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Politics in the USA,
in support of the freedoms that our Founding Fathers envisioned and implemented through the American Constitution calling for representative Democracy for All!

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Politics, including Politics in the United StatesPictured below: Five ways women are changing politics for the better around the world
Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The academic study of politics is referred to as political science.

It may be used positively in the context of a "political solution" which is compromising and non-violent, or descriptively as "the art or science of government", but also often carries a negative connotation. For example, abolitionist Wendell Phillips declared that "we do not play politics; anti-slavery is no half-jest with us."

The concept has been defined in various ways, and different approaches have fundamentally differing views on whether it should be used extensively or limitedly, empirically or normatively, and on whether conflict or co-operation is more essential to it.

A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries. Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level.

In modern nation states, people often form political parties to represent their ideas. Members of a party often agree to take the same position on many issues and agree to support the same changes to law and the same leaders. An election is usually a competition between different parties.

A political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a society. The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, with seminal works such as Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics, Chanakya's Arthashastra and Chanakya Niti (3rd century BCE), as well as the works of Confucius.

​Etymology:

The English politics has its roots in the name of Aristotle's classic work, Politiká, which introduced the Greek term politiká (Πολιτικά, 'affairs of the cities'). In the mid-15th century, Aristotle's composition would be rendered in Early Modern English as Polettiques which would become Politics in Modern English.

The singular politic first attested in English in 1430, coming from Middle French politique—itself taking from politicus, a Latinization of the Greek πολιτικός (politikos) from πολίτης (polites, 'citizen') and πόλις (polis, 'city').

Definitions:
  • For David Easton, it is about "the authoritative allocation of values for a society." To Vladimir Lenin, "politics is the most concentrated expression of economics."
  • Bernard Crick argued that "politics is a distinctive form of rule whereby people act together through institutionalized procedures to resolve differences, to conciliate diverse interests and values and to make public policies in the pursuit of common purposes."
  • According to Adrian Leftwich: "Politics comprises all the activities of co-operation, negotiation and conflict within and between societies, whereby people go about organizing the use, production or distribution of human, natural and other resources in the course of the production and reproduction of their biological and social life."

Approaches:

There are several ways in which approaching politics has been conceptualized.

Extensive and limited:

Adrian Leftwich has differentiated views of politics based on how extensive or limited their perception of what accounts as 'political' is. The extensive view sees politics as present across the sphere of human social relations, while the limited view restricts it to certain contexts.

For example, in a more restrictive way, politics may be viewed as primarily about governance, while a feminist perspective could argue that sites which have been viewed traditionally as non-political, should indeed be viewed as political as well.

This latter position is encapsulated in the slogan the personal is political, which disputes the distinction between private and public issues. Instead, politics may be defined by the use of power, as has been argued by Robert A. Dahl.

Moralism and realism:

Some perspectives on politics view it empirically as an exercise of power, while other see it as a social function with a normative basis. This distinction has been called the difference between political moralism and political realism.

For moralists, politics is closely linked to ethics, and is at its extreme in utopian thinking. For example, according to Hannah Arendt, the view of Aristotle was that "to be political…meant that everything was decided through words and persuasion and not through violence;" while according to Bernard Crick "[p]olitics is the way in which free societies are governed. Politics is politics and other forms of rule are something else."

In contrast, for realists, represented by those such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Harold Lasswell, politics is based on the use of power, irrespective of the ends being pursued.

Conflict and co-operation:

Agonism argues that politics essentially comes down to conflict between conflicting interests. Political scientist Elmer Schattschneider argued that "at the root of all politics is the universal language of conflict," while for Carl Schmitt the essence of politics is the distinction of 'friend' from foe'.

This is in direct contrast to the more co-operative views of politics by Aristotle and Crick. However, a more mixed view between these extremes is provided by Irish author Michael Laver, who noted that: Politics is about the characteristic blend of conflict and co-operation that can be found so often in human interactions. Pure conflict is war. Pure co-operation is true love. Politics is a mixture of both.

