Divisive State Primaries

In recent discussion of Democrats and Republican parties, a controversial issue has been whether or not the U.S. should expand their options from more than a two party system. On the one hand, some argue that there should be more choices other than between the two Democrat Party and Republican Party. From this perspective, voters have more of a variety when they vote. On the other hand, some argue that the U.S. should remain as a two party system. In the words of Gary Johnson, one of this view’s main proponents, “The Republicans and Democrats have spent decades trading power back and forth between themselves, and in doing so, have managed to install a two-party duopoly that completely controls America’s political process.” According to this view, Democrats and Republicans are dictating other parties opportunities to get elected. In sum, then, the issue is whether there should be other options rather than a choice between the Democrat and the Republican Party. I agree with Gary Johnson’s view that the Democrat and Republican Parties are controlling America’s

Although voters do not have an obligation publicly state which party they align with, they still must only align with one party during the primary. Therefore, their ballots do not present every possible candidate, and thus, their scope of presidential candidates is limited. The goal of a primary should be to reflect how the state will likely vote during the general election. Blanket primaries accomplish this by allowing voters to select the best candidate from every choice available. This also shows how certain candidates fair in comparison with other parties’ candidates. Parties still have the ability to nominate their candidate with the highest number of votes, but the blanket primary gives more power to the voters than to political parties. Political candidates must market themselves to voters as an aggregate in the state, and cannot rely on party affiliation to be a driving force come primary season. Therefore, while open and blanket primaries are extremely similar, it is the fact that blanket primaries allow more freedom for voters that makes them the favorable

differences between their parties and policies. Although there are similarities between the parties, they tend to be overshadowed by individual party ideologies. With so many fundamental differences between the parties, finding topics or issues upon which constituents agree upon can at times be somewhat difficult. Although there are chasms between the voting practices of the parties, there are also some fundamental similarities as well.

     In the following essay I will be talking about the disadvantages and advantages of partisan elections for state politics. I will also examine the last couple year’s election results and costs. Finally, I will discuss if partisanship made a difference in the vote, as well as if a judge should be decided by partisan vote. In the next couple paragraphs I will talk more specifically about these topics.

In order to participate in major elections, third parties must first overcome a myriad of obstacles that have been put in place by both the founding fathers and politicians of our current two-party system. Rosenstone and his colleagues contend that the most important barrier in place to discourage the success of third parties is the plurality single-member districts that are the cornerstone of the American electoral process. Not only do single-member districts elect only one member to higher office, but they also allow such elections to occur without an electoral majority. If voters know that a third party is unlikely to receive a substantial amount of votes, they may believe a vote for the party would be a wasted vote. This requirement for a plurality of votes is especially detrimental for a third party presidential campaign, due to the fact that the Electoral College distributes electoral votes to the winner of each statewide vote (excluding Nebraska and Maine), and the only plausible way for a third party candidate to receive any electoral votes is to be extremely popular in a certain region of the United States. Unlike the two major

US parties are often described as organisationally weak because they are essentially ‘broad coalitions’. For example they contain moderates like McCain republican) and Obama democrat), while also having a more conservative wing. Therefore stronger party organisation would give parties a narrower appeal and potentially alienate large ‘voting blocs’ or proportions of the electorate. This is a reason why it is argued that having ‘organisationally weak’ parties is a necessity in the US political system. It has therefore been argued that symptoms of weak organisation e.g issue centred or candidate-centered election campaigns are deliberate as parties attempt to gain a maximum

This paper will talk about the presidential primaries in the United States of America. It will explain what a primary election is, and where it comes from historically, also how it fits into today’s society. Another topic it will cover is how the primary process has played out so far this year, how some of the contenders are currently faring in the race for presidency. It will also cover the strong suits of the primaries and some of the major flaws of the primaries. The last topic this paper will cover is whether or not the people of the United States should understand and care about the presidential Primaries.

