Chapter 10. Political Parties and Elections: Good Citizens Acting Irrationally
Last Updated 4-7-2013
Copyright 2008-13
Setting the stage for
history: Michelle Obama after addressing the 2008 Democratic National
Convention, yet almost
half the nation did not vote (photo by Ava Lowery, Creative Commons)
OUTLINE
I. The Logic of Voting—An Irrational Activity
II. Elections Without Political Parties?
A. Complaints About Parties
B. What Parties Are and How They Differ from Interest Groups
C. Why Political Parties Are Necessary
1. Simplify Voting
2. Recruit and Screen Candidates
3. Get Government Moving
4. Nonviolent Outlet for Discontent
5. Promote Compromise and Moderation
6. Organize Campaigns
7. Recruit New Groups of Voters
8. Counterweight to Powerful Interest Groups
9. Develop Policy Proposals–-Real Party Differences
10. Increase Continuity in Public Policy
III. A Brief History of American Political Parties
A. The Creation of American Political Parties: Federalists and Jeffersonians
B. The Second Party System: Whigs and Democrats
C. The Third Party System: Republicans and Democrats
D. Realignments in the Third Party System
1. Rise and Fall of the Populist Challenge
2. The New Deal Realignment
3. Dealignment and Regional
Realignment—Civil Rights and Social Conservatives,
E. Future Changes?
IV. The Organization of Political Parties—Three Part Structure
A. Party Organization
B. Elected Officials
C. Voters
V. Why We Have a Two Party System
A. Tradition?
B. Two Sides to Issues?
C. Rules? Plurality Winner-take-all Elections
VI. Third Parties: Splinter Protest Parties and Ideological Parties
VII. Voting and Election Rules
A. Local, State, and National Elections—Turnout
B. Primaries—Different Types
C. The Electoral College
D. Campaign Finance
E. How People Make Voting Decisions
1. Party Identification
2. Group Membership
3. Nature of the Times
4. Personality
5. Ideology
6. Issues
VIII. Policy Implications
A. Cycles in the Public Mood—Change and Stability
B. Policy Mandates
IX. Should You Vote?
TEXT
I. The Logic of Voting—An Irrational Activity
Consider
the act of voting. Before you can vote, you must register. If you change your
place of residence, you have to register all over again. That requires time and
some planning. Moreover, if you want to take voting seriously, then you need
time and effort to decide exactly how you will vote. What I am saying is that
voting has costs. Let’s go through the logic of exactly what’s involved.
Deciding
for whom to vote can take considerable effort because we have so many offices
for which we vote in the
|
Choices
on the 2012 General Election in Pickens County, South Carolina (A
long ballot that would be longer if more offices were contested!) Blue names are
incumbents President and Vice President
(no write-in candidate option) Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, President Gary Johnson and James P Gray,
Libertarian Barack Obama and
Joe Biden, Democratic Virgil Goode and Jim Clymer,
Constitution Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, Green US House of Representatives, District
3 Jeff Duncan, Republican Brian Ryan B Doyle, Democratic State Sentate,
District 1 Thomas C Alexander, Republican State Senate District 2 Larry
A Martin, Republican Rex
Rice, Petition State House of Representatives
District 3 B
R Skelton, Republican Ed
Harris, Petition State House of Representatives
District 4 David
Davey Hiott, Republican State House of Representatives
District 5 Phil
Owens, Republican State House of Representatives
District 10 Joshua
Putnam, Republican Sheriff Rick
Clark, Republican Tim
Morgan, Petition Stan
Whitten, Petition County Council District 3 Randy
Crenshaw, Republican Kevin
Link, Petition County Council District 4 G
Neil Smith, Republican County Council District 5 Jennifer
H Willis, Republican Chris
Bowers, Petition County Council District 6 Tom
Ponder, Republican Auditor Brent
Suddeth, Republican Clerk of Court Pat
Welborn, Republican Coroner Kandy
C Kelley, Republican Treasurer Dale
M Looper, Republican School Board District 1 Herbert
P Cooper Jr, Nonpartisan School Board District 3 Alex
Saitta, Nonpartisan School Board District 5 Judy
Edwards, Nonpartisan Valerie
Ramsey, Nonpartisan David
Whittemore, Nonpartisan Georges Creek Watershed District
Commission (3-Seats to Fill) R
Stewart Bauknight, Nonpartisan John
H Cutchin, Nonpartisan Cynthia
Wise, Nonpartisan Brushy Creek Watershed District
Commission (2-Seats to Fill) Adelaide
M Gantt, Nonpartisan Eric
McConnell, Nonpartisan Three and Twenty Watershed District
Commission (3-Seats to Fill) J
Mark Bishop, Nonpartisan W
H McAbee III,
Nonpartisan Phil
Tripp, Nonpartisan Leonard
Allen Williams, Nonpartisan Constitutional Amendment
Question 1 Beginning with the general election of 2018, must Section 8 of
Article IV of the Constitution of this State be amended to provide that the
Lieutenant Governor must be elected jointly with the Governor in a manner
prescribed by law; and upon the joint election to add Section 37 to Article
III of the Constitution of this State to provide that the Senate shall elect
from among the members thereof a President to preside over the Senate and to
perform other duties as provided by law; to delete Sections 9 and 10 of
Article IV of the Constitution of this State containing inconsistent
provisions providing that the Lieutenant Governor is President of the Senate,
ex officio, and while presiding in the Senate, has no vote, unless the Senate
is equally divided; to amend Section 11 to provide that the Governor shall
fill a vacancy in the Office of Lieutenant Governor by appointing a successor
with the advice and consent of the Senate; and to amend Section 12 of Article
IV of the Constitution of this State to conform appropriate references? Explanation A ‘Yes’ vote will require, from 2018 onward, the Governor and
Lieutenant Governor to run on the same ticket and be elected to office
jointly. As a result, the Lieutenant Governor will no longer preside over the
Senate and the Senate will elect their presiding officer from within the
Senate body. A ‘No’ vote maintains the current method of electing the
Governor and Lieutenant Governor separately. The Lieutenant Governor shall
continue to serve as President of the Senate. |
The
task not only involves knowing who the candidates are, but also where they
stand on a variety of issues. Assuming you can find all their issue positions,
you must then decide which issues are most important and weight them in some
way to account for relative importance. And you need to know if your weights
match the weights of candidates. That is, you had better be sure that your top
priority issue is not the lowest priority issue for the candidate you decide to
vote for. And if you want to consider personal factors like experience and
leadership qualities, then more effort and weighting is involved. In sum, to
get all the information needed and work it all out for each office is almost
mission impossible.
Is voting worth all the time and effort involved? The answer is a clear “no” if you balance the time and effort against the probability that your vote will be the deciding vote for your favorite candidate. The odds of your vote being the deciding vote are about the same as a big payoff on a state lottery. And certainly the time and effort you put in would be worth far more than the few dollars you might spend on lottery tickets. Put this way, the act of voting is irrational. The expected payoff is far less than the cost of even minimally thoughtful participation.
Considering all this, what we should wonder is not why so few people vote (a little over half of those potentially eligible in presidential elections, about a third in congressional elections, and the percentage goes down from there to single digits in local primaries). The question should be why does anyone go to the trouble to vote at all?
Certainly
we have all heard many times that any good citizen should vote. Thus, we have
the paradox of good citizens and voting. If good citizens vote and voting is
irrational and being irrational is foolish, then being a good citizen requires
you to be foolish.
Perhaps
we vote for payoffs that are psychological or social, not payoffs on issue or
candidate preferences. We are certainly taught (or “socialized,” to use the
social science term) to believe that we should vote. You have almost certainly
heard that if you don’t vote, you should not complain. Of course, this is
nonsense in a legal sense—the right of expression does not rest on the act of
voting. To the extent that you feel good about voting, about wearing one of
those “I voted” stickers they give out when you leave the polls, you have been
conditioned to respond to symbolic rewards, even if none of your preferred
candidates win.
Typical sticker handed
out at polling stations all over the nation to make
voters feel that they have done something important (Google Images)
For
now I will offer you no answer to the question of whether you should vote. I
will leave the question for you to ponder as we go through the several major
voting-related topics in this chapter.
First,
we will consider the central role that political parties play in the voting and
election process. I will argue that you should value parties far more than the
average citizen does, because parties play a large number of essential roles in
our democratic republic. In fact, our republic could not survive without them.
Moreover, political parties help lower the costs of voting so that the act of
voting is not quite so irrational.
Second,
we will turn to election rules and the many different kinds of elections. By
now you should know that rules are very important in politics.
Third, parties and elections have important policy implications. After discussing these implications, we shall return to the question of whether you should act irrationally and vote.
II. Elections Without Political Parties?
A. Complaints About Parties
From
the beginning of our history Americans have complained about political parties.
You may remember the arguments in Federalist Number 10, in which
Today citizens and candidates alike criticize parties for petty bickering and for gamesmanship. We see each side looking for something wrong with the other side instead of trying to work together. We yearn for candidates who will work across partisan divides and put country above politics. Part of this gamesmanship is criticizing the other side for being too partisan. So we have another little paradox—candidates win partisan elections by attacking the other side as overly partisan! You might look for these kinds of attacks in campaigns.
Thomas Jefferson shared these feelings. He once said that if he had to have a political party to go to heaven, then he would rather go to hell. Yet, he founded a party under his name (which later after several name changes evolved into the Democratic Party). Why would someone who hates party so much go to the trouble to found a political party? This is another paradox for you.
The answer to this paradox is rather simple, at least conceptually. Though filled with potential dangers and problems, political parties were necessary for the operation of our democratic republic. We hated them and hoped to avoid them, but we had to have them. We still do. Why parties are necessary and how they operate is much of the rest of this chapter.
B. What Parties Are and How They Differ from Interest Groups
Let’s
start by defining what we mean by political parties. Although the Founders lumped parties and interest groups together and although the
two entities have some things in common, they also have some differences. Both
parties and interest groups are collections of people who have a common set of
concerns about what government does—about policy. Both have formal
organizations, as well as formal names. However, interest groups usually have a
narrower set of concerns than parties. More important, while both are involved
in campaigns, parties run slates of candidates for office under a label in
order to win control of government. Interest groups fall far short of this.