​Political science:
Main article: Political science

​The study of politics is called political science, or politology. It comprises numerous subfields, including: 
Furthermore, political science is related to, and draws upon, the fields of 
Comparative politics is the science of comparison and teaching of different types of constitutions, political actors, legislature and associated fields, all of them from an intrastate perspective. 

International relations deals with the interaction between nation-states as well as intergovernmental and transnational organizations. Political philosophy is more concerned with contributions of various classical and contemporary thinkers and philosophers.

Political science is methodologically diverse and appropriates many methods originating in psychology, social research, and cognitive neuroscience.

Approaches include ​
Political science, as one of the social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought: primary sources such as historical documents and official records, secondary sources such as scholarly journal articles, survey research, statistical analysis, case studies, experimental research, and model building.

Political system:
Main article: Political system
See also: Systems theory in political science

The political system defines the process for making official government decisions. It is usually compared to the legal system, economic system, cultural system, and other social systems.

According to David Easton, "A political system can be designated as the interactions through which values are authoritatively allocated for a society." Each political system is embedded in a society with its own political culture, and they in turn shape their societies through public policy. The interactions between different political systems are the basis for global politics.

​Forms of government:
​
Forms of government can be classified by several ways. In terms of the structure of power, there are monarchies (including constitutional monarchies) and republics (usually presidential, semi-presidential, or parliamentary).

The separation of powers describes the degree of horizontal integration between the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and other independent institutions.

Source of power:

The source of power determines the difference between democracies, oligarchies, and autocracies.

In a democracy, political legitimacy is based on popular sovereignty. Forms of democracy include representative democracy, direct democracy, and demarchy. These are separated by the way decisions are made, whether by elected representatives, referenda, or by citizen juries.

Democracies can be either republics or constitutional monarchies.

Oligarchy is a power structure where a minority rules. These may be in the form of: 
Autocracies are either dictatorships (including military dictatorships) or absolute monarchies.

Vertical integration: In terms of level of vertical integration, political systems can be divided into (from least to most integrated) confederations, federations, and unitary states.
A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government (federalism).

In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states, as well as the division of power between them and the central government, is typically constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision of either party, the states or the federal political body.

​Federations were formed first in Switzerland, then in the United States in 1776, in Canada in 1867 and in Germany in 1871 and in 1901, Australia. Compared to a federation, a confederation has less centralized power.

State:
​
​All the above forms of government are variations of the same basic polity, the sovereign state. The state has been defined by Max Weber as a political entity that has monopoly on violence within its territory, while the Montevideo Convention holds that states need to have a defined territory; a permanent population; a government; and a capacity to enter into international relations.

A stateless society is a society that is not governed by a state. In stateless societies, there is little concentration of authority; most positions of authority that do exist are very limited in power and are generally not permanently held positions; and social bodies that resolve disputes through predefined rules tend to be small. Stateless societies are highly variable in economic organization and cultural practices.

While stateless societies were the norm in human prehistory, few stateless societies exist today; almost the entire global population resides within the jurisdiction of a sovereign state.

In some regions nominal state authorities may be very weak and wield little or no actual power. Over the course of history most stateless peoples have been integrated into the state-based societies around them.

Some political philosophies consider the state undesirable, and thus consider the formation of a stateless society a goal to be achieved. A central tenet of anarchism is the advocacy of society without states. The type of society sought for varies significantly between anarchist schools of thought, ranging from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. 

In Marxism, Marx's theory of the state considers that in a post-capitalist society the state, an undesirable institution, would be unnecessary and wither away. A related concept is that of stateless communism, a phrase sometimes used to describe Marx's anticipated post-capitalist society.

Constitutions:

Constitutions are written documents that specify and limit the powers of the different branches of government. Although a constitution is a written document, there is also an unwritten constitution.

The unwritten constitution is continually being written by the legislative and judiciary branch of government; this is just one of those cases in which the nature of the circumstances determines the form of government that is most appropriate. 

England did set the fashion of written constitutions during the Civil War but after the Restoration abandoned them to be taken up later by the American Colonies after their emancipation and then France after the Revolution and the rest of Europe including the European colonies.

