Political Parties

1
Political Parties

• Chapter Twelve

2
Introduction

• Do parties matter to voters?
• In 2000, the same electorate that seemed so
  indifferent to parties cast the most consistent
  party-line vote for president recorded in nearly
  half a century.
• Polls found huge differences between Bush and
  Gore supporters on a variety of issues.
• The 2000 election was very partisan.
• Many voters, while expressing negative opinions
  about political parties, BEHAVE as partisans.

3
The Constitutions Unwanted Offspring

• The Constitution contains no mention of political
  parties.
• During the nations founding, parties were widely
  considered to be a threat to good government and
  public order.

4
The Constitutions Unwanted Offspring

• The pervasive fear of parties reflected both
  historical experience and widely held
  eighteenth-century social beliefs.
• Factional conflict brought to mind the bloody
  religious wars of Europe and internal strife that
  had destroyed the classic republics of Greece,
  Rome, and Italy.
• Those in power saw themselves as acting for the
  benefit of society. An opposition was misguided
  at best, treacherous at worst.

5
The Constitutions Unwanted Offspring

• When the leaders of the new government took the
  steps that led to the creation of the first
  political parties, they did not expect or want
  party competition to be a permanent feature of
  American politics.

6
The Constitutions Unwanted Offspring

• Parties were meant to be temporary expedients to
  achieve collective action goals that were
  difficult to achieve without them.
• The Constitution, while not vocal on parties
  specifically, did have a profound effect on the
  kind of parties that developed.

7
Incentives for Party Building

• In a system where collective choices are made by
  voting, organization pays.
• When action requires winning majorities on a
  continuing basis in multiple settings,
  organization is absolutely essential.
• The Constitutions provisions for enacting laws
  and electing leaders, therefore, put a huge
  premium on building majority alliances across
  institutions and electoral units.

8
To Build Stable Legislative and Electoral
Alliances

• The first American parties appeared in Congress
  when leaders with opposing visions of the
  national future began competing for legislative
  votes.
• In order to win, they had to obtain majority
  support for their side, arrange a common course
  of action, and then get the supporters to show up
  to vote.
• Parties must also build alliances across
  institutional boundaries incorporating the
  presidency as well as members of the House and
  Senate. Why?

9
To Build Stable Legislative and Electoral
Alliances

• Organized competition for votes in Congress leads
  directly to organized competition for votes in
  congressional elections.
• The organizational work required to negotiate and
  maintain electoral alliances expands legislative
  parties into electoral parties.

10
To Build Stable Legislative and Electoral
Alliances

• The presidential selection rules also offer
  powerful incentives for building electoral
  alliances across districts and states.
• How so?
• Because of the nature of the constitutional
  system and its incentives, the organizational
  work required for the collective pursuit of
  political office results in a national party
  organization.

11
To Mobilize Voters

• No matter how well organized, electoral alliances
  fail if they cannot get enough people to vote for
  their candidates.
• Parties are motivated to attract voters and get
  them to the polls.

12
To Mobilize Voters

• Initially, suffrage was restricted. Those who
  could vote made their preferences known orally
  and in public, a practice that encouraged
  deference to the local gentry.
• Elections were contests between individuals
  backed by personal followers.
• Politics was unseemly. Campaigns were conducted
  on the sly.
• As suffrage expanded and the egalitarian spirit
  of the frontier gradually dominated the habits of
  deference, party organizations emerged to court
  the voters openly.

13
To Develop New Electoral Techniques

• Once parties organized their efforts to win
  elections, they initiated new relationships
  between voters and elected leaders.
• Politics was not simply local a larger, more
  dispersed electorate had to be reached.
• Parties turned to mass communication newspapers,
  pamphlets, public letters, and printed speeches.
• These were designed to excite voters emotionally
  so that they would be motivated to vote and avoid
  the free-rider problem.

