, the Tea Party is more hostile to government and views government intervention in all forms, and especially taxation and the regulation of business, as a threat to capitalism and democracy. It is less willing to tolerate interventions in the market place, even when they are designed to protect the markets themselves. Although an anti-tax faction within the Republican Party has existed for some time, some factions of the Tea Party movement are also active at the intersection of religious liberty and social issues, especially in opposing such initiatives as same-sex marriage and abortion rights.57 The Tea Party has argued that government, both directly and by neglect, is threatening the ability of evangelicals to observe their moral obligations, including practices some perceive as endorsing social exclusion.

64. Has Congress become more or less effective?

Congress in particular have become less effective in recent years.

13. What were the two major parties of the Second Party System?

Democratic Party, was the party of Jackson; it continued to advocate for the common people by championing westward expansion and opposing a national bank. The branch of the Democratic-Republicans that believed that the national government should encourage economic (primarily industrial) development was briefly known as the National Republicans and later became the Whig Party6.

6. What were the first two competing parties in American politics?

Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans,

9. What issue led to the collapse of the Federalist Party?

Growing regional tensions eroded the Federalist Party's ability to coordinate elites, and it eventually collapsed following its opposition to the War of 1812.

30. How do election laws affect the success of third parties?

In the United States, such rules have been written to make it easy for existing parties to secure a spot for their candidates in future elections. But some states create significant burdens for candidates who wish to run as independents or who choose to represent new parties. For example, one common practice is to require a candidate who does not have the support of a major party to ask registered voters to sign a petition. Sometimes, thousands of signatures are required before a candidate's name can be placed on the ballot ut a small third party that does have large numbers of supporters in some states may not be able to secure enough signatures for this to happen.

10. Why was the election of 1824 known as the "corrupt bargain?"

In the election of 1824, numerous candidates contended for the presidency, all members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Andrew Jackson won more popular votes and more votes in the Electoral College than any other candidate. However, because he did not win the majority (more than half) of the available electoral votes, the election was decided by the House of Representatives, as required by the Twelfth Amendment. The Twelfth Amendment limited the House's choice to the three candidates with the greatest number of electoral votes. Thus, Andrew Jackson, with 99 electoral votes, found himself in competition with only John Quincy Adams, the second place finisher with 84 electoral votes, and William H. Crawford, who had come in third with 41. The fourth-place finisher, Henry Clay, who was no longer in contention, had won 37 electoral votes. Clay strongly disliked Jackson, and his ideas on government support for tariffs and internal improvements were similar to those of Adams. Clay thus gave his support to Adams, who was chosen on the first ballot. Jackson considered the actions of Clay and Adams, the son of the Federalist president John Adams, to be an unjust triumph of supporters of the elite and referred to it as "the corrupt bargain."5

73. What are safe seats?

Map designers, no longer certain how to protect individual party members, changed tactics to try and create safe seats so members of their party could be assured of winning by a comfortable margin. The basic rule of thumb was that designers sought to draw districts in which their preferred party had a 55 percent or better chance of winning a given district, regardless of which candidate the party nominated.

42. Among which generation's voters are Democrats the strongest?

Millennial

31. How do the political views of millennials compare with those of older generations?

Millennials—those aged 21-37—are more liberal than members of older generations.

50. What is the role of the national party convention?

National party conventions culminate in the formal nomination of the party nominees for the offices of president and vice president, and they mark the official beginning of the presidential competition between the two parties. The national party platform is formally adopted at the convention, as are the key elements of the strategy for contesting the national campaign. And even though the media is paying less attention, key insiders and major donors often use the convention as a way of gauging the strength of the party and its ability to effectively organize and coordinate its members.

23. How successful have third parties been in American politics?

None of these alternatives to the two major political parties had much success at the national level, and most are no longer viable parties. All faced the same fate. Formed by charismatic leaders, each championed a relatively narrow set of causes and failed to gain broad support among the electorate. Once their leaders had been defeated or discredited, the party structures that were built to contest elections collapsed. Achampioned. In the long run, however, many third parties have brought important issues to the attention of the major parties, which then incorporated these issues into their platforms.