Constitutions often set out separation of powers, dividing the government into the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary (together referred to as the trias politica), in order to achieve checks and balances within the state. Additional independent branches may also be created, including civil service commissions, election commissions, and supreme audit institutions.

​Political culture:
​
Political culture describes how culture impacts politics. Every political system is embedded in a particular political culture. Lucian Pye's definition is that "Political culture is the set of attitudes, beliefs, and sentiments, which give order and meaning to a political process and which provide the underlying assumptions and rules that govern behavior in the political system".

Trust is a major factor in political culture, as its level determines the capacity of the state to function. Postmaterialism is the degree to which a political culture is concerned with issues which are not of immediate physical or material concern, such as human rights and environmentalism. Religion has also an impact on political culture.


Political dysfunction:

Political corruption:
Main article: Political corruption

Political corruption is the use of powers for illegitimate private gain, conducted by government officials or their network contacts. Forms of political corruption include bribery, cronyism, nepotism, and political patronage.

Forms of political patronage, in turn, includes clientelism, earmarking, pork barreling, slush funds, and spoils systems; as well as political machines, which is a political system that operates for corrupt ends.

When corruption is embedded in political culture, this may be referred to as patrimonialism or neopatrimonialism. A form of government that is built on corruption is called a kleptocracy ('rule of thieves').

Political conflict:
Main article: Political conflict

Political conflict entails the use of political violence to achieve political ends. As noted by Carl von Clausewitz, "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means." Beyond just inter-state warfare, this may include civil war; wars of national liberation; or asymmetric warfare, such as guerrilla war or terrorism.

When a political system is overthrown, the event is called a revolution: it is a political revolution if it does not go further; or a social revolution if the social system is also radically altered. However, these may also be nonviolent revolutions.

Levels of politics:

Macropolitics:
Main article: Global politics

Macropolitics can either describe political issues that affect an entire political system (e.g. the nation state), or refer to interactions between political systems (e.g. international relations).

Global politics (or world politics) covers all aspects of politics that affect multiple political systems, in practice meaning any political phenomenon crossing national borders. This can include: 
An important element is international relations: the relations between nation-states may be peaceful when they are conducted through diplomacy, or they may be violent, which is described as war.

States that are able to exert strong international influence are referred to as superpowers, whereas less-powerful ones may be called regional or middle powers. The international system of power is called the world order, which is affected by the balance of power that defines the degree of polarity in the system. Emerging powers are potentially destabilizing to it, especially if they display revanchism or irredentism.

Politics inside the limits of political systems, which in contemporary context correspond to national borders, are referred to as domestic politics. This includes most forms of public policy, such as social policy, economic policy, or law enforcement, which are executed by the state bureaucracy.

Mesopolitics:

Mesopolitics describes the politics of intermediary structures within a political system, such as national political parties or movements.

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to attain and maintain political power within government, usually by participating in political campaigns, educational outreach, or protest actions. Parties often espouse an expressed ideology or vision, bolstered by a written platform with specific goals, forming a coalition among disparate interests.

Political parties within a particular political system together form the party system, which can be either multiparty, two-party, dominant-party, or one-party, depending on the level of pluralism. This is affected by characteristics of the political system, including its electoral system.

According to Duverger's law, first-past-the-post systems are likely to lead to two-party systems, while proportional representation systems are more likely to create a multiparty system.

Micropolitics:

Micropolitics describes the actions of individual actors within the political system. This is often described as political participation. Political participation may take many forms, including:
Political values:
Main article: Political philosophy

Democracy:
​Main article: Democracy

Democracy is a system of processing conflicts in which outcomes depend on what participants do, but no single force controls what occurs and its outcomes. The uncertainty of outcomes is inherent in democracy.

Democracy makes all forces struggle repeatedly to realize their interests and devolves power from groups of people to sets of rules.

Among modern political theorists, there are three contending conceptions of democracy: aggregative, deliberative, and radical.