Ever since the election season of 1972, presidential primaries have become “the dominant means of selecting the two major party candidates.”i[i] The primary system is one in which the eligible voters of each state do one of the following: 1) Vote for a presidential candidate to run for their party in the general election. 2) Vote for a delegate pledged to vote for a certain candidate at the party’s national convention. As intended, this process would bring the candidate selection processes out into the open and “let the people vote for the candidate of their choice.”ii[ii] On the surface, this may look very democratic (and admittedly, in some instances it was/is), but upon closer

When the words “swing state” are mentioned, Florida is perhaps one of the first states a person may think of. In this year’s election cycle, the story is no different. Florida has a single senate seat up for election, and Marco Rubio (R), and Patrick Murphy (D) are hoping to claim it on November 8th. Marco Rubio has held that seat since the last senate election in 2010, giving him an edge as the incumbent. Patrick Murphy is the challenger and has been a member of the House of Representatives since 2012. A glance at any polling numbers shows Rubio ahead, and most have shown him ahead since the beginning of the race. The polls do not show a commanding lead, as one may expect from an incumbent. While polling margins are slimmer than many average incumbents, money has not stopped flowing to Rubio. His finances are typical of an incumbent particularly that of a closely contested race. It may be impossible to tell which has the greater effect of Rubio’s fundraising. In states that are typically swing states and have close political races, simple analyses such as incumbency advantage may not fully explain the results and polls in the race.

There are two major parties (Democrat and republican) that organized at the national, county and precinct levels. In order to ensure that the states and local party organizations have the opportunity to decide their positions on party issues each majority party is loosely organized. Furthermore Texas Election Code mandates that the two major parties are very similar in make up.

America is vastly known as a country boundlessly pursuing equality in all facets of life. In this seemingly endless quest for equal opportunity, there has been one lurking negation; our election system. The addition to equal representation in public funding and on the ballot will create variability and allow Americans to entrust their vote in a political format that more closely aligns with democratic philosophy. Therefore, a shift away from a bipartisan, a two party, dominated election system would not only be a healthy change for American electoral satisfaction, but for the future of third party politics. Unfortunately affluence and inherent wealth have played a large role in this divide between a true democratic election and our present biased, broken, and benyne system.

I make three contributions in this paper. First, I argue that previous models of electoral competition miss two important and related points: (1) Disproportionality itself provides parties a strong incentive to mobilize and (2) disproportionality also exacerbates the effect of compet- itiveness on mobilization efforts. Together, these points suggest a reevaluation of the claim that proportionality encourages parties to mobilize voters because it creates “nationally competitive districts”. Second, unlike most previous work, I recognize that competitiveness can vary in multimember districts and use a recently developed measure of district competitiveness to directly compare the effect of competitiveness on mobilization efforts in PR and SMDP

This essay seeks to explore to what extend the Downs model of voting helps us to understand, in which ways political parties align themselves in general elections. Political parties shall be seen as ´a team of people seeking to control the governing apparatus by gaining votes in a duly constituted election´ (Down 1957, p.25). General elections shall be defined and restricted to democratic elections and the state level, which are held within periodic intervals to determine its government. Due to the limitations of this essay, this shall be restricted to a two-party system and illustrated by certain examples during both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential election of the United States of America.

Nonetheless, the difference in party alignment has clear implications for the nomination process. During the nomination process, you are facing other members of your party to fight for the single nomination for the general election. This means you have to fight over voters with quite similar ideologies. This would exclude the extreme number of people from the other party, and perhaps many people who are in the middle and cannot decide which way to lean yet. Due to this, candidates must strategize their rhetoric and conduct to appeal to the most extreme members of the party. Studies have shown that the people who vote in primary elections are in general more highly educated, and indicate more party activism/pride (Lecture Notes).

To assess which cleavage structures have typically divided voters within a given party system, the party system must have been ‘frozen’ – whereby the party system has effectively politicised a certain issue dimension where political parties emerge from and have maintained their relevance in the system due to the salience of such issues. For many Western democracies, Lipset and Rokkan assessed that two revolutions have been responsible for structuring certain cleavages in party systems: the national revolution was responsible for politicising the differences of the centre/periphery and the religious/secular while the industrial revolution characterised the urban/rural and capital/labour divides.