Political Parties: Party Identification

Unlike parties in many other countries, political parties in the U.S. are relatively weak in terms of their ability to mobilize voters to register and ultimately vote on election- day. This inability to mobilize voters has direct correlation to the fact that membership and affiliation in political

Political parties today started to form in the late 1600’s. In 1787, Hamilton and other leaders joined and called themselves the Federalist. The Federalist party is the party which is most qualified for the presidency because the Federalist want a central government, want to avoid foreign affairs, and also want a central banking system. First a strong central governments.

Some common issues that political parties present can include problems with inequality, wrong education of the people, the spread of communal hatred, and the decrease of personal individuality. Issues with inequality originate from the thought that one political party doesn’t have the right to make decisions for the public and many citizens may not support everything that a specific Party supports. Educational issues with the political system are caused by political parties trying to obtain votes through false promises and propaganda, this type of advertisement creates misunderstandings among citizens. The spread of communal hatred is based on the fact that many people believe that religion based parties create hatred against other communities and cause conflict in our country. The decrease of personal individuality has also become an issue, this refers to how political parties expect people to follow them blindly and how these parties refuse to be criticized for their own shortcomings.

Political parties are critical structures in the modern society and universal phenomena in most democracies. In fact, they form major objects of intensive study as they are usually the centre of political and social power. They engage in most activities that are of significant consequence in the lives of citizens and link the common populace to the government. Therefore, it is important to understand political parties fully from every perspective of political systems so obtain their real importance in democracies. A political party is basically a group of citizens who converge as voters, activists, electoral candidates and office holders with a common party label and seek to elect party members into public offices. While modern political

There quite a few similarities and differences between each of the two theories that I’ve introduced above. The main similarities include:

In the United States of America, the political party system is pivotal to the function of our nation. The political party system in our society today is separated between the Democrats and the Republicans. Although political parties do possess uncertainties their advantages outweigh their drawbacks in America. The United States of America is made up of two basic political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. A political party is a group of individuals who share similar interest and they work together with one another to construct and execute policies. The Democratic Party was established in 1828, by Andrew Jackson. The Democratic Party was created based on a belief in an unyielding government and an advocacy of social and

There were many political disputes that happened in the United States. Many people were fighting over which party they should go to or which one was better. They had the Republicans and the Federalists who wanted to sway the vote to their side. They opposed each other and disputed against each other. This caused many conflicts in the United States.

From 1972 to 2004, Abramowitz points out that the correlation between ideology and party identification rose from .32 to .63 showing an increase over time from a more moderate stance to a more polarized one in the engaged electorate. In the 1984 to 2004 ANES, the least interested and least informed Americans were shown to be in the middle of the liberal-conservative spectrum, while the more informed and active constituents were more likely to be more polarized. From the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) data, Abramowitz states that even Independents leaned more liberal or conservative than weak Democrats or weak Republicans respectively. Again, nonvoters made up forty-one percent of the center of the distribution affirming that only the nonvoters are non-ideological and non-polarized. In regards to social groups, Abramowitz concluded that religious commitment mattered more than social status, but overall, voter’s ideological beliefs made a greater impact on party loyalty than being part of any social

The Democratic Party was in favor of the rights of the states and the people and believed that the people should get to decide whether or not slavery was legal or not legal (illegal). In the year 1854, Senator Stephen Douglas who was from the state of Illinois, wanted to run for president, and he wanted southern Democrats to support him. He created the Kansas-Nebraska Act in question of slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act supported popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty means the “rule by the people”. If the country were to vote for Stephen Douglas, the Missouri Compromise would be repealed, or cancelled. The southerners would like The Kansas-Nebraska Act, meaning that this would help Douglas to win the election. Although, the northerners were

The first examined effect was political action as a function of instrumental concerns such as strongly held stances on issues and contrasted their effects with that of expressive partisan identity. Secondly, the degree to which action-oriented political emotions, such as anger and enthusiasm, are instrumental or expressive in nature was examined. The studies looked at how much political anger is driven instrumentally by threats to ideology and issue positions or whether it reflects a threat to someone’s party status, making it expressive. Lastly, the studies examined the degree to which political enthusiasm is driven by similar competing forces: the likely success of one’s ideology and issue positions or promised electoral victory and enhanced party

Partisan identification refers to the political party with which an individual identifies and political socialization can be defined as the process by which people form their ideas about politics (Hershey 2016, pg. 127). Both of these terms are important for understanding how individuals identify with the parties they do and how in doing so can affect both the perception of the candidate and the level of participation.

Social identity theory proposed by Tajfel & Turner (2004) is a theory of group membership and behaviour which has made significant contributions in explaining in-group favouritism, out-group denigration, competition and other interactions of an individual among social groups (Korte, 2007; Brown, 2000; Tajfel & Turner, 2004). Social identity theory can be defined as an individual’s sense of who they are based on the group that they belong to through a process of self-categorisation and depersonalisation (Tajfel & Turner, 2004). In this essay, I will define social identity theory through its three mental processes involved in group evaluation which are: social identification which is a process whereby we are placed into certain

After taking the, Political Party Quiz, I checked the results and found out I stand very far to the right on the political spectrum. This surprised me mostly because the majority of my family falls further on the left side. Researching the issues on the quiz soon after I realized that I have been exposed to many of these prior to the quiz. While on some of the issues I had a sure answer, there were quite a few that I hadn’t really ever heard of.

The social identity theory is a theory developed by Henry Tajfel, in which Tajfel believes that who we are socially determines how many positive feelings we have towards ourselves. Basically, if we like where we stand socially, then we will like who we are and display happiness. In this theory, Tajfel labels the “in group” and the “out group” and says that we will always compare our “in group” to another’s “out group.” By comparing these groups, we develop a better personal view on ourselves (King, 2009). A big factor of the social identity theory is that the groups will tend to critique the differences of the groups, and overlook the similarities. A modern day example of the social identity theory would be your everyday high school cheerleaders versus band members. The cheerleaders think of themselves as the queen bees of the school,

There are various factors that influence how a voter will cast their choice in the U.S. elections. Party identification is the most top factor in a person's voting choice. Some voters are members of either the two majors political parties; the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. These party affiliations are usually determined by a person's influences from family, peers, media and the assessment of the candidates and the issues. Independents who are not affiliated with either party does not have a particular loyalty to any party. They vote mainly on the issues (Schmidt, Shelley, Bardes, 2011, p.193).