Magruder's American Government: 11. Elections

A political party is a group of persons who seek to control government through the winning of elections and the holding of public office.

Political parties seek to modify the contending views of various interests and groups, encourage compromise, and so help to unify, rather than divide, the American people. They are very often successful in their attempts to soften the impact of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum, the range of political views.

Congress and the State legislatures are organized on party lines, and they conduct much of their business on the basis of partisanship—the strong support of their party and its policy stands.

The winning candidate is the one who receives a plurality, or the largest number of votes cast for the office. Note that a plurality need not be a majority, or more than half of all votes cast in any given election.

The GOP (The Republican Party) and the Democrats regularly act in a bipartisan way in this matter. That is, the two major parties find common ground here.

Still, there is a broad consensus—a general agreement among various groups—on matters of fundamental importance.

A coalition is a temporary alliance of several groups who come together to form a working majority and so to control a government.

The ideological parties are those based on a particular set of beliefs—a comprehensive view of social, economic, and political matters.

Those that have split away from one of the major parties are known as splinter parties.

A ward is a unit into which cities are often divided for the election of city council members.

A precinct is the smallest unit of election administration; the voters in each precinct cast their ballots at one polling place located within the precinct.

Nomination—the naming of those who will seek office—is a critically important step in the election and appointment process at the national, State, and local levels.

Many of them hold general elections—regularly scheduled elections at which voters make the final selection of officeholders—much as democracies do.

As a nominating device, a caucus is a group of like-minded people who meet to select the candidates they will support in an upcoming election.

A direct primary is an intraparty election. It is held within a party to pick that party’s candidates for the general election.

In most States, State law requires that the major parties use the primary to choose their candidates for the United States Senate and House of Representatives, for the governorship and all other Statewide offices, and for most local offices as well.

Today, more than half the States provide for the closed primary—a nominating election in which only declared party members can vote. The primary is closed to all but those party members.

The open primary—or crossover primary—is a party’s nominating election in which any qualified voter can cast a ballot.

If no one wins a majority in a race, a runoff primary is held a few weeks later. In that runoff contest, the two top vote-getters in the first primary face one another to determine the party’s nomination, and the winner of that vote becomes the party’s nominee.

In most States all or nearly all of the elected school and municipal offices are filled in nonpartisan elections. These are elections in which candidates are not identified by party labels.

Instead, the Democrats now have a complex proportional representation rule. Any candidate who seeks the party’s presidential nomination who wins at least 15 percent of the votes cast in a primary gets the number of that State’s Democratic convention delegates that corresponds to his or her share of that primary vote.

Instead, the Democrats now have a complex proportional representation rule. Any candidate who seeks the party’s presidential nomination who wins at least 15 percent of the votes cast in a primary gets the number of that State’s Democratic convention delegates that corresponds to his or her share of that primary vote.

Recall, the platform is a statement of party principles and stands on policy matters. But it is also an important campaign document aimed at appealing to as many people and as many groups as possible.

Both campaigns focus much of their efforts on swing voters—the roughly one third of the electorate who have not made up their minds at the start of the campaign and are open to persuasion by either side.

Political action committees are the political arms of special-interest groups and other organizations with a stake in electoral politics.

A subsidy is a grant of money, usually from a government.

Since the 1970s, federal law has placed limits on hard money—that is, those contributions that are given directly to candidates for their campaigns for Congress or the White House, are limited in amount, and must be reported. That kind of campaign money is usually more difficult to raise than soft money—funds given to parties or to other political organizations, in unlimited amounts, to be used for such “party-building activities” as voter registration...