14
To Use Party Labels and Enforce Collective
Responsibility

• Voters need a way to distinguish among candidates
  for office.
• Party labels offer a shorthand cue that keeps
  voting decisions cheap and simple (as long as the
  labels are informative).
• The more accurately a candidates label predicts
  behavior in office, the more useful it is to
  voters, and the more it will continue to be used.

15
To Use Party Labels and Enforce Collective
Responsibility

• Once candidates have adopted a party label,
  politicians have a personal stake in maintaining
  the value of their partys brand name.
• This may require them to put aside some of their
  views or ambitions for the good of the party.
• The threat of collective punishment gives the
  majority party a strong incentive to govern in
  ways that please voters.

16
To Use Party Labels and Enforce Collective
Responsibility

• Parties, then, developed into three-part systems
  connecting
• 1) the party in government, an alliance of
  current officeholders cooperating to shape public
  policy
• 2) the party organization, dedicated to electing
  the partys candidates and
• 3) the party in the electorate, composed of those
  voters who identify with the party and regularly
  vote for its nominees.

17
Basic Features of the Party System

• Parties developed because the institutional
  structures and processes established by the
  Constitution made them too useful to forgo.
• As they formed, they changed, but a number of
  basic features remained throughout.
• Two-party competition.
• Decentralized, fragmented, party coalitions.
• Professional politicians.

18
Two-Party Competition

• During the first few Congresses, national leaders
  gradually divided into two major camps.
• This division initiated a two-party competition
  that has basically continued to this day.

19
Two-Party Competition

• While Americans think of the two-party system as
  the norm, most modern democracies have more than
  two parties.
• Our system, with elections in which only a single
  winner is chosen by plurality vote, generally
  reduced competition to two because people tend to
  vote strategically.
• Duvergers law when your candidate has no chance
  to win, you turn to the less objectionable of the
  major party candidates who can win. Encourages
  two-party competition.

20
Two-Party Competition

• Because of this, most office seekers join one of
  the two competitive parties, rather than pursue
  office as independents or third-party nominees.
• When independent/third parties arise, their
  popular aspects are copied by the major parties.
• Major parties, with incentives to expand their
  electoral coalitions, help maintain the two-party
  system.
• Elections in U.S. have generally been
  winner-take-all rules work to reduce options to
  two.

21
Two-Party Competition

• An alternative to the American system is one
  based on proportional representation.
• Here a party receives legislative seats in
  proportion to its share of votes.
• The system helps to preserve smaller parties,
  because votes for their candidates are not
  wasted, but it has never been tried in the United
  States on any significant scale.
• Once a two-party system was established, both
  parties had a stake in preserving the electoral
  rules that got them elected.
• What kinds of hurdles did they erect?

22
Decentralized, Fragmented, Party Coalitions

• Federalism fragments the political system and
  thus promotes two-partyism.
• Historically, national parties have been
  assembled from diverse state and local political
  factions concerned chiefly with the politics of
  their cities, counties, and states.
• Thus, they can work together to elect national
  leaders, but go their own way on matters closer
  to home.
• Since the beginning, the major parties have been
  diverse, unwieldy coalitions that required much
  maintenance to stay united.

23
Professional Politicians

• At the time the Constitution was adopted,
  political leadership was the job of successful
  and prominent men who valued public service.

24
Professional Politicians

• The variety and frequency of elections generated
  by the multi-layered federal system made party
  management a full-time job for many.
• Tools were born to attract resources and reward
  the efforts of party workers. One of these was
  patronage -- the use of government jobs,
  contracts, and so on as political rewards.
• This system was largely destroyed with the
  reforms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

25
The Development and Evolution of the Party System

• Parties have been shaped by politicians
  strategic behaviors as they react to
  opportunities and challenges posed by the
  Constitution.
• Scholars have identified a sequence of five
  (possibly six) distinct historical party systems.

26
The Development and Evolution of the Party System

• First party system (1790-1824) creation of
  national parties.
• Second party system (1824-1860) basic
  organizational structures set.
• Third party system (1860-1894) rise of party
  machines.
• Fourth party system (1894-1932) fall of party
  machines.
• Fifth party system (1932-?) pattern of
  coalitional nature of American parties clearly
  illustrated.