Interest groups try to influence government, but generally do not try to
capture control of government by running candidates for office under the label
of the interest group. So political parties are people organized
around a wide range of policy preferences who recruit
and run slates of candidates for office so that they can capture control of
government and then enact their policy preferences.
|
Characteristics and Goals |
Political Parties |
Interest Groups |
|
People w/common interests |
X |
X |
|
Influence policy |
X |
X |
|
Formal organizations |
X |
X |
|
Formal Names |
X |
X |
|
Broad policy concerns |
X |
|
|
Help candidates in elections |
X |
X |
|
Run slates of candidates under a label |
X |
|
|
Attempt to capture control of all branches of
government |
X |
|
Because
interest groups and parties significantly overlap in what they do, they have an
inverse relationship in their power. Generally speaking, the stronger interest
groups are, the weaker political parties are. In modern American politics,
interest group power has significantly weakened the power that political
parties have. Candidates get far more campaign money from interest groups than
from political parties. Officials need a lot of information to make policy, and
they get far more from interest groups than from party organizations.
Interest
groups are also closely attached to and interwoven with parties. Interest
groups have so infiltrated political parties that parties can be seen as a
shifting coalition of interest groups that attempt, with significant success,
to capture control of the party, at least in key policy areas of concern to the
groups. Note in the table below of the top 12 contributors to the DNC and RNC
in 2012 that sometimes groups hedge their bets and give to both parties (data
from the Center for Responsive Politics at www.opensecrets.org)!
|
2012 Dem Nat Com Top 12 Contributors |
2012 Rep Nat Com Top 12 Contributors |
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|
If we looked at the complete list of groups, we would see some differences. The Democratic Party gets more support from labor unions, civil rights groups, environmental groups, and pro-choice groups. The Republican Party has more support from fundamentalist religious groups, anti-abortion groups, and business and corporate groups (especially health insurance, hospitals, banks and financial institutions, oil companies, and military contractors).
Given
the inverse relationship we see between interest group power and political
party power, I wonder if
For parties to play a stronger correcting role to offset the power of interest groups reforms would have to take place to disentangle parties from interest groups and candidates from interest group money. How could we strengthen parties? We might find ways to encourage large numbers of average people to give small amounts of money to political parties. It would have to be enough so that most candidates would receive most of their campaign money from parties rather than directly and indirectly from individuals closely associated with interests and Political Action Committees representing interests. This might make elected leaders feel more able to ignore narrow interests. While theoretically possible, these reforms are very hard to do.
C. Why Political Parties Are Necessary
One way to evaluate the importance of political parties is to consider the many things they do. They don’t do some of these things very well because of the power of interest groups and a variety of other reasons. But these things need to be done, and the alternative ways to get them done might be far worse than the fears we have about parties. These are the reasons why Jefferson created a party even though he disliked them so very much.
1. Simplify Voting
We
have already noted the difficulties of voting in terms of costs and expected
payoff. Having a party identification greatly reduces the time and effort
involved in voting.
Suppose
you know that you are a Republican and you share general values and issue
positions with most other Republicans. You know that the vast majority of the
time Republican officeholders will try and move government policy in the
direction you want. Then voting is really quite simple. You just choose the
Republicans on the ballot. No further research necessary! The same could be said
about being a Democrat.
Strong party
supporters like this one do not have to do a lot of research
to decide how to vote.
They just vote for all candidates of their party knowing
that if elected those
candidates will agree with them on most issues. Party works
as an excellent
short-cut IF people carefully choose the party that best fits their
policy preferences. Many
people fail to do that (photo by Kwame Raoul, Creative Commons).
Party identification makes voting choice really simple. You just vote for candidates running under that label. You know that most of the time you will be supporting people who share more things with you than you would get if you voted for someone under another party label.
However, bragging that you vote on the basis of party is not something that will win you much admiration today. American culture encourages us to make choices based on our own evaluation of issues or character. Most people proudly say “I vote on the basis of issues” or “I vote the person.” This sounds sophisticated and educated. However, if you ask exactly what those issues are and exactly what the individual characteristics are, the answers you will get are likely to be superficial. Most people really do not do any significant research on either issues or character. Most people (about three-fourths) have partisan leanings and see the candidates through the psychological filter of their party identifications. So whether they admit it or not, they will generally see candidates of their own party as closer to them on issues and as having a better character. They tend to see the candidate of their party as strong, while the other party’s candidate as merely power hungry. They see their party’s candidate as really caring about people, while the other party’s candidate as only pretending to care.
Voting research strongly supports the hypothesis that party identification makes voting easier. The stronger the party identification a person has, the more likely they are to vote. Those who identify themselves as pure independents, that is, having no partisan leanings in either direction, are less likely to vote than those who at least have leanings one way or the other. The difficulty of making a choice is often too great, so they just do not vote.
2. Recruit and Screen Candidates
Over the course of American history, parties have used different ways to choose candidates they run for office. For the first few decades, party leaders in Congress or in legislatures gathered together in a party caucus, which was a meeting to decide who would be the best candidates for them to put forward. This method tied candidates closely to existing party leaders, but it also meant that elites rather than average citizens played the most important role. Of course, the elites needed to choose candidates who would have some popular appeal so that they could win the election. So concern for the pubic played an indirect role in the party caucus decision process.
By
the late 1820s pressure began to build to allow more participation among party
supporters in choosing their candidates for office. The 1828 election of Andrew
Jackson as president played a role in this because of the emphasis
National nominating
conventions allowed more popular participation than did the old party caucus
method in which small groups
of party leaders made the decisions. Yet political machines and their
bosses often dominated the
national conventions behind the scenes. This is the 1868 Democratic
National Convention
Hall in N.Y. City, where the Tammany Hall Democratic machine had a lot of
influence behind the scene in
what were describes as “smoke-filled” rooms (public domain).
Conventions
certainly included many more people than party caucuses, but numbers were still
limited compared to the total number of citizens. Moreover, party leaders were
usually able to use convention rules to control enough votes so that they still
had the major say in nominations. By the late 1800s more and more people began
to call for greater openness and popular participation in the nomination
process. Citizens saw party leaders as corrupt party bosses who manipulated
conventions in “smoke-filled” rooms.
Wisconsin Senator
Robert Lafollette was one of the leaders of the Progressive Movement
in the early 1900s, a
movement that promoted the use of primaries to select party candidates
to take power away from party
leaders and give average citizens more control over nominations.
They had only partial
success at the time, but by the 1970s primaries became the standard for
selecting candidates at all
levels across the nation. diates
Here Lafollette is speaking to a crowd of
supporters in Illinois in 1905
(Library of Congress, public domain).
Reformers
called themselves Progressives, and they pushed for democratic
reforms that would move the nation toward a more popular democracy in which
average voters would have more power. Some wanted to end parties
altogether, promoting non-partisan elections that would ban
candidates from running under a party label. They had significant success
at the local government level, where many elections today are nonpartisan
elections.
Other
reforms included allowing people to initiate laws by signing petitions and
then holding referenda to actually pass laws. This is called the initiative.
They also wanted voters to be able to force someone out of office, using a similar
process involving signed petitions and then a vote, called the recall.
Some governors have been removed from office this way. Many states and local
governments allow these measures today, especially in the
California Democratic
Governor Gray Davis, who was removed from
office in a recall election
and replaced by Republican movie star Arnold
Schwarzenegger
in 2003.
Allowing recall elections was another Progressive
reform measure designed to
move power more directly to average citizens
which some states, like
California, adopted in the early 1900s. In practice, those
who had financial
resources to run petition drives and run media campaigns to
influence voters really had the
power (photo by Neon Tommy,
Creative Commons).
Getting
back to our discussion about choosing candidates for office, the Progressive
Movement had a great impact, though it happened quite slowly over many decades.
In some areas of the country the movement created its own party, but in most
states progressive reformers became wings within the two major political
parties that existed, the Democrats and the Republicans.
The
progressives pushed for nominations to take place by primaries rather than by
convention. This method of nomination gradually worked its way up to
presidential nominations in the 1960s and 70s. By the 1970s, to win the
presidential nomination for either major party, you had to win a majority of
the delegates through primaries that most states scheduled, starting with the
famous
Democratic
Presidential caucus held in Iowa City, January 3, 2008. By tradition the
Iowa Caucus is the
first major event in which party members meet at local precincts
to choose delegates to
the state convention based on which presidential candidate they
support. Barak Obama’s
victory in 2008 helped launch his successful run in 2008 (public domain).
Because we live in a federal system in which each state organizes its own primary rules for each party, today we have separate rules for each party in each state for nominations for different offices. Needless to say, this makes the nomination process extremely complex. You might search the web for the rules in your own state for nomination for key offices, including the presidency.
Despite
all the variation in state rules, the bottom line today is that primaries are
the most important method of winning party nominations at all levels. Rather
than having party leaders play the central role in screening acceptable
candidates to run, the citizens who take the time and trouble to turn out for
primaries play that role. A great deal of research concludes that those who act
“irrationally” and vote in primaries tend to be more motivated by strong
partisan and ideological feelings, which means that more moderate candidates
are at a disadvantage in primaries. Once elected, the more extreme candidates
are less likely to compromise with the other side. Some of the gridlock we see
in government today is an unintended consequence of a reform that was supposed
to make elections more democratic.
A
few states have adopted the nonpartisan
blanket primary system to remedy this problem. In California, for example, all
candidates for an office of all parties run in one big primary. Each
candidate can have her or his party preference listed on the ballot, but that
does not mean party endorsement. If someone gets a majority, that person is
elected without a general election. If no one gets a majority, then the
top two are in a runoff in the general election, even if they are of the
same party. With all parties contending, candidates need to attempt to attract
supporters from across the political spectrum, including independents. A larger
primary that could decide who the winner is without a general election would
attract greater participation. This gives an advantage to more moderate
candidates. Time will tell whether this reform is successful. If so, then other
states could adopt it.
Endorsements
and support by party leaders can still play a role in building support in
primaries, but a much less important role than once was the case when
nominations were by party leader caucus or conventions. Because of this, once
elected, officeholders are less closely tied to party leadership than once was
the case.
If you dislike political parties, you probably see the weakening of party influence on nominations as a good thing. However, unless candidates are independently wealthy, they have to get campaign resources somewhere. That somewhere could be from interest groups and wealthy groups of people, from large numbers of small donors, or some combination of all of these. Rare is the candidate who comes into office with ties only to the voters.
Considering
that primaries are the method by which candidates are chosen today, do
conventions matter anymore? Although everyone knows who the presidential
candidates will be before the conventions (or candidates for governor in the
case of a state party conventions), conventions still have other things to do.
Some
of these things take place at all party conventions. They adopt a party
platform, telling voters where the party stands on issues. They set rules for
the next set of primaries, which have a great impact on strategy for the next
election. Activist party members meet and compare notes on what they are doing
at home, learning from each other (much like a convention of any professional
group) and energizing themselves for the upcoming campaign.