Aggregative:

The theory of aggregative democracy claims that the aim of the democratic processes is to solicit the preferences of citizens, and aggregate them together to determine what social policies the society should adopt. Therefore, proponents of this view hold that democratic participation should primarily focus on voting, where the policy with the most votes gets implemented.

Different variants of aggregative democracy exist. Under minimalism, democracy is a system of government in which citizens have given teams of political leaders the right to rule in periodic elections.

According to this minimalist conception, citizens cannot and should not "rule" because, for example, on most issues, most of the time, they have no clear views or their views are not well-founded. Joseph Schumpeter articulated this view most famously in his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Contemporary proponents of minimalism include William H. Riker, Adam Przeworski, Richard Posner.

According to the theory of direct democracy, on the other hand, citizens should vote directly, not through their representatives, on legislative proposals. Proponents of direct democracy offer varied reasons to support this view. Political activity can be valuable in itself, it socializes and educates citizens, and popular participation can check powerful elites.

Most importantly, citizens do not rule themselves unless they directly decide laws and policies.

Governments will tend to produce laws and policies that are close to the views of the median voter—with half to their left and the other half to their right. This is not a desirable outcome as it represents the action of self-interested and somewhat unaccountable political elites competing for votes. 

Anthony Downs suggests that ideological political parties are necessary to act as a mediating broker between individual and governments. Downs laid out this view in his 1957 book An Economic Theory of Democracy.

Robert A. Dahl argues that the fundamental democratic principle is that, when it comes to binding collective decisions, each person in a political community is entitled to have his/her interests be given equal consideration (not necessarily that all people are equally satisfied by the collective decision).

He uses the term polyarchy to refer to societies in which there exists a certain set of institutions and procedures which are perceived as leading to such democracy.

First and foremost among these institutions is the regular occurrence of free and open elections which are used to select representatives who then manage all or most of the public policy of the society.

However, these polyarchic procedures may not create a full democracy if, for example, poverty prevents political participation. Similarly, Ronald Dworkin argues that "democracy is a substantive, not a merely procedural, ideal."

Deliberative:
Main article: Deliberative democracy

Deliberative democracy is based on the notion that democracy is government by deliberation.

Unlike aggregative democracy, deliberative democracy holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation, not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. 

Authentic deliberation is deliberation among decision-makers that is free from distortions of unequal political power, such as power a decision-maker obtained through economic wealth or the support of interest groups.

If the decision-makers cannot reach consensus after authentically deliberating on a proposal, then they vote on the proposal using a form of majority rule.

Radical:
Main article: Radical democracy

Radical democracy is based on the idea that there are hierarchical and oppressive power relations that exist in society. Democracy's role is to make visible and challenge those relations by allowing for difference, dissent and antagonisms in decision-making processes.

Equality:
Main article: Social equality

​Equality is a state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same social status, especially socioeconomic status, including protection of human rights and dignity, and equal access to certain social goods and social services.

Furthermore, it may also include health equality, economic equality and other social securities. Social equality requires the absence of legally enforced social class or caste boundaries and the absence of discrimination motivated by an inalienable part of a person's identity.

To this end there must be equal justice under law, and equal opportunity regardless of, for example, sex, gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, origin, caste or class, income or property, language, religion, convictions, opinions, health or disability.

Left–right spectrum:

A common way of understanding politics is through the left–right political spectrum, which ranges from left-wing politics via centrism to right-wing politics. This classification is comparatively recent and dates from the French Revolution, when those members of the National Assembly who supported the republic, the common people and a secular society sat on the left and supporters of the monarchy, aristocratic privilege and the Church sat on the right.

Today, the left is generally progressivist, seeking social progress in society. The more extreme elements of the left, named the far-left, tend to support revolutionary means for achieving this. This includes ideologies such as Communism and Marxism. The center-left, on the other hand, advocate for more reformist approaches, for example that of social democracy.

In contrast, the right is generally motivated by conservatism, which seeks to conserve what it sees as the important elements of society. The far-right goes beyond this, and often represents a reactionary turn against progress, seeking to undo it. Examples of such ideologies have included Fascism and Nazism.