63. What is Occupy Wall Street?

Occupy Wall Street movement was born of the government's response to the Great Recession of 2008 and its assistance to endangered financial institutions, provided through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP (Figure 9.16). The Occupy Movement believed the recession was caused by a failure of the government to properly regulate the banking industry. The Occupiers further maintained that the government moved swiftly to protect the banking industry from the worst of the recession but largely failed to protect the average person, thereby worsening the growing economic inequality in the United States. the Occupy Movement's calls for more social spending and higher taxes on the wealthy remain a prominent part of the national debate. Their popularity, and the growing visibility of race issues in the United States, have helped sustain the left wing of the Democratic Party.

3. What is a party platform?

Parties influence public policy by identifying and aligning sets of issues that are important to voters in the hopes of gaining support during elections; their positions on these critical issues are often presented in documents known as a party platform

21. What are third parties?

Political parties that are formed as alternatives to the Republican and Democratic parties are

68. Under which Republican president did southern social conservatives turn away from the Democrats toward the Republican Party?

Ronald Reagan

59. How does divided government affect the ability of government to function smoothly?

Shutdowns are even more likely when the president and at least one house of Congress are of opposite parties.

65. What is a government shutdown?

Shutdowns occur when Congress and the president are unable to authorize and appropriate funds before the current budget runs out. This is now an annual problem.

43. Among which generation's voters are Republicans the strongest?

Silent

5. When did American political parties form?

Soon after the United States emerged from the Revolutionary War, however, a rift began to emerge between two groups that had very different views about the future direction of U.S. politics. Thus, from the very beginning of its history, the United States has had a system of government dominated by two different philosophies.

25. What is a winner-take-all election?

The candidate who receives the greatest overall number of votes wins. Winner-take-all

46. Which part of a party's organization has the most responsibilities, especially at election time?

The county-level organization is in many ways the workhorse of the party system, especially around election time.

19. On what issue was the party born?

The growing power of industrialists, who preferred greater national authority, combined with increasing tensions between the northern and southern states over slavery,

24. Why does the United States have two major parties rather than several?

The two-party system came into being because the structure of U.S. elections, with one seat tied to a geographic district, tends to lead to dominance by two major political parties. Even when there are other options on the ballot, most voters understand that minor parties have no real chance of winning even a single office. Hence, they vote for candidates of the two major parties in order to support a potential winner. Most of the blame has been placed on the process used to select its representatives. First, most elections at the state and national levels are winner-take-all: voters do not like to waste votes, third parties must convince voters they have a real chance of winning races before voters will take them seriously. This is a tall order given the vast resources and mobilization tools available to the existing parties, especially if an incumbent is one of the competitors. In turn, the likelihood that third-party challengers will lose an election bid makes it more difficult to raise funds to support later attempts.

8. Who were the leaders of the Democratic-Republican Party?

Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr

66. What is sorting? How does it contribute to polarization?

a change in party allegiance in response to shifts in party position.65 According to the sorting thesis, before the 1950s, voters were mostly concerned with state-level party positions rather than national party concerns. Since parties are bottom-up institutions, this meant local issues dominated elections; it also meant national-level politicians typically paid more attention to local problems than to national party politics. voters have started identifying more with national-level party politics, and they began to demand their elected representatives become more attentive to national party positions. As a result, they have become more likely to pick parties that consistently represent national ideals, are more consistent in their candidate selection, and are more willing to elect office-holders likely to follow their party's national agenda. One example of the way social change led to party sorting revolves around race.

56. What is divided government?

a condition in which one or more houses of the legislature is controlled by the party in opposition to the executive

33. What is party realignment?

a shifting of party allegiances within the electorate

22. What are examples of third parties in American political history?

a third party known as the Populist Party formed in reaction to what its constituents perceived as the domination of U.S. society by big business and a decline in the power of farmers and rural communities................Progressive Party, a new political party created in 1912. In 1912, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt attempted to form a third party, known as the Progressive Party, as an alternative to the more business-minded Republicans. The Progressives sought to correct the many problems that had arisen as the United States transformed itself from a rural, agricultural nation into an increasingly urbanized, industrialized country dominated by big business interests. In 1948, two new third parties appeared on the political scene. Henry A. Wallace, a vice president under Franklin Roosevelt, formed a new Progressive Party, which had little in common with the earlier Progressive Party. Wallace favored racial desegregation and believed that the United States should have closer ties to the Soviet Union. Wallace's campaign was a failure, largely because most people believed his policies, including national healthcare, were too much like those of communism, and this party also vanished. The other third party, the States' Rights Democrats, also known as the Dixiecrats, were White, southern Democrats who split from the Democratic Party when Harry Truman, who favored civil rights for African Americans, became the party's nominee for president. The Dixiecrats opposed all attempts by the federal government to end segregation, extend voting rights, prohibit discrimination in employment, or otherwise promote social equality among races.15 They remained a significant party that threatened Democratic unity throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Other examples of third parties in the United States include the American Independent Party, the Libertarian Party, United We Stand America, the Reform Party, and the Green Party.