Conventions
may have an additional task if the primaries leading up to the convention have
been divisive. They provide an opportunity for reuniting the party. The
disappointed followers of the losing candidate or candidates need to feel that
their efforts were not wasted and need to be re-energized for the upcoming
general election. If a winning candidate does not do this, she or he is likely
to lose in November.
Ron Paul, a losing
contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, had a
strong following of
dedicated supporters whose support Mitt Romney would need
in the general election.
So Paul, as is traditionally done for all major losing contenders,
was given an important
speaking role at the national convention in the hope that this would
help reunite the party for
the fall campaign (photo by Gage
Skidmore, Creative Commons).
Finally,
conventions serve as a “kick-off” for the upcoming campaign. Although the media
do not cover national conventions like they once did when conventions had
dramatic fights about nominations, the media still cover major speeches and
especially the acceptance speech of the presidential candidates. Those speeches
set the tone for the upcoming campaign and still get considerable audiences.
The speech provides the candidate an opportunity to either introduce or
redefine him or herself to the nation. So conventions still
matter, even though they are less newsworthy today.
Nixon supporters
showing their enthusiasm to national television audiences at the 1968
Republican National
Convention in Miami Beach, which set the stage for a successful run
for the White House.
“Kicking off” the campaign is an important role that national nominating
conventions continue to play.
Conventions are often held in key states to give a the party
a boost from all the
local coverage in the state (photo by the state of Florida, public domain).
3. Get Government Moving
Without political parties, our checked and balanced and separated and federalized government would probably accomplish nothing. By now you know many of the obstacles that the Founders built into our democratic republic. Their concern for preventing the tyrannical accumulation of power led them to create a structure that included so many safeguards that a new danger was created. Would government be able to do anything when faced with any kind of crisis that required quick action?
One
way to overcome all these safeguards is for some charismatic leader to
accumulate enough power to overrun the obstacles. The office best situated to
accomplish this is the president. At times the president has acted as though
the office has unlimited power. For example, at the outbreak of the Civil War
Lincoln claimed a wide range of emergency powers. But that was relatively
short-lived, and Congress reasserted its powers shortly after
President Nixon, under
great pressure from special prosecutors, released edited version
of the Watergate tapes
in April 1974. He hoped that this would satisfy the public and prosecutors.
Later that year the
Supreme Court forced him to release all the tapes, including one that showed
he played a key role in
the conspiracy to cover up White House involvement in the burglary of
Democratic campaign
headquarters in the Watergate complex. This revelation led Nixon to resign
in order to avoid
impeachment by the House and removal from office by the Senate.
Checks and balances
worked to remove a potential tyrant (U.S. National Archives, public domain).
Short of crisis and an all-powerful charismatic leader, party offers an alternative way to overcome the checks and balances and get our government moving in a coordinated way. Party is an external organization with a set of policy proposals, called the party platform, which all those running for office under the party label at least partially support. Members of Congress, governors, state legislators and judges, who were nominated and confirmed along party lines, share most of these policy goals and work together to enact them into law. If a party captures control of all the branches of government, enacting the policies in the platform gets easier.
This does not happen most of the time. Rarely does one party control enough of government to pass almost whatever it wants. But at times parties have been dominant enough to enact a wide range of new policies. The best examples of this were Democratic dominance in passing New Deal legislation following the election of FDR in 1933 and the passage of the Great Society program after the 1964 election gave Lyndon Johnson large majorities in both houses of Congress. Using party to bridge the checks and balances is far less dangerous to freedom than granting unlimited power to a single leader to run roughshod over the safeguards against tyranny.
4. Nonviolent Outlet for Discontent
Suppose
you are really angry with what current elected officials are doing. What are
your alternatives? You can leave and go live somewhere else. That is usually
impractical. You can suck it up and just put up with discontent and anger. Many
people do this, but nothing changes as a result. You can try to overthrow these
leaders through violent revolution, which has very high human and economic costs.
You do not have to look very far around the world to see this happening.
Political parties offer another alternative. You can join an opposing party and work to win sufficient popular support to elect a new set of leaders pledged to the policy proposals in their platform. Party activity channels discontent into activities that can lead to change but falls short of violence when the party in power respects the right of an opposition party to organize and criticize—the idea of the loyal opposition. That condition, a very important condition, usually holds true in our political culture. Considering these alternative ways to deal with discontent, which would you prefer?
5. Promote Compromise and Moderation
Because
parties are coalitions of people and interest groups with differing particular
interests, no one can get everything they want. At the same time, party leaders
know that they must have the support of all groups in the party if they are to
have any chance of winning an election. So leaders work hard to forge
compromises on issues to keep as many people in the party as happy as possible.
That usually requires that extreme ideas get turned into more moderate ideas.
Parties that stick with extreme ideas usually do not win elections and usually fail
to get them enacted into policy.
The Tea Party movement
within the Republican Party came to dominate the party around
the 2012 election. Many
observers concluded that this rather extreme anti-government
faction that refused any
compromise with Democrats made winning the Senate and the White
House more difficult
for the Republicans because moderation usually beats extremism in
presidential and senatorial
elections (photo by Matthew
Reichbach, Creative Commons).
In addition, party leaders know that in order to win elections the party must expand its appeal to independents and often to some people who lean toward the other party. If both parties hold their base supporters in an election, the party that does best in winning the independents will usually win. Again, the best way to do this is to take issue positions that are relatively moderate.
This argument assumes that on most issues American opinion is distributed along a bell shaped curve. In a bell shaped curve most people are in the middle. It also assumes that two major parties are competing for votes, so that the one that captures the middle wins the most votes. If many parties were competing, then a more extreme party could win if several parties split the votes in the middle. Both of these assumptions apply pretty well in American politics.
Let me offer one example to illustrate, the issue of abortion. This was a highly emotional issue when I first began teaching American government about three decades ago, and it will almost certainly remain an emotional issue long after I end my teaching career. How do Americans feel about abortion? Relatively few take either the extreme “no abortions ever” or “abortions on-demand at any time during the pregnancy” positions. Most Americans would allow abortions to be legal in a variety of situations, especially those that put the health of the mother at risk. (You might look up some polls on the Web on this issue.) The Republican Party, which includes most anti-abortion groups (or “pro-life,” to use the term these groups prefer), certainly supports more limits on abortion. But many Republican candidates are careful to allow exceptions in their policy positions, exceptions for rape and incest and when the mother’s life or health is in danger. Democrats include most groups that would allow abortions as a matter of choice on the part of the woman (calling themselves “pro-choice”). But most Democratic candidates would allow some restrictions in the latter part of the pregnancy. Both parties generally moderate their positions to better fit the actual distribution of public opinion. But when they take extreme no-compromise positions, they usually lose votes.
6. Organize Campaigns
Parties
have long played a role in organizing political campaigns. We have already
talked about recruiting and screening candidates. After candidates were chosen,
parties recruited volunteers, raised money, planned strategy, worked to get
people out to vote, and provided a great deal of campaign advice. Before the
electronic media, party organization was about the only way for candidates to
get their messages to voters, especially candidates running for election
statewide or nationally. Back in the 1800s most newspapers were run by party
organizations and made no pretense about being neutral in campaigns, clearly
favoring one party’s candidates.
Recruiting campaign
volunteers is still an important function for political parties, but
most candidates recruit
their own volunteers because they need the volunteers to
win the primary election.
Here Congressional candidate Susan Davis is thanking her
volunteers for her victory
(photo by Pattymooney, Creative
Commons,).
The
rise of the electronic media in its many forms reduced the role of political
parties in campaign organization. Candidates could bypass party organization to
reach voters in a variety of ways, including paid advertisements on television
and radio to email, web sites, and social media today. Candidates must win primaries
to run for office today, and they get no party help there. So they develop
their own personal organizations and raise their own money. Raising a lot of
money is really important in the modern campaign because of the great expense
of media advertising, especially television. If candidates win the nomination,
they certainly get some help from the party. But they almost always keep their
own campaign organization. So if they ultimately win office, they are less
indebted to party leaders than they once were.
Thinking back to the idea of party getting elected officials moving in the same direction, you can see how the declining role of party in organizing campaigns and the rise of personal campaign organizations and campaign consultants have weakened the ability of the party to count on loyalty from candidates after the election. Quite simply, candidates do not need help from party as much as they once did.
Nevertheless, parties still do provide significant campaign support, including some money, especially for candidates in lower level offices. Parties run seminars and workshops to help new candidates learn the things they need to know to run successful campaigns. In a sense parties train candidates in the minor leagues, but once a candidate is ready for a higher level office, party makes less difference.
7. Recruit New Groups of Voters
Historically,
as new groups came to the
Immigrant landing
station at Ellis Island in New York harbor, a major point of entry for
immigrants into the U.S. in the
1800s and early 1900s. After being accepted and often
going to work in the
factories of northeastern cities, political party organizations worked
hard to help the
immigrants and won their votes in return, playing the role of helping integrate
new groups of people into
our political culture (Copyright expired, public domain).
The
story of African American political participation might be seen as an exception
to this generalization. For nearly a century after the Civil War, whites in the
South agreed that no candidate would seek out votes from African Americans to
gain political advantage. This agreement along with a wide range of segregation
laws minimized voting participation by African Americans and relegated them to
second class citizenship. Though African Americans suffered greatly under this
system, the entire South paid a heavy toll in wasted human potential. It is
still trying to catch up. However, African Americans have not always been
excluded from Southern electoral politics. For a brief period right after the
Civil War during Reconstruction, the Republican Party recruited the formerly
enslaved people to temporarily build a Republican majority in most Southern
states. And beginning in 1960, Democratic presidential candidates recruited
African American voters across the nation.
Republican recruitment
of African Americans for a brief period after the Civil War enabled the
party
to win control of some
state governments in the South. This ugly caricature of African American
legislators in the South Carolina
House published in 1874 in a national magazine, Harper’s Weekly,
showed that even in the
North many white people held strong feelings of prejudice that would
prevent parties from fully
integrating this important group of Americans into our political
system for many
decades (Copyright expired, public domain).
Hispanic voters are the most recent group who are being recruited. Their potential numbers are increasing as more and more Hispanics gain citizenship and more and more are voting in primaries and general elections. Failure to win very many Hispanic votes in the 2012 presidential election was a significant factor in the Republican loss. Shortly after that election many Republican leaders began seeking ways to attract more Hispanics to their party.