27
The First Party System The Origin of American
Parties

• The American party system was born in the first
  few Congresses as leaders with opposing views on
  national issues fought to prevail.
• The conflict involved two opposing factions
• the Hamilton faction, which promoted commercial
  and manufacturing interests following the British
  economic model,
• and the Jefferson and Madison faction, which
  sought to protect the interests of farmers,
  tradesman, and agrarian states in general, and
  supported diplomatic relations with France.

28
The First Party System The Origin of American
Parties

• Hamiltons efforts to win votes for his policies
  caused him to caucus members of Congress, try to
  influence the legislative schedule, and so on,
  much like a modern floor leader.
• Those who agreed with his plan coalesced around
  his leadership.

29
The First Party System The Origin of American
Parties

• The Hamilton coalition was labeled Federalists,
  which derived from members earlier support of
  the Constitution and their endorsement of a
  strong national government.
• Members who were opposed to Hamiltons policies
  gradually coalesced under the leadership of
  Jefferson and Madison.

30
The First Party System The Origin of American
Parties

• Protesting the alleged aristocratic pretensions
  of the Federalists, they styled themselves
  Republicans.
• Later, the Jeffersonian Republicans would become
  the Democratic Party (1820s), now the oldest
  political party in the world.

31
The First Party System The Origin of American
Parties

• The Federalists prevailed early in the battle.
  Hamilton convinced members of Congress to support
  his policies.
• John Adams, a Federalist, succeeded Washington as
  president.

32
The First Party System The Origin of American
Parties

• In 1800 Jefferson challenged Adams for the
  presidency, but his faction of Republicans also
  recruited candidates for state and local offices
  across the states.
• This alliance of state office holders gave him
  the ability to remove the Federalists and their
  influence from the White House and Congress.
• Moreover, the Federalists had given them ample
  ammunition with the Alien and Sedition Act, as
  well as other policies and the performance of
  government in general.

33
The First Party System The Origin of American
Parties

• Democratic-Republicans found new ways to move
  from the out party to the in party.
• The losers then imitated successful innovations.
  Federalists tried, but could not change their
  ways.
• These parties were loose collections of
  provincial interests -- unstable coalitions.
• When their pro-British leanings put them on the
  wrong side of the War of 1812, the Federalists
  faded as a national force.

34
The Second Party System Organizational Innovation

• By the second decade of the nineteenth century
  the Democratic-Republicans had eclipsed the
  Federalists nearly everywhere.
• James Monroe (pictured) crushed their last
  nominee (Rufus King) in 1816.

35
The Second Party System Organizational Innovation

• Monroe was reelected with no competition four
  years later.
• There was so little party conflict, the time was
  called the Era of Good Feelings.
• But that did not mean there was no political
  conflict. There was.
• It simply took place within one party rather than
  between two.

36
The Second Party System Organizational Innovation

• Without electoral opposition, party networks fell
  apart and political participation dropped
  significantly.
• However, competition was again seen in the
  presidential election of 1824.

37
The Second Party System Organizational Innovation

• During this time period, presidents were
  nominated by congressional caucus (members
  assembled with their allies to make party
  decisions).
• With the Federalists gone, almost everyone in
  Congress was a Democratic-Republican. However,
  these members did not always reach consensus.
• In 1824 no fewer than five serious candidates
  sought the presidency.

38
The Second Party System Organizational Innovation

• The congressional caucus nominee, William
  Crawford, came in last, whereas Andrew Jackson
  came in first in popular and electoral votes, but
  had no majority in either.
• John Quincy Adams came in second to Jackson.
  House Speaker Henry Clay was third, and John C.
  Calhoun withdrew early.
• Because no candidate had a majority, the election
  was thrown to the House of Representatives.