The center-right may be less clear-cut and more mixed in this regard, with neoconservatives supporting the spread of democracy, and one-nation conservatives more open to social welfare programs.

According to Norberto Bobbio, one of the major exponents of this distinction, the left believes in attempting to eradicate social inequality—believing it to be unethical or unnatural, while the right regards most social inequality as the result of ineradicable natural inequalities, and sees attempts to enforce social equality as utopian or authoritarian.

Some ideologies, notably Christian Democracy, claim to combine left and right-wing politics; according to Geoffrey K. Roberts and Patricia Hogwood, "In terms of ideology, Christian Democracy has incorporated many of the views held by liberals, conservatives and socialists within a wider framework of moral and Christian principles."

Movements which claim or formerly claimed to be above the left-right divide include Fascist Terza Posizione economic politics in Italy and Peronism in Argentina.


​Freedom:
Main article: Political freedom

Political freedom (also known as political liberty or autonomy) is a central concept in political thought and one of the most important features of democratic societies. 

Negative liberty has been described as freedom from oppression or coercion and unreasonable external constraints on action, often enacted through civil and political rights, while positive liberty is the absence of disabling conditions for an individual and the fulfillment of enabling conditions, e.g. economic compulsion, in a society.

This capability approach to freedom requires economic, social and cultural rights in order to be realized.

Authoritarianism and libertarianism:

Authoritarianism and libertarianism disagree the amount of individual freedom each person possesses in that society relative to the state. One author describes authoritarian political systems as those where "individual rights and goals are subjugated to group goals, expectations and conformities," while libertarians generally oppose the state and hold the individual as sovereign.

In their purest form, libertarians are anarchists, who argue for the total abolition of the state, of political parties and of other political entities, while the purest authoritarians are, by definition, totalitarians who support state control over all aspects of society.

For instance, classical liberalism (also known as laissez-faire liberalism) is a doctrine stressing individual freedom and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, free markets, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, constitutional limitation of government, and individual freedom from restraint as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

According to the libertarian Institute for Humane Studies, "the libertarian, or 'classical liberal,' perspective is that individual well-being, prosperity, and social harmony are fostered by 'as much liberty as possible' and 'as little government as necessary.'"

​For anarchist political philosopher L. Susan Brown (1993), "liberalism and anarchism are two political philosophies that are fundamentally concerned with individual freedom yet differ from one another in very distinct ways. Anarchism shares with liberalism a radical commitment to individual freedom while rejecting liberalism's competitive property relations.

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Politics of the United States

The United States is a federal constitutional republic, in which the President of the United States (the head of state and head of government), Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.

The executive branch is headed by the President and is independent of the legislature.

Legislative power is vested in the two chambers of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The judicial branch (or judiciary), composed of the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, exercises judicial power. The judiciary's function is to interpret the United States Constitution and federal laws and regulations. This includes resolving disputes between the executive and legislative branches.

The federal government's layout is explained in the Constitution. Two political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, have dominated American politics since the American Civil War, although other parties have also existed.

There are major differences between the political system of the United States and that of most other developed democracies. These include increased power of the upper house of the legislature, a wider scope of power held by the Supreme Court, the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive, and the dominance of only two main parties. The United States is one of the world's developed democracies where third parties have the least political influence.

​The federal entity created by the U.S. Constitution is the dominant feature of the American governmental system. However, most residents are also subject to a state government, and also subject to various units of local government. The latter can include counties, municipalities, and special districts.

​State government:

States governments have the power to make laws on all subjects that are not granted to the federal government or denied to the states in the U.S. Constitution. These include education, family law, contract law, and most crimes.

Unlike the federal government, which only has those powers granted to it in the Constitution, a state government has inherent powers allowing it to act unless limited by a provision of the state or national constitution.

Like the federal government, state governments have three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. The chief executive of a state is its popularly elected governor, who typically holds office for a four-year term (although in some states the term is two years).

Except for Nebraska, which has unicameral legislature, all states have a bicameral legislature, with the upper house usually called the Senate and the lower house called the House of Representatives, the Assembly or something similar. In most states, senators serve four-year terms, and members of the lower house serve two-year terms.