8. Counterweight to Powerful Interest Groups
If you remember the chapter on interest groups, many political scientists see the operation of interest groups as central in understanding how our government makes policy decisions. You may remember my saying that if I could only teach you one chapter on how American government actually works, it would be the chapter on interest groups. You may also remember that the most important groups tend to be those with a lot of money, specifically business and corporate groups representing mostly upper class citizens.
Political parties can provide a counterweight to the advantages that the wealthy have in interest group politics. Working class people do have some interest group representation, but they are no match for the interest groups that represent wealth. What working class citizens do have is votes. Votes can be very effective, if they choose to use them and if they are united behind a political party—two big “if’s!”
Joining
political parties and then voting on the basis of economic class is called
class based politics. Critics of this idea call it “class warfare.” We find
relatively less of this in the
Protester at a 2011
“Occupy Wall Street” demonstration in
N.Y. City, showing her
anger at the growing disparity of income
in the U.S. (photo by Adam
Jones, Ph.D, Creative Commons)
Nevertheless, at certain points in American history the income gap grew to the point that the have-nots began to lose hope and were willing to vote along class lines. Organized parties gave them a way to capture control of government and challenge powerful economic interests. This is rare, but it has happened. This is one way of looking at the New Deal in the 1930s.
If
the wealthy and their powerful interest groups fully understand this, then they
will understand that they have a self-interest to
provide opportunity and a decent standard of living for those who are less well
off. (This may remind you of a classic political observation made by Socrates:
it is in the interest of the stronger to look out for the interests of the
weaker.) But if the wealthy and their interest groups let disparities grow too
great and ignore the many who potentially can vote, then a political party
could attract enough voters to bring about great change. Some observers say
that we are approaching this point in the
9. Develop Policy Proposals—Real Party Differences
Over the course of American history, political parties have developed many policy proposals that have become programs we take for granted today. I should not have to say more than the New Deal (think Social Security) or the Great Society (think Medicare) to illustrate this point. Many of the wide range of economic, social, educational, and environmental policies that came from the Roosevelt and Johnson administrations were at least partly developed through the political parties. Of course, some also came through interest groups that are part of the coalition of groups that support political parties.
Until recently, many citizens believed that few differences exist between the two major political parties. This belief rested either on political ignorance or on viewing the political landscape from an extreme position. Members of third or minor parties often have an extreme perspective. From the perspective at one extreme or the other, the two major parties would appear similar, because the major parties are competing for voters near the middle of the political spectrum. This misperception is less likely today because of the polarization of the two parties and their seeming unwillingness to compromise on taxes or the budget.
Yet even if most people today think the parties are different, they often cannot give many examples of differences. One of the best places to get details on differences is to examine and compare the most recent party platforms that you can find on the Web. That would be a good exercise.
Let
me offer some generalizations on these differences. Democrats generally want
more government involvement in providing equal economic and educational
opportunity for citizens who are less well off. Democrats want government to
play a stronger regulatory role in protecting the environment. Republicans
would rely more on market forces and voluntary action to deal with social and
environmental problems. Democrats would pursue a foreign and defense policy
that relies more on cooperation with allies and international agencies, while
Republicans prefer more unilateral action. Democrats would spend more on social
and economic aid to other nations while Republicans would spend more on the
military equipment and hardware. For a long time Republicans were opposed to the
Social Security program, but its great popularity has led them to shift to a
position that would make it a private and more voluntary program, which
Democrats see as gutting a program that they feel should cover everyone.
Republicans oppose a universal health care system regulated by the national
government, preferring to keep market forces dominant in determining what is
available to whom, while Democrats support a national system that covers
everyone, even if it works through private insurance companies, which they
would regulate far more than Republicans would. This is what the battle over “Obamacare,” or the Affordable Care Act, was all about. Of
course, the specifics on any of these proposals shift from year to year and
from candidate to candidate, but the general differences have existed for a
long time and will continue to exist.
A recent example of an
issue on which the political parties took very strongly opposing stands
was the expansion of
health care through the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare.”
Here anti-Obamacare protesters in a 2010 rally call for defeat of the
proposal and for moderate
Republicans to be
purged from the party (photo by Fibonacci
Blue, Creative Commons).
10. Increase Continuity in Public Policy
If we had no political parties and if we elected political leaders on the basis of their specific ideas, then policies would change every time we elected new leaders. Having parties operate throughout government means that each party will defend the policies it enacted, even if it is no longer in control of the entire government. If you remember that our government structure is designed to make change difficult, you can see how this works. Republican control of the presidency and both houses of Congress did not enable President Bush to privatize Social Security in his first term in office, even though that is what he proposed. Democrats had too many ways to block such a major change.
If you have been reading and considering this list of things that political parties do, you might see a contradiction here. I have argued that political parties can be a force for change by developing new policies, recruiting voters and helping win campaigns and then capturing control of government and getting it moving to enact the policies. And now I have said that they can also slow change down by using the many obstacles built into our system of government to defend existing policies against the other party. So we have another paradox: parties both promote change and slow change.
How
is that possible? The answer rests on the extent to which a party gains control
of the government structure and the length of time they have that control.
During periods of great change a single party was able to dominate most of
government. Again, I think of the Democratic majority during the New Deal in
the 1930s and following the 1964 landslide re-election of Lyndon Johnson that
also gave the Democrats overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress. Without
those majorities the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and
the creation of Medicare probably would not have happened. Consider the degree
of partisan control of government that exits today. Does one party have
sufficient control of government today to bring about great change?
We
will see more evidence of when parties are able to make major changes as we now
turn to a brief history of political parties in the
III. A Brief History of American Political Parties
A. The Creation of American Political Parties: Federalists and the Jeffersonians
Right
after the new government under the new Constitution took office in 1789, we had
no organized political parties, just as the Founders hoped. That situation did
not last for long. During the first
On
one side, led by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and supported by
Vice President John Adams, was a group that kept the name Federalists,
the same name that they had used when they had promoted the federal union that
was central to the new Constitution. They favored a strong and active
national government and staying neutral in the war by negotiating the Jay
Treaty with
With the passing of both Hamilton (shot dead by Aaron Burr in a dual in 1804) and John Adams, the Federalist Party lacked leadership and began to decline. Following the War of 1812, the nation united under the Democratic-Republicans and President James Monroe, who had no effective opposition.
B. The Second Party System: Whigs and Democrats
By
the 1820s we had only one party. But again, this situation did not last for
long. The Democratic-Republicans split over the personalities and ambitions of
presidential contenders Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, son of John
Adams. In terms of group support, the split was along familiar lines. Adams had
the support of the commercial and banking interests while
Jackson
and his supporters organized themselves and set out to change the rules. They
were successful in changing rules in enough states so that by 1828 a majority
of electors were chosen by popular vote. In that election
John Quincy Adams’
political battles with Andrew Jackson in 1828 and 1828
led to a split in the
Democratic Party, with those supporting Adams forming
the Whig Party, which
lasted till the 1850s when the battle over abolition of
slavery destroyed the Whigs
and split the Democrats and gave birth to the
Republican Party
(copyright expired, public domain).
By
1832 all of
C. The Third Party System: Republicans and Democrats
The issue of the abolition of slavery ultimately destroyed the Whig/Democrat party system. Many Northern Democrats who opposed enslavement joined the new party that was forming around the cause for abolition, the Republican Party. Southern Democrats defended human enslavement and threatened secession. The Whigs also split along regional lines. In the South many Whigs joined the Democrats even though they disagreed with Democrats on many economic issues. In short, issues surrounding race and preserving the union trumped economic issues.
When
Following
the war was a short period of Reconstruction when Republicans had political
power in the South. But then Southern whites forcibly
regained control over southern state governments, took the vote away from black
Republicans and sent segregationist Democrats to
1876 Thomas Nast
political cartoon in Harper’s Weekly
condemning the
Hamburg Massacre in
which whites killed seven blacks. The bloody incident,
which took place near what
is now North Augusta, South Carolina, launched a
violent movement to forcibly
return control of South Carolina to whites. For well
over a century after the
Civil War questions of race dominated party activities
in the South (copyright
expired, public domain).
D. Realignments in the Third Party System
1. Rise and Fall of the Populist Challenge
By
the late 1880s, economic hardships for farmers and workers, who suffered
greatly under the economic and political power of railroads and large
corporations during the industrial revolution, created the potential for
change. As noted earlier in our discussion about the things that political
parties do, parties could provide an outlet for all this discontent. Many
middle class reformers were attracted to the Progressive movement, which
operated both as a political party in the
Tom Watson, Populist
Party leader in Georgia, was one of the few in the
Populist Party to win
a seat in Congress (1891-3). He began his career
trying to unite whites and
blacks on the basis of shared economic interests,
but later became a white
supremacist when that proved an easier political
path. This poster was for
his unsuccessful run for the presidency as the
candidate of a dying third
party in 1904 (out of copyright, public domain).
The Populists elected some members to Congress and ran presidential candidates, but failed to get much beyond this. The failure can be attributed to several things, including the split along racial lines in the South that prevented white Populists from seeking black votes that might have allowed them to win elections. Again, racial issues trumped economic concerns. The defeat of their 1896 and 1900 presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, who was also the Democratic candidate in those elections, ended the Populist challenge to the two major parties.
Most
southern white Populist supporters either went back to the all-white Democratic
Party, whose major purpose was to maintain white supremacy, or they dropped out
of politics altogether. Voting rates dropped dramatically in the South
following the Populist defeat. Few African Americans voted in the South.
In
the North African Americans were loyal to the party of emancipation, the
Republicans. Workers in the North split between both major parties, but the
Republican Party had the clear edge.
The
regional basis for the two parties that had existed before the Populist
challenge was reinforced. The Democrats were the only viable party in the
South, but the Republicans dominated the North and the West and the nation as a
whole.
The only Democrat to be elected president between 1896 and the 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt was Woodrow Wilson in 1912. He won only because the Republicans were splintered by the third party candidacy of Teddy Roosevelt, who took many progressive Republicans with him into his Bull Moose Party.
2. The New Deal Realignment
Political scientists have long observed that great crises can lead to realignments in who supports the different political parties. And these shifts can create new parties and new majorities within existing parties. We saw that in the 1850s with the crisis surrounding abolition and the rise of the Republican Party. As we saw, the economic crises in the late 1800s almost but did not quite lead to a major shift. But the economic crisis of the Great Depression did lead to a major realignment.
Republican
President Hoover took some action to address the economic crisis of the Great
Depression, but not enough to turn things around. Unemployment grew to the
range of 25%.
Voters
rejected
New Deal programs like
the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) were
immensely popular, bringing
jobs and appliances, like this electric stove, to rural
families across the nation,
and building popular support for a landslide realigning
election for Roosevelt and the
Democrats in 1936 (FDR Library, public domain).