39
The Second Party System Organizational Innovation

• Clay threw his support and that of his coalition
  to Adams. Adams promised to make him Secretary of
  State (then the stepping stone to the
  presidency).
• Jacksons supporters were outraged at the
  corrupt bargain.
• With the help of Martin Van Buren, Jackson was
  able to win the presidency under a new Democratic
  party in 1828.

40
The Second Party System Organizational Innovation

• Van Buren utilized communications of all kinds to
  build the Jackson network, particularly
  newspapers.
• He utilized the concept of a club and created
  Jackson clubs across the country.
• Supporters of Adams had no choice but to put
  together a network of their own.
• Adams did not like parties and campaigned little,
  but simply standing for reelection brought a
  national party into being.

41
The Creation of the National Convention

• Jackson won in 1828, and upon his campaigning for
  his second term (1832), a new innovation was
  introduced to party politics -- the national
  party convention.
• It was promoted as a more democratic alternative
  to the discredited congressional caucus, allowing
  for more popular participation in the nomination
  process.

42
The Creation of the National Convention

• It served the purpose of solving problems of
  conflict and coordination by
• Assembling the national party coalition,
• Providing a forum for the politicking that helped
  create a unified presidential ticket.
• Serving as a giant pep rally that got the troops
  ready for electoral battle.

43
The Creation of the National Convention

• Jacksons strong presidency and personality
  generated some opposition.
• In 1836 when Van Buren was nominated by the
  Democratic convention as their candidate,
  opponents (the Whig party) chose their own
  candidates (three of them).
• The Whig party name had come to symbolize
  opposition to royal (King Andrew) tyranny.

44
The Creation of the National Convention

• The Whigs lost, but came back the following year
  with a popular war hero who was able to beat a
  beleagured incumbent Van Buren.
• By 1840, the Whigs and Democrats were organized
  in every state, competing not only for the
  presidency but state and local elections as well.
• The two-party competition for president framed
  competition for offices at all levels of
  government.
• Participation in the hoopla surrounding the
  presidential contest bred strong feelings of
  party loyalty among many voters.

45
The Spoils System

• Parties on the rise always attract opportunists.
• Most people who join a partys effort do so for
  some benefit. Perhaps political office in the
  future or some other favor.
• During this time period, the most sought after
  reward was a government job, government contract,
  or some special project they could gain material
  riches from.
• The pursuit of spoils intensified party
  competition and put a heavy premium on winning.

46
The Spoils System

• Spoils made parties work harder to expand their
  coalition -- supporting efforts to expand the
  franchise and to bring immigrants into the
  political process.
• It also increased corruption -- the willingness
  for parties to overlook real problems (like
  slavery and other divisive issues) in order not
  to upset the delicate balance of their electoral
  coalitions.
• Principled conflict is often a threat to party
  coalitions.

47
The Third Party System Entrepreneurial Politics

• The Republican Party, organized in 1854 as a
  coalition of forces -- many of them anti-slavery
  -- serves as one example of a successful
  challenge to the two-party system.
• Third parties have generally failed to attract
  enough of a following to become more than obscure
  refuges for the disaffected.
• Some, however, have shaken the political system.
• Anti-Masonic and American parties both had
  lasting effects on the character of the major
  parties of their time (pre-Civil War era).

48
The Republican Party

• The Republican Party was organized in opposition
  to the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which
  overturned limits on the extension of slavery to
  the territories enacted earlier in the Missouri
  Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850.
• It drew its members from anti-slavery parties,
  the Know Nothings, anti-slavery Whigs, and
  dissident Democrats who did not tolerate their
  partys position on slavery.

49
The Republican Party

• Their name was meant to connect them to
  Jeffersonian Republicans and the National
  Republicans who had organized briefly and
  unsuccessfully in response to Andrew Jackson.
• While founded on the issue of slavery, the
  Republicans were NOT a single-issue party.
• They appealed to business and commercial
  interests by promising a protective tariff and a
  transcontinental railway. To farmers they offered
  free land for homesteading.

50
The Republican Party

• While they failed with their first candidate,
  only four years later in 1860, they won with
  Abraham Lincoln in a complicated (and regionally
  split) presidential election.