The constitutions of the various states differ in some details but generally follow a pattern similar to that of the federal Constitution, including a statement of the rights of the people and a plan for organizing the government. However, state constitutions are generally more detailed.

Local government:
See also: Urban politics in the United States

There are 89,500 local governments, including 3,033 counties, 19,492 municipalities, 16,500 townships, 13,000 school districts, and 37,000 other special districts. Local governments directly serve the needs of the people, providing everything from police and fire protection to sanitary codes, health regulations, education, public transportation, and housing. Typically local elections are nonpartisan - local activists suspend their party affiliations when campaigning and governing.

About 28% of the people live in cities of 100,000 or more population. City governments are chartered by states, and their charters detail the objectives and powers of the municipal government.

For most big cities, cooperation with both state and federal organizations is essential to meeting the needs of their residents. Types of city governments vary widely across the nation. However, almost all have a central council, elected by the voters, and an executive officer, assisted by various department heads, to manage the city's affairs. Cities in the West and South usually have nonpartisan local politics.

There are three general types of city government: the mayor-council, the commission, and the council-manager. These are the pure forms; many cities have developed a combination of two or three of them.

Mayor-Council:

This is the oldest form of city government in the United States and, until the beginning of the 20th century, was used by nearly all American cities. Its structure is like that of the state and national governments, with an elected mayor as chief of the executive branch and an elected council that represents the various neighborhoods forming the legislative branch.

The mayor appoints heads of city departments and other officials, sometimes with the approval of the council. He or she has the power of veto over ordinances (the laws of the city) and often is responsible for preparing the city's budget. The council passes city ordinances, sets the tax rate on property, and apportions money among the various city departments. As cities have grown, council seats have usually come to represent more than a single neighborhood.

The Commission:

This combines both the legislative and executive functions in one group of officials, usually three or more in number, elected city-wide. Each commissioner supervises the work of one or more city departments. Commissioners also set policies and rules by which the city is operated. One is named chairperson of the body and is often called the mayor, although his or her power is equivalent to that of the other commissioners.

Council-Manager:

The city manager is a response to the increasing complexity of urban problems that need management ability not often possessed by elected public officials. The answer has been to entrust most of the executive powers, including law enforcement and provision of services, to a highly trained and experienced professional city manager.

The council-manager plan has been adopted by a large number of cities. Under this plan, a small, elected council makes the city ordinances and sets policy, but hires a paid administrator, also called a city manager, to carry out its decisions. The manager draws up the city budget and supervises most of the departments. Usually, there is no set term; the manager serves as long as the council is satisfied with his or her work.

County government:

The county is a subdivision of the state, sometimes (but not always) containing two or more townships and several villages. New York City is so large that it is divided into five separate boroughs, each a county in its own right.

On the other hand, Arlington County, Virginia, the United States' smallest county, located just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., is both an urbanized and suburban area, governed by a unitary county administration. In other cities, both the city and county governments have merged, creating a consolidated city–county government.

In most U.S. counties, one town or city is designated as the county seat, and this is where the government offices are located and where the board of commissioners or supervisors meets. In small counties, boards are chosen by the county; in the larger ones, supervisors represent separate districts or townships. The board collects taxes for state and local governments; borrows and appropriates money; fixes the salaries of county employees; supervises elections; builds and maintains highways and bridges; and administers national, state, and county welfare programs.

In very small counties, the executive and legislative power may lie entirely with a sole commissioner, who is assisted by boards to supervise taxes and elections. In some New England states, counties do not have any governmental function and are simply a division of land.

Town and village government:

Thousands of municipal jurisdictions are too small to qualify as city governments. These are chartered as towns and villages and deal with local needs such as paving and lighting the streets, ensuring a water supply, providing police and fire protection, and waste management.

In many states of the US, the term town does not have any specific meaning; it is simply an informal term applied to populated places (both incorporated and unincorporated municipalities). Moreover, in some states, the term town is equivalent to how civil townships are used in other states.