The new Democratic majority in the New Deal realignment included most Northern workers, especially those in unions, rural Americans across the nation who were subsisting on small farms, and Southerners who remained in the party for reasons of race but now had economic reasons as well. In addition, significant numbers of African Americans began to migrate to the party for economic reasons, though that shift would not be complete till the 1960s when the Democratic Party became the party of civil rights. The Republicans remained the party of small businesses and corporations. As FDR and the Democrats created more and more social programs, like Social Security, the Republicans began to view Democrats as taking the nation down a path to socialism. In short, the parties became realigned along economic lines more than regional lines.
While
the election of 1932 was a rejection of
3. Dealignment and Regional
Realignment—Civil Rights and Social Conservatives,
The New Deal Democratic majority began to erode as new crises arose and as generations passed away. Children sometimes went their own way, so the intergenerational transfer of party identification was less than perfect. Over several generations this made a difference. In another sense the New Deal was a victim of its own success. As living conditions improved for average people, they had less self-interest in helping those who were still at the bottom. More people began to see themselves as paying taxes to help others rather than being the beneficiaries of opportunities paid for by others.
The
civil rights revolution had a major impact on the Democratic majority in the
South. After John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson supported civil rights and after
the Republican Party started to oppose the passage and enforcement of civil
rights laws, white southerners began to abandon the Democratic Party. New African
American voters supported the party of civil rights and offset some of this
loss. But what had been the solid Democratic South changed first to a two party
competitive region and then to a strongly Republican region. Political
scientists see this as a regional realignment driven by white resentment of
national government actions to undo a society built on white advantage.
President Lyndon
Johnson signing the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law with Rev. Martin Luther
King and
other civil rights leaders
watching. This and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that forced the integration of
all
facilities and businesses
serving the public, cemented the growing bond between African Americans and the
Democratic Party, but
resentment about forcing change on southern social relationships began driving
white southerners toward
the Republican Party (LBJ Library, public domain).
A range of social and moral issues reinforced the movement of the white South to the Republican Party. Conservative white Christians in the South rejected liberal positions taken by the national Democratic Party on such issues as women’s equality, gay rights, prayer in school, and abortion.
Foreign
policy also eroded the Democratic majority created by the New Deal. Until the
1960s most citizens saw the Republicans as the party of isolationism, rejecting
military action to promote American interests. The triumph of
But
then the Korean War went badly. The first Republican President since
Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson deepened our commitment to a military adventure in Vietnam
in the 1960s. That also went badly. Americans turned to another Republican to
find “peace with honor,” to use Richard Nixon’s own words. Democrats had turned
against the war. Nixon prolonged the war, and in the process gained the support
of Americans who supported strong military action. Vietnam flipped the images
of the two parties. Citizens began to see the Republicans as the party
supporting strong military actions to promote American interests.
Touching one of the
more than 58,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial wall,
commemorating the fallen in a war
that flipped the images of the two parties on military
interventions. The Republicans had
been the party of isolationism and the Democrats
the party of military
action in places like Korea and Vietnam, but when Democrats
turned against the war in
1968 and Nixon pursued the war, the parties reversed their
images on pursuing military
interventions (photo by “ownself,” Creative Commons).
Americans who favored military actions against nations that we saw as threats moved to the Republican Party. This helped Republicans in the South, where many military bases are located and where many military veterans retire. Ronald Reagan’s build-up of the military in the 1980s and George W. Bush’s strong military response after 9/11 continued to reinforce these trends.
Together
these forces shifted the political balance of power. Democrats still had more
identifiers than Republicans, but the margin of difference was close enough so
that short term issues and personalities could win or lose the elections for
either party. Republicans were strongest in the South and in some of the rural
mountain states that had a lot of land but few people. Democrats were strongest
in the Northeastern seaboard and the Pacific coast. You may have seen maps of Democratic
blue states, Republican
red states, and the swing
purple states. The two parties were reflecting cultural differences
among the regions of the nation. Whichever party won more of the states that
had more cultural diversity (
States colored by
their Electoral College results over the presidential elections of 2000, 2004,
2008, and 2012.
Red went Republican all
four; pink three of the four; purple split two and two; light blue three of four for Democrats;
and, blue went for the Democrats all four. In 2012, Obama won all of the
purples, just as he did in 2008. This was
only two states less than
he won in 2008 when he also won two pink states, Indiana and North Carolina.
Remember that
this map gives the
impression that the Republicans have more support because of the geographical
size of the
red states. But most of
them, with the exception of Texas, are relatively small in population and therefore
have
relatively fewer Electoral Votes
(map by Angr, Creative Commons).
E. Future Changes?
Current
trends and unknown future crises will certainly make a difference in the American
party system. The percentage of people who do not associate themselves with
either major party, the independents, is significantly higher than a few
decades ago. They may remain independents, but some crisis could move them to
one party or the other.
Political
scientists have been looking for a new realignment for decades now. We may have
come close in the early 1970s when Nixon was extremely popular, but his
misdeeds in the Watergate scandal did great damage to the Republican Party. One
could say the same for the Democrats in the late 1990s.
Changing
demographics in the nation might have a long term effect in favor of the
Democratic Party. Minority groups have tended to be more Democratic in
identification over the last half century, and minority groups, especially
Hispanics, are growing in their proportion of the population. Assuming current
trends continue, Hispanics along with other minorities as well a growing number
of people who consider themselves multi-ethnic, will create in the years to
come a nation that is comprised of a majority of minorities. Single working
females, who tend to identify more with and vote more for Democrats than
Republicans (creating something called the gender gap), are a growing part of the population. Young voters,
especially singles, another growing demographic, who are more accepting of
cultural diversity, including same sex marriage, have been trending Democratic
as well. Whites, who tend toward Republican identifications, will become a
minority. According to U.S. Census projections, “non-Hispanic whites,” who were
72% of all voters in 2012, will fall to about half of the population. In short,
Republicans cannot count on winning national elections with only white votes
from conservative areas of the nation in the not too distant future.
|
%
Who Voted Democratic in 2012 Among Growing Demographic Groups |
|||
|
Latino (10% of all voters) |
Young: 18-29 (19% of all voters) |
Singles (40% of all voters) |
Single Women (23% of all voters) |
|
71% |
60% |
62% |
67% |
IV. The Organization of Political Parties—Three Part Structure
Political scientists often break political parties down into three connected components: party organization, elected officials, and the party in the electorate, referring to the voters. Let’s look at each one in turn.
A. Party Organization
Party
organization refers
to the people who run party affairs on a day-to-day basis. Some are
volunteers who do only a few things. For example, precinct chairs or captains
at the local level often do little more than preside over precinct meetings
that only take place when the party has a caucus (meeting) to measure the
presidential preferences of party members in that precinct. If the state holds
presidential primaries, then these meetings do not even take place.
At
the county level, most parties have some kind of organization. They often elect
a county party chair at the county party convention that usually takes place
every two years. County chairs are usually unpaid positions. But depending on
the size of the county and the strength of the party, the county party could
have an office with paid staff. The county level is important because we elect
so many officials at the county level in the
State level organizations are far more substantial and sophisticated. A state chair speaks for the party and works closely with the governor, if the governor is of that party. The governor plays a key role in choosing the state party chair. The structure varies from state to state, but usually the party has vice chairs and other officers as well as representatives to the national party, usually called national committee members. The leadership selects someone usually called an executive director as a full time head of the staff to oversee party activities and efforts. As you can see, the structure of the parties parallels our federal structure. You might look up the structure of the two state parties in your home state.
At the national level a similar structure to the state structure usually exists. This includes a chair who serves at the pleasure of the president if the president is in that party, or at the pleasure of the presidential candidate once the party selects a candidate every four years. A national committee includes representatives from the states. A hired executive director oversees day-to-day activities.
In addition, each party in each house of Congress has its own structures. They hire people to assist in campaigns to re-elect their members to Congress and help win seats held by the other party when possible. For example, the Democrats in the Senate have the DSCC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Republicans have the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
This structure reveals many ties between officeholders and the party organizations. The organizations speak for the party, help recruit candidates, train them, give campaign advice, help in fundraising, run get out the vote drives (called GOTV), and recruit and train volunteers at all levels. Despite all this, you should keep in mind that candidates for most offices have their own personal campaign organizations that they rely on far more than party organizations.
B. Elected Officials
All
the people who win office potentially enable the party to control
government and enact policies that the party supports. These elected officials
are what political scientists call the party in government.
Working together is the norm, but many disagreements also take place. Governors do not always get along with their party members in the legislature. Party leaders in one house of a state legislature or the Congress do not always get along with the leaders in the other house. The president often has conflicts with party members in Congress and with governors over policies that affect the states. Even governors of the same party from different parts of the nation may have different views. For example, a Republican governor in a relatively liberal state may have very different views on environmental policy than a governor from a conservative state. You might look in the news for stories about conflicts between elected officials in the same political party. They are not hard to find.
Yet, despite all this, most of the time party members vote together in legislative bodies and chief executives of the same party move in similar directions. In recent years in Congress, a majority of party members voted with each other well over 80% of the time, according to studies done by Congressional Quarterly. From the average citizen’s point of view, this means that if you generally agree with what a party wants to do, then you will get what you want from members of that party about eight times out of ten. That’s not too bad. This takes us to the last part of the party structure, the voters.
C. Voters
What
political scientists call the party in the electorate refers to average
citizens who consider themselves members of political parties. Party
identification is more of a psychological self-identification than any
kind of formal membership. About as formal as party membership gets is with
states that have closed primaries. In states with closed primaries people must
register some kind of party membership. That includes no membership—being an
independent. Voting in a party’s primaries is restricted to those registered in
that party. Those registered as independent do not get to vote in any primary.
Voters in Gainsville, Florida, waiting in line to vote in the 2008
presidential election.
Voters are the third
and most important leg of the party structure, because the power
of the first and second
legs depend on building a loyal and active base of voters (public domain).
Who are in the two major parties? You can easily find current survey data indicating party identification by a variety of demographic variables as well as the current division between the two major parties. But for now let me give you a few generalizations, some of which you saw earlier in the discussion of party history.
Let’s
start with the division in party identification. In most surveys respondents
are asked something like “generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a
Republican, Democrat, independent, or what?” Then they are asked “how strongly”
they identify with whatever party they name, or if they say “independent,” they
are asked if they “lean to” either of the two parties. Surveys end up with a
range of identifications from strong identifiers to one party through leaners
and then independents and leaners to the other party and so on.