51
The Republican Party

• After the end of the Civil War and
  Reconstruction, Republicans maintained a strong
  base in the North, while Democrats emerged as a
  competitor in the South and had pockets of
  strength in the West and in the border states.

52
Party Machines

• Party organizations reached their peak of
  development during this system (3rd).
• Patronage generated by the rapid growth of
  industrial cities provided the resources they
  needed.
• Party entrepreneurs managed the organizations and
  the resources.
• The party machines, as they were called, were
  built on simple principles of exchange favors
  and services for votes on election day.

53
Party Machines

• At this time as well, politics had become a
  full-time profession for thousands (and they were
  generally not from the elite strata of society).
• Party machines were often not discernible from
  the local government.

• Pictured Former fireman, later political crook,
  Boss Tweed

54
Party Machines

• To win elections, the party amassed legions of
  grassroots workers to blanket precincts and
  neighborhoods.
• In return for their services, workers received
  patronage jobs or other personal benefits from
  their victorious party.
• Politics had become a full-time profession for
  many of the non-elite.
• Winning local elections was the focal point and
  goal of the party machines.

55
The Progressive Attack

• Party machines were regularly attacked as corrupt
  and inefficient.
• Reformers, working within the system, sought to
  destroy the machines by depriving party leaders
  of the capacity to reward followers.

56
The Progressive Attack

• The most important changes were introduced during
  what is now called the Progressive Era -- the
  decades before and after the turn of the
  twentieth century.
• In addition to the introduction of the civil
  service, two of the most important reforms were
  the Australian Ballot and the Direct Primary
  Election.

57
Dismantling the Spoils System

• After passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883,
  reformers began to replace the spoils system with
  a civil service system.
• The civil service system turned government jobs
  into careers rather than short-term political
  rewards.
• Party organizations, therefore, lost one of their
  powerful reward tools.

58
The Secret Ballot

• Another reform associated with the Progressive
  Era was the secret ballot.
• Prior to the 1890s, each party produced its own
  ballots (listing only its candidates), which were
  handed to voters outside of the polling place.

59
The Secret Ballot

• Because they were generally of different colors,
  they were easily distinguishable.
• Voters could not easily keep their choices to
  themselves, nor could they easily vote for
  candidates of different parties for different
  offices (split their ticket).

60
The Secret Ballot

• When the secret ballot was introduced, it was
  printed by the government, listed candidates from
  all parties, and was marked in the privacy of a
  voting booth.
• This made it more difficult for parties to
  exchange votes for favors. Why?

Pictured Teddy Roosevelt
61
The Secret Ballot

• With the adoption of the secret ballot, the
  government became involved in party nominations,
  because someone had to determine which parties
  and names would be listed on the
  government-produced ballot.
• Laws were passed to regulate party nominating
  conventions and later, to allow a partys voters
  to nominate candidates through primary elections.
  
• Why did this hurt the parties?

62
The Primary and Other Reforms

• Other reforms included non-partisan elections,
  registration requirements, and introducing the
  notion of city managers and urban services under
  the control of independent boards.
• While generally focused on eliminating corruption
  in government, progressive reforms were also
  designed to enhance the influence of the right
  kind of people.
• Stricter voter registration laws discriminated
  against the poor and uneducated.

63
The Consequences of Progressive Reforms

• These and other changes introduced by the
  Progressives had important consequences for
  electoral politics.
• Turnout declined due to tighter registration
  laws, the Australian ballot, and literacy tests.

64
The Consequences of Progressive Reforms

• Lack of patronage kept some individuals from
  participating.
• The reforms also began to shift the focus of
  electoral politics from parties to candidates.
  Candidates could win with or without the partys
  blessing.
• By altering the incentives to perform party work,
  reforms shifted the base of the party
  organizations from the working to the middle
  class as the motivations to help the party
  shifted in many cases from material incentives to
  nonmaterial incentives.