4. When is it adopted?

adopted at each party's presidential nominating convention every four years. If successful, a party can create a large enough electoral coalition to gain control of the government. Once in power, the party is then able to deliver, to its voters and elites, the policy preferences they choose by electing its partisans to the government.

7. Who were the leaders of the Federalist Party?

alexander Hamilton led the movement during drafting of US constitution- John Adams the first elected leader

37. Which are solidly Republican?

and the South and rural areas overwhelmingly voting Republican. The result today is a political system that provides Republicans with considerable advantages in rural areas and most parts of the Deep South.

32. How interested are young Latinos in voting compared with the older generations?

as young Latinos reach voting age, they seem more inclined to vote than do their parents, which may raise the traditionally low voting rates among this ethnic group.

40. Who are party identifiers?

being a member of the party-in-the-electorate simply means a voter is more likely to voice support for a party. These voters are often called party identifiers, since they usually represent themselves in public as being members of a party, and they may attend some party events or functions. Party identifiers are also more likely to provide financial support for the candidates of their party during election season.

60. Is bipartisanship more or less common?

bipartisanship, or cooperation through compromise is less common now

11. Who suffered because of it?

co

26. What is plurality voting?

commonly referred to as first-past-the-post, is based on the principle that the individual candidate with the most votes wins, whether or not he or she gains a majority (51 percent or greater) of the total votes cast.

53. How does the complexity of America's political system affect a party's organizational ability?

each level and unit of government has different constituencies that the office holder must satisfy. The person elected to the White House is more beholden to the national party organization than are members of the House or Senate, because members of Congress must be reelected by voters in very different states, each with its own state-level and county-level parties. First, legislators may serve a constituency that disagrees with the executive on key matters of policy. If the issue is important enough to voters, as in the case of gun control or abortion rights, an office holder may feel his or her job will be in jeopardy if he or she too closely follows the party line, even if that means disagreeing with the executive. each house of the legislature has its own leadership and committee structure, and those leaders may not be in total harmony with the president. Key benefits like committee appointments, leadership positions, and money for important projects in their home district may hinge on legislators following the lead of the party.

52. What role does the whip play?

ensures that members are present when a piece of legislation is to be voted on and directs them how to vote. The whip is the second-highest ranking member of the party in each chamber.

16. What is personal politics?

focused on building direct relationships with voters rather than on promoting specific issues.

1. What are political parties?

groups of people with similar interests who work together to create and implement policies. They do this by gaining control over the government by winning elections.

67. How did social issues undercut the old Democratic Party coalition?

in the late 1950s and early 1960s, social issues became increasingly prominent in national politics. Southern Democrats, who had supported giving the federal government authority for economic redistribution, began to resist calls for those powers to be used to restructure society. Many of these Democrats broke away from the party only to find a home among Republicans, who were willing to help promote smaller national government and greater states' rights. This shift was largely completed with the rise of the evangelical movement in politics, when it shepherded its supporters away from Jimmy Carter, an evangelical Christian,

2. How are parties different from interest groups?

interest groups often work indirectly to influence our leaders, political parties are organizations that try to directly influence public policy through its members who seek to win and hold public office.

54. What is a majority party?

it controls more than half the seats in one of the two chambers.

49. Why is the national party organization more visible to the general public than state and local organizations?

many Americans, especially young people, are more interested in the topics discussed at the national level than at the state or local level. it usually coordinates the grandest spectacles in the life of a political party. But the national conventions, organized and sponsored by the national-level party, can dominate the national discussion for several weeks in late summer, a time when the major media outlets are often searching for news.

58. Is divided government more or less common now than it once was?

more common- the past several decades have brought an increased prevalence of divided government.

35. What is a critical election?

one that represents a sudden, clear, and long-term shift in voter allegiances.