What
is critical is how one counts the party leaners, those who feel
slightly inclined toward one party or the other if pressed to give an answer.
If party leaners are counted with the party toward which they lean, we get a
much higher percentage of party identifiers. Typically, leaners are counted as
independents. Of course, this boosts the percentage of independents that get
counted.
Okay,
you see the complexity. If we just count pure independents, those who do not
even lean in either direction, we get about one in ten voters. Most people have
at least some leaning. Counting this way Democrats are most recently a little
under half of all voters. And Republicans are around 40%.
If we count the leaners as independents, then the independent group is somewhat over a third of the population. Counting this way, Democrats generally have a little over a third identifying with them and Republicans about a fourth. So Democrats have the advantage in party identification, about ten percentage points no matter how we count the independents.
Does this mean that Democrats win nearly all elections? Definitely not, for several reasons. First, voters are not evenly distributed across the nation, so certain areas could and do have a Republican advantage. Second, some people defect and vote for the other party’s candidate. Republicans are generally more loyal than Democrats. And perhaps most important, most people do not vote most of the time. Only in presidential elections do we see a majority of the adult population voting. Republicans generally vote at higher rates than Democrats. So Republicans have several ways to make up for their numerical deficiency. This last point about turnout reinforces one of the things that election experts frequently say: turnout is everything in elections.
Democratic identifiers tend to have different demographic characteristics than Republican identifiers. Democrats are more likely to be minority group members, single females, lower income, of a non-Protestant religion such as Catholic or Jewish or nonreligious, from the North or far Northwest, live in urban areas, and union members. Republicans are just the opposite on these things.
Age is an interesting factor in party identification. Young people tend to identify with the party of a successful president or against the party of an unsuccessful when they were young. Then that identification tends to last the rest of their lives. So the children of the New Deal, who are passing from the political scene, tended to be Democrats in identification. Those who went though their young years in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president tended to be Republican. George W. Bush’s rather unsuccessful presidency helped recruit relatively more young people for the Democratic Party. The other difference between the young and older people is that younger people tend to have weaker identifications and relatively more of them are independents, at least while they are young.
V. Why We Have a Two Party System
Unlike
many European democratic republics which have multi-party systems, the
Why just two? Given that Americans complain so much about the parties that do exist, why aren’t other parties more successful? This question has several possible answers.
A. Tradition?
Certainly
a tradition of two major parties exists in the
However,
nothing magic exists about a tradition. We have a history of traditions that
have been broken by both necessity and preference. Republicans were the party
traditionally associated with isolationism in foreign policy—true no more.
Democrats were associated with white supremacy—true no more. Traditions get
broken and even reversed. So even though two major parties do have a tradition,
I suspect that if the need arose and other factors changed, that tradition
would end.
About the best that can be said for this explanation is that it has a certain self-fulfilling aspect to it. If those with the ambition and skill to win political office think they have to run under one of the two major party labels, they choose to run under one of those labels. Well-qualified candidates do not choose to run under third parties because usually they want to win.
B. Two Sides to Issues?
Some argue that two parties fit how most Americans feel on issues. This explanation has a logical foundation. Consider how opinion is distributed on many issues, in a bell shaped curve. Consider that ideologically, more Americans consider themselves as moderates than liberal or conservative. If parties need votes, then the most votes are in the middle. So logically the middle is where parties go to find votes. Only so much room is in the middle, and the two relatively moderate parties divide up that vote. Third parties are forced out to the extremes where they cannot find enough votes to win.
While this explanation works well in the sense of describing where our two major parties are on many issues and where third parties are, not all issues have bell shaped distributions of opinion. To put it another way, many issues have more than two sides. For example, many different positions exist on how health care should be provided. Many positions exist on how to best foster a strong economy—Keynesian economics, free market economics, monetarism, supply side economics, all of which we have talked about earlier in this text. Many positions exist on the ownership and regulation of weapons, on abortion, and so on. So why could not third parties find enough votes on some of these issues and some of these positions to win some offices? The answer lies in our next explanation, our election rules.
C. Rules? Plurality Winner-take-all Elections
Election
rules are critical in any political system. In the
This
set of rules has profound implications for the prospects of a third party.
Suppose three parties exist with one having a little more support than the
other two (say 40% and 35% and 25%). The party with 40% will win virtually all
the elections, though the 35% party could occasionally win if it found enough
converts. But the party with 25% stands no chance at all—at least if they run
as a separate party. However, if they realize that they could guarantee a win
for either of the other two parties, then what is the rational thing for them
to do? You guessed it. They see what kind of a deal they can make with the
other two parties and then join the one that makes the better offer. Of course,
the other parties also realize this, so if they behave rationally they will try
to recruit members from the smallest party. And pretty soon, the third party
exists no more. One of the other parties absorbs most of it members. If it
survives at all, it only has members who are unwilling to compromise on what
they want.
|
Party
A—40% of the citizens ·
Always wins if everyone remains loyal to their party ·
Needs help from C if C might make a deal with B |
Party
B—35% of the citizens ·
Sometimes wins if it can win a few converts ·
Needs help from C to improve chances |
Party
C—25% of the citizens ·
Never wins if everyone remains loyal to their party ·
Can decide whether A or B wins if willing to make a
deal |
Imaginary rectangular
shaped state or county or city or district with three parties that must elect a
single person to office using the plurality
winner-take-all election rule. Logic compels the C Party, the third
party, to make a deal with either A or B, unless it wants to lose every
election.
That in a nutshell is the major reason why we have had only two major parties for almost all of our history. The rules make it irrational for any third party to continue to run candidates for office and lose when they can get much more by forming a coalition with one of the major parties.
If
you talk to the supporters of third parties, they will offer other reasons in
the rules, like state laws that create difficulty in getting third party
candidates on the ballot. I have even had third party supporters blame me when
I am doing a survey and do not include questions on candidates from minor
parties who stand little chance of being elected. Somehow they want to believe
that not asking questions about a third party candidate in a survey of several
hundred citizens hurts their chances. My answer is that when third parties
start getting elected I will start including them in the questions.
To
be sure, legal barriers like state ballot access rules created by the two major
parties do exist. But they are very minor compared to our basic election rules.
If the
|
Party
A—40% of the citizens ·
Runs a slate of 20 candidates for the legislative body ·
Wins 40% of the vote, so the party gets 40% of its 20
candidates elected, or wins 8 seats |
Party
B—35% of the citizens ·
Runs a slate of 20 candidates for the legislative body ·
Wins 35% of the vote, so the party gets 35% of its 20
candidates elected, or wins 7 seats |
Party
C—25% of the citizens ·
Runs a slate of 20 candidates for the legislative body ·
Wins 25% of the vote, so the party gets 25% of its 20
candidates elected, or wins 5 seats |
Imaginary rectangular shaped state or county
or city or district with three parties that elects a
20 seat legislative body using proportional
representation. As you can see, the results are very different when
each voter casts twenty votes and votes for the twenty candidate slate put
forth by each party—Party C wins some representation without making a deal with
either of the other two parties.
VI. Third Parties: Splinter Protest Parties and Ideological Parties
Even
though third parties rarely win any national level elections in the
We can classify third parties into two basic categories, splinter protest parties and ideological parties. Splinter protest third parties are groups that temporarily break off from one of the two major parties because of some major disagreement where the party failed to reach an acceptable compromise. Sometimes it is an issue that is particularly hard to resolve. Sometimes the disagreement concerns a strong party leader with frustrated ambitions. Sometimes it is a combination of both.
For
example, the Bull Moose Party of Teddy Roosevelt involved both factors. In
1912, Roosevelt, a former two term Republican president, was frustrated that
William Howard Taft, the incumbent Republican president and Teddy’s hand-picked
successor, was not following his advice. Teddy also represented the progressive
reform oriented wing of the party, which was not happy with Taft’s policies. So
Other
examples include Strom Thurmond and the States’ Rights or Dixiecrat
Party in 1948, though that protest against the Democrats did not deny Democratic
incumbent President Harry Truman a reelection victory. In 1968 segregationist
Alabama Governor George Wallace bolted from the Democratic Party over the issue
of civil rights and ran under the banner of the American Independent Party.
Ross Perot ran as an independent in 1992 and lost. To keep his movement alive,
Perot formed a third party, the Reform Party, and ran again under that banner
again in 1996.
Governor George
Wallace announcing his run as a third party candidate in
1968 based on his
opposition to civil rights and support for an all-out military
effort to quickly win the
Vietnam War. Wallace won five southern states (Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Arkansas) and about ten million votes. This
splinter party served as a
kind of halfway house for angry southern white Democrats
who later moved to the
Republican Party (Library of Congress, no known restrictions).
None of these parties lasted very long. Their supporters either moved back to their original party or to the other party. For example, many of the white segregationists who had supported Wallace found a new home in the Republican Party, when under Richard Nixon it began to pursue what was called the Southern Strategy, promising to go slow on civil rights.
Ideological third parties tend to last a lot longer, because they take rather extreme positions on issues and are unwilling to compromise at all. They would rather lose and lose and lose than get less than everything they want—all or nothing. They would rather have an empty glass than one half full. You get the idea! A lot of these parties exist, including the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Constitution Party, a Prohibitionist Party that still wants to ban all sales of alcoholic beverages, a variety of parties with socialist in their names, and dozens of others. You might want to do a search of the web for these parties the positions they take.
The National
Prohibition Party Convention in 1892, an ideological third party that peaked
in the early 1900s puching for passage of the 18th Amendment that
put in place Prohibition.
It declined after the
repeal of Prohibition in 1933, but it continues to run presidential candidates,
winning 516 votes from
individual voters across the nation in 2012 (copyright expired, public domain).
Most
of the time these parties have no impact on election results, but on very rare
occasions they can affect the outcome of an election, usually hurting the major
party candidate who is closer to their own position. The clearest recent
example of this is Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2000.
Overwhelming evidence exists that he took enough votes from Democrat Al Gore in
Anyone who questions the
value of third parties should remember that the Republican
Party started as a
third party, growing out of the anti-slavery movement, and nominating
John C. Freemont as
its first candidate in 1856—they won with Lincoln
four years later
(copyright expired, public domain).
As
long as we have the freedom to associate, we will have third parties. They do
serve some useful functions. They are an outlet for protest, and sometimes that
protest causes the major parties to shift their positions to regain support.
That is not a bad thing if you want parties to respond to shifts in public
opinion. Third parties also introduce new ideas. For example, third parties
pushed many of the ideas that FDR later adopted as part of his New Deal.