65
The Consequences of Progressive Reforms

• Paradoxically, the Progressive reforms that in
  many ways weakened political parties also made
  them quasi-public, rather than private,
  organizations.
• Parties were treated by the law in many states as
  essentially public entities charged with managing
  elections.
• Regulations tended to privilege the two major
  parties and discriminate against new parties and
  independent candidates.

66
The Fourth Party System Republican Ascendancy

• From the end of Reconstruction in 1876 until
  1896, the third American party system settled
  into place.
• The Democrats and Republicans competed on nearly
  even terms.

67
The Fourth Party System Republican Ascendancy

• In 1896, however, the Democrats reacted to a
  severe economic downturn by adopting the Peoples
  Party (Populist) platform.
• They nominated William Jennings Bryan as their
  presidential nominee.

68
The Fourth Party System Republican Ascendancy

• Democrats supported making silver as well as gold
  a monetary standard, which would increase the
  money supply, ease interest rates, and therefore
  the pressure on debtors, which included farmers
  and westerners.

69
The Fourth Party System Republican Ascendancy

• Republicans were able to paint these policies as
  unsound, convincing urban workers that it was a
  threat to their jobs.
• The reaction to the agrarian takeover of the
  Democrats left the Republicans with a clear
  national majority for the next generation.

70
The Fourth Party System Republican Ascendancy

• This majority was lost when Republicans were
  affected by economic downturns.
• Having taken credit for the prosperity of the
  1920s with policies highly favorable to financial
  institutions and industrial corporations, the
  Republicans under the leadership of President
  Herbert Hoover, were saddled with the blame for
  the economic devastation and high unemployment
  that followed the stock market crash of 1929.

71
The Fourth Party System Republican Ascendancy

• Roosevelt and the Democratic Party took advantage
  of Republican woes and used the New Deal to
  solidify a new coalition of interests, which gave
  them a popular majority that endures, if barely,
  today.

72
The Fifth Party System The New Deal Coalition

• The New Deal Coalition, as it was called, brought
  together Democrats of all backgrounds.
• It united white segregationists with northern
  African Americans, progressive intellectuals with
  machine politicians, union members and poor
  farmers, Catholics and Baptists.

73
The Fifth Party System The New Deal Coalition

• The New Deal had something for everyone -- and
  everyone had been devastated by the blight of the
  Great Depression.
• The opposing Republican coalition was a smaller,
  inverted image of the Democratic coalition
  business and professional people, upper-income
  Protestants, and residents of small towns and
  cities in the Northeast and the Midwest.

74
Erosion of the New Deal Coalition

• For as long as the economy dominated national
  politics, campaigns were organized around whether
  one supported the New Deal or not.
• When new issues became the focus of electoral
  politics, the Democratic coalition began to
  unravel.
• The first and most important issue was civil
  rights for African Americans.

75
Erosion of the New Deal Coalition

• As the Democrats and their presidents championed
  the fight against discrimination, Republicans
  attempted to appeal to white southerners with an
  argument against the continued expansion of the
  federal government into the affairs of states.
• White southerners did leave the Democratic Party
  -- some became Republicans others voted for
  Wallace and then became Republicans some became
  Independents.

76
Erosion of the New Deal Coalition

• About the same time, the war in Vietnam began to
  split the Democrats (largely along class lines).
• Traditional Democratic constituencies also were
  divided over new economic initiatives and social
  policy.

77
Erosion of the New Deal Coalition

• Lyndon Johnsons Great Society programs lacked
  the broad appeal of the New Deal programs.
• The War on Poverty was targeted to the poor.
  Economic growth slowed during this period, and
  taxes became an important issue.

78
Erosion of the New Deal Coalition

• Environmental protection posed a dilemma for
  Democrats as well.
• Republicans still had difficulty during the
  period from the 1950s to the late 1970s as they
  divided into conservative and moderate factions.

79
Erosion of the New Deal Coalition

• Republicans gradually recovered from their
  tremendous loss in 1964 (the Goldwater ticket)
  with a series of presidential election wins.
• Nixon, Reagan, and Bush built winning coalitions
  by combining affluent economic conservatives with
  middle and working class social conservatives.