70. What is redistricting?

or redrawing of their electoral maps, only if they gained or lost seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. This can happen once every ten years

47. What role do county party organizations play?

organization frequently takes on many of the most basic responsibilities of a democratic system, including identifying and mobilizing potential voters and donors, identifying and training potential candidates for public office, and recruiting new members for the party. County organizations are also often responsible for finding rank and file members to serve as volunteers on Election Day, either as officials responsible for operating the polls or as monitors responsible for ensuring that elections are conducted honestly and fairly. They may also hold regular meetings to provide members the opportunity to meet potential candidates and coordinate strategy

15. What were political machines?

organizations that secured votes for the party's candidates or supported the party in other ways.

41. What proportion of the electorate are party identifiers?

over half of American adults have called themselves "Republican" or "Democrat" when asked how they identify themselves politically. Partisan support is so strong that, in a poll conducted from August 5 to August 9, 2015, about 88 percent of respondents said they either identified with or, if they were independents, at least leaned toward one of the major political parties.38

27. What is a proportional electoral system?

parties advertise who is on their candidate list and voters pick a party. Then, legislative seats are doled out to the parties based on the proportion of support each party receives.

61. What is party polarization?

parties have grown farther apart ideologically,

44. What is the relationship between party identification and party membership?

party identification is not quite the same thing as party membership. People may call themselves Republicans or Democrats without being registered as a member of the party, and the Republican and Democratic parties do not require individuals to join their formal organization in the same way that parties in some other countries do. Many states require voters to declare a party affiliation before participating in primaries, but primary participation is irregular and infrequent, and a voter may change his or her identity long before changing party registration. For most voters, party identification is informal at best and often matters only in the weeks before an election.

48. What role does the state party organization play?

state-level organizations are responsible for key party functions, such as statewide candidate recruitment and campaign mobilization. Most of their efforts focus on electing high-ranking officials such as the governor or occupants of other statewide offices (e.g., the state's treasurer or attorney general) as well as candidates to represent the state and its residents in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. usually accept greater fundraising responsibilities - coordinate giving across multiple races and to develop the staffing expertise that these candidates will draw upon at election time. responsible for creating a sense of unity among members of the state party.

14. What was the first modern political party in the world?

the Democratic Party

20. In which region were the Democrats the strongest in the 1850s?

the South

72. What was the significance of Reynolds v. Simms?

the Supreme Court argued that everyone's vote should count roughly the same regardless of where they lived.67 Districts had to be adjusted so they would have roughly equal populations. Several states therefore had to make dramatic changes to their electoral maps during the next two redistricting cycles

45. What is party organization?

the formal structure of the political party, and its active members are responsible for coordinating party behavior and supporting party candidates. It is a vital component of any successful party because it bears most of the responsibility for building and maintaining the party "brand." It also plays a key role in helping select, and elect, candidates for public office.

55. What is a minority party?

the legislative party with less than half the seats in a legislative body

69. How did gerrymandering affect polarization?

the manipulation of legislative districts in an attempt to favor a particular candidate (Figure 9.17). According to the gerrymandering thesis, the more moderate or heterogeneous a voting district, the more moderate the politician's behavior once in office. Taking extreme or one-sided positions on a large number of issues would be hazardous for a member who needs to build a diverse electoral coalition. But if the district has been drawn to favor a particular group, it now is necessary for the elected official to serve only the portion of the constituency that dominates.

71. What is reapportionment?

the number of House seats given to each state is adjusted to account for population changes.

51. What is the party-in-government?

the party identifiers who have been elected or appointed to hold public office,

29. How does the Electoral College affect the success of third parties?

the winner is selected not directly by the popular vote but indirectly by a group of electors known collectively as the Electoral College. The winner-take-all system also applies in the Electoral College. the state's electoral votes go to the candidate who wins the plurality of the popular vote in that state. Even if a new, third party is able to win the support of a lot of voters, it must be able to do so in several states in order to win enough electoral votes to have a chance of winning the presidency.

39. What is the party-in-the-electorate?

those members of the voting public who consider themselves to be part of a political party and/or who consistently prefer the candidates of one party over the other.

38. What are the three components of political parties?

three components identified by political scientist V. O. Key: the party in the electorate (the voters); the party organization (which helps to coordinate everything the party does in its quest for office); and the party in office (the office holders). To

57. What is unified government?

when the same party controls the executive and the legislature entirely.

36. Which regions and areas are solidly Democratic today?

with urban areas and the Northeast now solidly Democratic, Democrats dominate urban politics and those parts of the South, known as the Black Belt, where the majority of residents are African American.