Some of the programs
of the New Deal had long been supported by ideological third parties, such as
the
Socialist Party, even
though defenders of the New Deal would argue that they had to modify capitalism
in
order to save it and deny
any relationship to socialists (copyright expired, public domain).
VII. Voting and Election Rules
Now we will turn to things you should know about the different kinds of elections we have and how people participate in them. Political scientists have done a lot of research about voting behavior for two reasons. First, elections are an important aspect of how democratic republics operate. Second, voting is relatively easy to measure and quantitatively study. We will start with the idea of turnout, that is, who votes, then talk about the different kinds of elections, financing these elections, and end with a discussion of how people make voting decisions.
A. Local, State, and National Elections—Turnout
Americans are relatively less likely to vote than citizens in other western democratic republics. One reason, mentioned earlier, is that we have a lot of elections and have a lot of choices to make—the long ballot. Too many demands on voters create what political scientists call voter fatigue.
Voter
turnout, the percentage
of citizens who vote, can be measured in several ways. When you read news
stories on turnout, you need to know how it is being measured. If it is the
percentage of those registered who vote, then turnout will be high, typically
in the 75% range for presidential elections. If it is the percentage of those
potentially eligible (which is based on the adult population over the age of
18), then the numbers will be lower, typically in the 50-60% range for
presidential elections. The reason for this difference is that registration,
which usually has to take place a minimum of 30 days before an election, is a
major barrier for citizens. Most nonvoters do not get past the registration
barrier. Registration requires planning well ahead of the election and must be
redone after every change in place of residence.
Voter
Turnout since 1824 in Presidential elections as percentage of voting age
population.
Not the decline following the
defeat of the Populists in
1896—the modern high point was 63% in 1960 (public domain).
Turnout
varies quite a bit depending on the level of the election and type of election.
As we move from national elections to state to local elections, turnout falls.
Off-year (non-presidential year) congressional elections typically run in the
35% of potentially eligible citizens, and state elections slightly lower. Local
elections are often in the 20% range or lower.
General
elections usually get higher turnout than primaries. Primaries also vary in
turnout depending on the level. A presidential primary will have far greater
turnout than a city council primary, which is often in the 10-15% range.
Choosing nominees by party caucuses in precincts has even lower turnout,
because the caucus takes a lot more time and is more inconvenient. Turnout in
these elections may be in the range of 5% or lower.
Nonpartisan elections, where candidates cannot run under a party label, usually have lower turnout, in large part because making voting decisions is harder. People no longer have party identification to help them decide how to vote.
In addition to the level and type of election, several other factors affect the turnout in particular elections. The more competitive the election, the closer it seems, the more people will turn out to vote. For example the extremely tight 1960 presidential election that John Kennedy narrowly won over Richard Nixon had a turnout of 63%. Candidates who have charismatic personalities increase turnout. A crisis atmosphere increases turnout. You might think about an upcoming election and consider whether it will have higher or lower turnout based on these kinds of factors.
B. Primaries—Different Types
Primary
elections vary from state to state, because our federal system allows states to
make up their own election rules for nominations. And the rules also vary from
party to party within the states because state governments usually allow each
party to make up their own rules within broad guidelines set by the state. In
general, two kinds of primaries exist, open and closed, though variations exist
on each type. For example, winning a primary by a clear majority (more than
50%) in
In
an open primary any registered voter can vote in either party’s
primary (but not both of them). Typically, the voter just shows up at the
polls and votes in that primary. This allows both independents and even people
who identify with the other party to vote in a party primary. Potentially,
those in the other party could vote for whomever they see as the weaker
candidate, but that would preclude them from voting in their own primary.
Rarely does this kind of strategic voting across party lines make a difference.
However, allowing independents to vote usually helps candidates who are less
tied to strong partisans within the party. My home state,
In
a closed primary, voters have to register with a political party when
they register to vote. They can change party registration before a primary
(usually 30 days before), but once registered, they are restricted to voting
in that party’s primary. When I became old enough to vote where I grew up
in
The newest kind of primary is the nonpartisan blanket primary, which we described earlier in the chapter in the changing role of parties in screening potential nominees. To review, in this kind of primary, used in California and Washington (with Louisiana using the same system for its general elections), all candidates for an office of all parties run in one single primary together. Each candidate can have her or his party preference listed, and if someone gets a majority, that person is elected without a general election. If no majority winner, then the top two are in a runoff in the general election, even if they are in the same party.
C. The Electoral College
The Electoral College was created by the Founders as a compromise between having the Congress choose the president and allowing popular election. It also gave states an important role in the process, giving them the power to decide how the electors would be chosen. As you might remember, initially most state legislatures just chose the electors directly themselves. But gradually more and more states allowed popular election of electors until, in 1828, a majority of electors were chosen by popular vote. Today all electors are chosen by popular vote in the states. So when you vote for, say the Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates, you are really voting for a slate of Republican electors nominated as electors by the Republican Party in your state.
Most
states use a plurality winner-take-all rule in electing electors. That is, the
party with the most votes gets all their electors chosen. Two
states,
The
number of electoral votes depends on the number of members each state has in
Congress. So the number for each state is the number of their members in the
U.S. House of Representatives plus two for its two Senate seats. The
The Electoral College
map with each state drawn in size proportional to the number of Electoral Votes
it has.
Note that big geographical
states may have few people and therefore few Electoral Votes (public domain).
Many
debates take place on whether the Electoral College favors large or small
states. Mathematically speaking, the rules clearly favor small states because
each state gets two bonus votes no matter how large or how small the state is.
So states with less than a million people in them, like the mountain states of
However, in politics mathematical rules do not always apply in a straightforward manner. Politically speaking, large states have some advantage. Because almost all states use the “plurality winner-take-all” rule for electing presidential electors, presidential candidates often place more emphasis on large states where a victory can win a large block of electoral votes.
But
even that oversimplifies political reality. Presidential candidates focus on
any states where the election is close. Why waste campaign resources in any
state where you are likely to lose? For example, if a Democrat spent a lot of
money and effort in a reliable Republican state, the Democrat might get 45% of
the vote rather than the usual 40%. Either way, the Democrat gets zero
electoral votes from that state. So candidates spend resources where they think
they have a chance of winning. It turns out that large states do tend to be
more competitive, in part because large states have greater diversity in their
populations. But that is not true of all large states.
D. Campaign Finance
How
campaigns are financed is critically important. Perhaps the best statement on
campaign finance was back in 1896, when William McKinley’s fundraiser Mark
Hanna said that “in campaigns three things are important—the first is money and
I can’t remember the other two.” Perhaps an overstatement, but the statement is
close to true. Money alone will not win campaigns. Many well funded candidates
lose to dynamic charismatic opponents who run smart campaigns. But without a
minimal amount of money to get your message out, you cannot win a modern
campaign at almost any level in American politics.
Mark Hanna raised vast
amounts of money for presidential candidate William McKinley and recognized
the critical
importance of money in winning
campaigns—that is even more true today in the age
of media driven
campaigns (copyright expired, public domain).
Campaign finance is an incredibly complex subject. Every few years reforms get passed after some kind of scandal, and then those with money and those seeking money for campaigns find ways around the reforms to either give money to influence the outcomes of campaigns or get a big advantage in raising money. About all that voters can agree upon is that campaigns cost too much and that they are disgusted with the influence of money on campaigns.
The first set of modern campaign reforms followed after Watergate campaign scandals. These scandals touched on many things, including the unscrupulous raising of huge amounts of campaign money by the Nixon campaign, money that was secretly raised in return for campaign promises to a variety of interest groups. The reforms involved three things: 1) reporting, 2) limits, and 3) public funding of presidential primaries and the general election.
Candidates for any federal office (president and Congress) must report where they get their money and how they spend it. (Most states have their own reporting requirements for state level offices.) That much is pretty noncontroversial today, though some groups wishing to influence campaigns have exploited loopholes to avoid reporting contributors and amounts.
The reforms also set limits on how much people can give in a campaign for an office. This is more controversial, because people can give in a variety of ways. They can give to a candidate’s campaign (primaries count separately from the general election). They can also give to political parties, to PACs (Political Action Committees) set up by interest groups, to independent committees that run their own ads about issues, and spend money themselves advocating some point of view. The courts have allowed limits on contributions to candidates and parties and PACs that give money directly to candidates. But the courts have not allowed limits on contributions to independent committees, to independent PACs, on spending one’s own money to advocate some point of view, and most recently on independent expenditures by unions and corporations (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010). The Supreme Court has equated these contributions with free speech that is protected by the first amendment.
Public funding of campaigns is very controversial. Reform groups like Common Cause advocate public funding of all campaigns (calling this “Clean Elections”). They argue that citizens are better off using tax money for campaigns than paying higher prices for goods and services that in turn pay for PAC contributions which then tie officeholders to interest groups. A few states have public funding of state campaigns, but at the federal level this only exists for presidential elections. Congress did not apply this reform to itself. Reformers charge that members of Congress wanted to keep their ability to raise large sums of money because that gave them a huge advantage in getting re-elected. If they raise enough money early, it discourages anyone from even trying to run against them.
The Presidential Election Campaign Fund comes from a check-off on the federal income tax form. Selecting this check-off takes $3 ($6 for joint returns) from taxes you already pay. It does not increase your taxes. That money goes into the fund for presidential primaries, for helping major parties run their conventions, and for the general election.
However, in recent years this system has been coming apart. Public money for primaries is on a matching basis for small contributions and candidates do not have to participate. If a candidate accepts matching money, the candidate must also accept the limits for spending in each primary. Front-running presidential candidates today choose to raise all their own money to avoid these limits. With modern techniques like raising money over the internet, they can raise far more than they can get in accepting the matching funds. So the matching system for primaries is mostly irrelevant today except for less well-known candidates who cannot raise much money on their own.
For
the first time in 2008, one of the major party candidates, Democrat Barack Obama,
rejected the public money for the general election campaign because he was able
to raise far more through private donations. His
opponent, Republican John McCain, was limited to the $84 million provided in
public money, though this was supplemented by the fundraising ability of the
Republican Party. In 2012 both President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt
Romney opted out of the public money, and both spent raised and spent far more
than they would have had under the system.
About all that is left is that both parties still accept the money available to help run their conventions. Most observers feel that within a few years the entire public funding system at the national level will totally collapse.
E. How People Make Voting Decisions
If
you ask someone how they make voting decisions, they are most likely to say
they vote for the best person, vote on the basis of issues, or if they are of a
cynical nature, vote for “the lesser of the two evils.” As you know from our
earlier discussion on how parties simplify voting choice, voting in any of
these ways involves a great deal of effort. It imposes a cost of time and
effort that most citizens are unwilling to pay. So people say these things not
because they are true, but because saying these things makes them feel good.