80
Erosion of the New Deal Coalition

• They declared war on taxation, regulation, and
  welfare.
• And made prominent their concerns over law and
  order and traditional family values.
• Neither party has a completely stable and unified
  coalition.

81
Changing the Rules

• Divisions within the parties electoral
  coalitions during the 1960s were played out in
  intraparty battles that reshaped the parties as
  organizations.
• During this period, presidential nominations
  underwent significant reform.

82
Changing the Rules

• The reforms were initiated within the Democratic
  party, but many parts of the reforms also
  affected the Republicans.
• The civil rights movement, and most strongly the
  Vietnam War, triggered the reform of the
  Democratic Party.
• Nominations for the partys presidential ticket
  were made by delegates at the national convention.

83
Changing the Rules

• Democrats who opposed involvement in Vietnam were
  denied access to the process in their efforts to
  nominate an anti-war candidate.
• VP Hubert Humphrey was the anointed successor of
  Lyndon Johnson and the choice of most party
  regulars.
• While other Democrats marched in the streets,
  inside the convention hall, Humphrey was
  nominated.

84
Changing the Rules

• In 1968 the Democratic National Convention broke
  down as protestors rebuked the party candidate
  (Hubert Humphrey) and the party bosses (e.g.,
  Mayor Richard J. Daley). The Chicago police
  violently suppressed the protestors activities.

85
Consequences of Fractured Alignments

• In order to heal the Democratic coalition --
  (Nixon won in 1968) -- a party commission
  (McGovern-Fraser) drew up a new set of rules
  specifying that the convention delegates had to
  be chosen in a process that was OPEN, TIMELY, AND
  REPRESENTATIVE.
• Of the options available to state party
  organizations, the primary provided the best
  opportunity for meeting all of these criteria.
• In 2000, 40 states used the primary method.

86
Consequences of Fractured Alignments

• Democrats also eliminated the winner-take-all
  WTA method of allocating delegates. Instead
  they used a proportional system.
• This meant that candidates could win state
  delegates if they garnered state support. Under
  the WTA system, only one candidate could receive
  any delegates in each state.

87
A Whole New Ballgame

• The new process was now more open, and certainly
  fairer -- but it threatened other party goals --
  namely winning and governing.
• Primaries among activists do not necessarily
  choose the winning candidate for the general
  election.
• It also allows outsiders to win the nomination
  (with sometimes negative effects for the party).

88
Changing the Rules

• After the major changes of the 1970s, the party
  has continued to tweak its rules in response to
  some of the unintended consequences that emerged.
• In the 1980s super-delegates were introduced.
  These were prominent elected officials who are
  now automatically among the convention delegates.
• These delegates held 16 percent of the seats at
  the Democrats 2000 convention.

89
Changing the Rules

• Party leaders have learned how to influence the
  selection process before the conventions.
• If they can reach broad agreement on which
  candidate to support, they can be decisive.
• Example, Bush in 2000 faced 12 opponents early
  on, but by the first delegate contest half had
  dropped out.

90
Changing the Rules

• The decisiveness of primaries has made the
  national convention obsolete in terms of actually
  choosing the partys standard bearer.
• But the convention is important in terms of the
  image of the party that it portrays.

91
Consequences of Fractured Alignments

• When issues arise that split the existing party
  coalitions, partisan identities weaken and the
  party label may not provide the information
  voters want.
• Party-line voting has declined, and ticket
  splitting has increased.
• Voters have become more indifferent to the
  parties.

92
Consequences of Fractured Alignments

• With voters substituting personal cues for party
  cues, the electoral advantage enjoyed by
  congressional incumbents has grown.
• Independent and third-party candidates have
  increased their share of votes.
• Divided partisan control of governments has
  become common.

93
Media and Money

• The weakening of party influence on voters was
  hastened by the influence of new technologies and
  the availability of resources outside of party
  organizations.
• The advent of television and its use as a
  campaign medium was one of the most important
  changes that occurred.