A wooden ballot box
used in the Northeastern U.S. in the late 1800s, a distant relative of
computer voting machines used
in most places today—yet people
still make their voting
decisions the same way (Smithsonian, public domain).
Political scientists have done a lot of research on how people make voting decisions. We know which factors are most and least important in how most people make their decisions. I have listed these factors in rough order of importance, though some factors are more important to some kinds of people than others. We will begin with party identification, which of course is only relevant to those who have a party identification. But that is about two-thirds of all voters.
1. Party Identification
The single most important factor in helping people decide how to vote is their party identification. Yes, I know that most people do not admit this to be the case and most people make fun of those who vote along party lines. Saying we vote the person or issues is considered a sign of political sophistication, and most people like to seem sophisticated. But if we were to look at a whole range of issues and compare them to votes, none would explain vote as well as party identification. This is because party identification works as a psychological filter for most people. It colors how we view both candidate personality and issues. Of course we should add that if people choose party on the basis of general issue positions, party is a good shorthand way of choosing candidates. Voters generally vote for the candidate of their party between 85% and 95% of the time. No issues come close to that strong a relationship to voting choice.
2. Group Membership
Group memberships also have a profound effect on how people vote. People get cues from other members in the group on how they should vote. For example, if you are in a church that is politically active, you will get cues on which candidates take morally acceptable positions. If you are in a professional association that is impacted by public policy, you pretty quickly learn which candidate is most friendly to your group.
3. Nature of the Times
In
the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan, challenging incumbent President Jimmy Carter,
asked Americans, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” This
was a powerful question that defined much of the campaign. It assumes some very
important things.
First
it assumes that we should hold presidents accountable for our everyday lives.
You know that we do, fairly or unfairly, and that we have felt this way ever
since Franklin Roosevelt redefined the role we expect presidents to play in our
lives.
It
also assumes that elections are about continuity or change. That is also
true—nearly all elections are about continuity or change. If we are satisfied
and want things to continue as they are, we reward the person and party that
holds office. If we are not and want change, we vote for any challenger whom we
deem acceptable. Americans were dissatisfied with the way things were going in
1980 and they found Reagan to be acceptable, so they voted Carter out of
office. I call 1980 the “ABC election,” anybody but Carter.
Borrowing
Reagan’s words, pollsters ask a standard question that taps this feeling:
whether your family is better off than it was four years ago. People who
vote on the basis of this perception of change in condition for themselves
and/or the nation are called nature of the times voters. Political
scientists sometimes call this “retrospective voting.”
One of the better predictors for a party or incumbent holding office is change in real per capita income. If it is up, then the incumbent or the party currently holding the White House has the advantage. If not, then the other party has the advantage. People do tend to vote their pocketbooks. They generally know how badly stretched they are over a period of time. But once again, if the situation is at all close, party identification can color how people perceive their own family’s changing situation.
4. Personality
We
vote on perceptions of personality. We vote for people with whom we feel
comfortable. Of course, this only applies to candidates for offices that are
high profile enough for us to pay attention to the candidates. Most offices
below the governor or state legislator do not merit enough attention to even
make an evaluation of personality. So we go back to party or just name
familiarity.
John Kennedy on the
Jack Parr late night television show—few, if any, presidents had a better
television image than Kennedy
(published without copyright notice, public domain).
Where
do we learn about the personalities of candidates for major offices? Television
is where we meet them. And we are pretty good at making judgments on
personality, about who we like and dislike on television. We do that every new tv season as we meet new characters on shows. If we like the
characters, we tune in and the show gets good ratings. If we do not like them,
then we tune them out and the show gets cancelled. So when we see a candidate
on television, we make this judgment pretty quickly and with some measure of
confidence.
Political party plays an indirect role here as well. We tend to like people who share a common identity like party. To put it another way, party is a psychological filter that biases our judgment. So for those with a party identification, personality evaluation is far from objective.
5. Ideology
We
looked at ideology way back in the first chapter. It is heavily correlated with
political party. Democrats tend to be more liberal and Republicans tend to be more
conservative. You can find populists in both parties (more among the Democrats)
and libertarians in both parties (more among the Republicans). But all these
are statistical tendencies. Some Democrats are conservative on moral issues,
especially African Americans. And some Republicans, especially those in the
Northeast and in the West, still tend to be moderate or even slightly liberal
on social and environmental issues. So you should know that party and ideology
are different—pretty closely related, but not the same. Party does color
ideological evaluations, as it does many other things.
You also know that many people do not use the term ideology or misunderstand what it means. So while it does help some people sort out which candidate better fits their views on what government should and should not do, ideology is irrelevant to many, if not most Americans. Nevertheless, ideology is another factor that helps voters sort out candidate choices.
6. Issues
Finally,
issues do make a difference. But for most voters, despite what they say, issues
are rather far down the list. How many people do you know who actually do
research on where each candidate stands on each issue and then weights these
positions against their own positions to make a choice?
Perhaps
the best we can say is that issues enter through the framework of party. In
that sense issues are important—if you choose party based on the basis of
issues. Those who do not have a party identification are less likely to vote,
largely because deciding on the other factors just takes too much work and is
too confusing.
If you want to see how you might vote on the basis of issues, you can go to a variety of websites that allow you to answer questions on issue preferences and then the site shows you which candidates best fit your own personal positions on issues. If you are reading this text during an ongoing campaign, this might be a good exercise.
VIII. Policy Implications
A. Cycles in the Public Mood—Change and Stability
Almost
any study of
Some
political scientists argue that the public mood shifts in cycles that bring
about change and then shift to wanting to slow down and have stability for a
while. So following a Franklin Roosevelt and all the changes of the New Deal
that expanded government activity, we see a period in the 1950s in which voters
wanted to move more slowly. This was followed by the expansion of government
activity and new policies in the 1960s, followed by slowing down in the 1970s
and 1980s.
You might consider where the nation is now in these terms. Has the public had so much change in recent years that it wants to slow down and digest these changes? Or has it become restless? Is the current mood one in which the public desires more change? While simplistic, this theory reinforces the idea that almost all elections are about change or stability.
B. Policy Mandates
Those running for office often claim that voters elected them to enact policies that were in their platform. That is, they claim a policy mandate. While this may sometimes be the case, it is rare. You know that most voters only know a few things about details of policy proposals. Therefore, while someone may win because of dissatisfaction with the status quo and because of the desire for change, exactly what that change is to be is another matter.
Those who win elections must persuade others in government to support policy proposals after being elected. To put it another way, candidates must do more than just win. After winning they must sell the mandate to both the public and to other policymakers. Having large majorities elected with you in Congress from a landslide election certainly helps. This helped Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, Lyndon Johnson in 1965, and Barack Obama in 2009-10. Having a crisis in which the nation looks for strong leadership helped Woodrow Wilson at the outbreak of WWI and George W. Bush after 9/11 in persuading the public and those in Congress that new policies needed to be passed.
In
foreign policy, for example, George W. Bush changed course from carefully
working with allies, multilateralism, and only attacking other
nations after we were attacked. He sold a new foreign policy of unilateralism,
in which the
My point here is that elections do not automatically lead to major changes in policy. Elected leaders have to sell those changes after they get elected.
IX. Should You Vote?
We began with the observation that the time and effort required for voting compared to the expected benefits make voting irrational. Yet about half the population still votes in presidential elections and somewhere in the range of a fifth to a third in most lower level elections. So a lot of citizens are acting irrationally and voting. Should they continue to do so? Should you?
We can lower the costs of voting by using party identification as a shorthand way of voting on issues. So perhaps the costs are not as high as would be the case if we had to research a wide range of issues for a long list of candidates. This makes the act of voting not quite as irrational as we thought.
Nevertheless, our individual votes will rarely make a difference. But perhaps we vote for that rare case when it will. We buy lottery tickets knowing full well that we are unlikely to win. We watch many athletic games to the bitter end when our favorite team or player seems hopelessly behind so that we can see that rare instance when the impossible does happen. So perhaps we continue to vote hoping that some day it might make a difference. Perhaps we continue because we want to be there and be counted when it does. This kind of argument places a value on hopes and dreams, a psychological value that is often overlooked, but real nonetheless.
In
addition, voting is more than doing something for expected rewards. It is a civic
ritual in which we participate to affirm our membership in our
democratic republic, just as religious rituals affirm membership in a body
of believers of some faith. It gives us a sense of connection, of being part of
something bigger than ourselves. Voting helps us keep the democratic republic
Ben Franklin and the other Founders started. It also honors those who struggled
to gain that right for us, and in some cases died fighting for that right. To
fail to vote dishonors their sacrifice. All of these considerations are social
and psychological and moral, not part of a cold economic analysis of
self-interest.
Suffragettes fought
for the vote for decades before winning
that right in the
Nineteenth Amendment passed in 1920. Some
were imprisoned and
force-fed when they went on hunger strikes.
Is failing to vote a
dishonor to their sacrifice? (Library of Congress,
no known restriction on
use)
So should you vote? Surprise! I will not tell you that you should. All I will say is that you should consider all the factors involved. You must decide for yourself.
KEY TERMS AND IDEAS
long ballot
political party
party caucus
Progressives
nonpartisan elections
initiative
recall
nonpartisan blanket primary
loyal opposition
Federalists
Jeffersonians and Democratic-Republicans
Whigs
Republican Party
Populist Party
New Deal realignment
Blue states,
Red states, and Purple states
gender gap
party organization
party in government
party in the electorate
party identification
party leaners
two party system
plurality winner-take-all election rules
proportional representation
splinter protest third parties
Southern Strategy
ideological third parties
voter fatigue
voter turnout
open primary
closed primary
Electoral College
nature of the times voters
policy mandate
multilateralism
unilateralism in foreign policy
preemption in defense policy
(voting as a) civic ritual
Possible
Internet Exercises
1. Use of the
long ballot in the
2. Find out
how parties choose candidates for office at the local level where you live and
for state level offices. Find out whether your state uses open or closed
primaries or caucuses in the presidential nomination process.
3. Search the
internet for studies of income inequality in the U.S. Has inequality been
decreasing, staying the same, or growing?
4. Find the
most recent national platforms for the two major parties and compare the
positions they take on several important issues.
5. Find the
names of the current chairs of the Democratic and Republican National
Committees, noting their backgrounds.
6. Find a
list of third parties on the Web. Find two that interest you and look at their
websites. Describe their issue positions on some key issues.