94
The Survival (Revival) of the Parties

• Despite it all, parties continue to dominate
  electoral politics.
• Over the past two decades, partisanship revived
  somewhat modestly.
• Ticket splitting has returned to 1960s levels,
  and voters have become steadily less neutral
  about the major parties since 1980.

95
Partisanship Endures

• Most people still call themselves Republicans or
  Democrats.
• And while Independents have increased, most are
  closet partisans leaning toward one party and
  supporting its candidates as consistently as weak
  partisans.
• Those who are pure Independents are less likely
  to vote in general.
• The proportion of strong partisans declined
  between the 1950s and 60s, but has since
  rebounded.

96
Party Differences

• Voters may not think much of parties, but a
  majority of them admit a preference and use
  parties as their cues in voting decisions.
• Party labels, while somewhat more ambiguous in
  terms of meaning, still carry valuable
  information on party differences.
• Can you suggest some of the differences you
  perceive between the major parties? What about
  between third and major parties?

97
Changes in the Party Coalitions

• The party coalitions of today still retain strong
  traces of the New Deal alignment.
• Lower-income voters are still more likely to be
  Democrats higher-income voters are more likely
  to be Republicans.
• The crucial changes -- white southerners have
  been moving into the Republican camp. African
  Americans are still strongly loyal to the
  Democratic party.

98
Changes in the Party Coalitions

• Men have become more Republican, while women have
  not -- creating the famous gender gap between
  parties.
• Democratic advantage among Catholics has shrunk.
  Regular churchgoers of all kinds have become more
  Republican.
• During the Reagan years, electorate became more
  Republican, less Democratic.

99
Changes in the Party Coalitions

• These changes suggest that a sixth party system
  is now in place, but because these changes have
  occurred gradually and at different times, the
  new systems starting date is unclear.
• Most salient change Republicans stronger.
• Democrats maintain an edge in party identifiers,
  those who vote at higher rates tend to be
  Republicans.
• The competitive nature of the 2000 elections
  reflects the publics current party preferences.

100
Modern Party Organizations

• Despite the rise of television, other electronic
  campaign media, and campaign consultants, parties
  are still useful to candidates as well as voters.
• Party organizations have not disappeared.
• May be in better shape than in the past.

101
Modern Party Organizations

• The national committee, with at least two members
  from each state, is charged with conducting the
  partys affairs between national conventions.
• State committees and their chairs oversee the
  committees representing congressional and state
  legislative districts and counties.
• These are followed by divisions that include
  township, city, ward, and precinct committees.

102
Modern Party Organizations

• This may seem hierarchical, but it is not in
  terms of the nature of the organizations
  relationships.
• At most levels, they are controlled by elected
  officials.
• National committee of the presidents party is
  controlled by the president.
• Same at the state level with governor.
• House and Senate candidates have their own
  separate national campaign organizations, and
  they control them.
• Result organizational fragmentation.

103
Modern Party Organizations

• While modern parties continue to play a major
  financial and organizational role in electoral
  politics, they have clearly lost the
  near-monopoly they had on campaign resources
  until the mid-20th century.
• Candidates are the focus of campaigns.
• Parties are there to serve the candidates, not
  control them.

104
Expediency Persists

• American parties developed and have endured
  because they have proven useful to politicians
  and voters attempting to act collectively within
  the institutional framework provided by the
  Constitution.
• Although the party coalitions have shifted
  periodically in response to new national issues
  and conflicts -- leaving five (six) identifiable
  party systems, the basic pattern of two-party
  competition has persisted.

105
Expediency Persists

• Progressive Era reforms, followed by the advent
  of new communication technology, weakened
  traditional party organizations and ended their
  campaign monopoly.
• But they still play a central role.
• Voters rely heavily on them for voting cues.
• Party entrepreneurs will continue to utilize
  parties to do what they were created to do in the
  first place elect those who share their views so
  that they may shape public policy to their liking.