The government is usually entrusted to an elected board or council, which may be known by a variety of names: town or village council, board of selectmen, board of supervisors, board of commissioners. The board may have a chairperson or president who functions as chief executive officer, or there may be an elected mayor. Governmental employees may include a clerk, treasurer, police and fire officers, and health and welfare officers.

One unique aspect of local government, found mostly in the New England region of the United States, is the town meeting. Once a year, sometimes more often if needed, the registered voters of the town meet in open session to elect officers, debate local issues, and pass laws for operating the government.

As a body, they decide on road construction and repair, construction of public buildings and facilities, tax rates, and the town budget. The town meeting, which has existed for more than three centuries in some places, is often cited as the purest form of direct democracy, in which the governmental power is not delegated, but is exercised directly and regularly by all the people.

Suffrage:
Main article: Voting rights in the United States

Suffrage is nearly universal for citizens 18 years of age and older. All states and the District of Columbia contribute to the electoral vote for President. However, the District, and other U.S. holdings like Puerto Rico and Guam, lack representation in Congress. These constituencies do not have the right to choose any political figure outside their respective areas. Each commonwealth, territory, or district can only elect a non-voting delegate to serve in the House of Representatives.

Voting rights are sometimes restricted as a result of felony conviction, but such laws vary widely by state. Election of the president is an indirect suffrage: voters vote for electors who comprise the United States Electoral College and who, in turn vote for President.

These presidential electors were originally expected to exercise their own judgement. In modern practice, though, they are expected to vote as pledged and some faithless electors have not.

Unincorporated areas:

Some states contain unincorporated areas, which are areas of land not governed by any local authorities and rather just by the county, state and federal governments. Residents of unincorporated areas only need to pay taxes to the county, state and federal governments as opposed to the municipal government as well. A notable example of this is Paradise, Nevada, an unincorporated area where many of the casinos commonly associated with Las Vegas are situated.

Unorganized territories:
Main article: Unorganized territory

The United States also possesses a number of unorganized territories. These are areas of land which are not under the jurisdiction of any state, and do not have a government established by Congress through an organic act. The unorganized territories of the U.S. are: 
American Samoa is the only one with a native resident population, and is governed by a local authority. Despite the fact that an organic act was not passed in Congress, American Samoa established its own constitution in 1967, and has self governed ever since.

Campaign finance:
Main article: Campaign finance in the United States

Successful participation, especially in federal elections, requires large amounts of money, especially for television advertising. This money is very difficult to raise by appeals to a mass base, although in the 2008 election, candidates from both parties had success with raising money from citizens over the Internet., as had Howard Dean with his Internet appeals.

Both parties generally depend on wealthy donors and organizations - traditionally the Democrats depended on donations from organized labor while the Republicans relied on business donations. Since 1984, however, the Democrats' business donations have surpassed those from labor organizations.

This dependency on donors is controversial, and has led to laws limiting spending on political campaigns being enacted (see campaign finance reform). Opponents of campaign finance laws cite the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, and challenge campaign finance laws because they attempt to circumvent the people's constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Even when laws are upheld, the complication of compliance with the First Amendment requires careful and cautious drafting of legislation, leading to laws that are still fairly limited in scope, especially in comparison to those of other countries such as the United Kingdom, France or Canada.

Political culture:

Colonial origins:
Main articles: Colonial history of the United States and Thirteen Colonies

The American political culture is deeply rooted in the colonial experience and the American Revolution. The colonies were unique within the European world for their vibrant political culture, which attracted ambitious young men into politics. At the time, American suffrage was the most widespread in the world, with every man who owned a certain amount of property allowed to vote.

Despite this, fewer than 1% of British men could vote, most white American men were eligible. While the roots of democracy were apparent, deference was typically shown to social elites in colonial elections, although this declined sharply with the American Revolution.

In each colony a wide range of public and private business was decided by elected bodies, especially the assemblies and county governments. Topics of public concern and debate included land grants, commercial subsidies, and taxation, as well as the oversight of roads, poor relief, taverns, and schools.

Americans spent a great deal of time in court, as private lawsuits were very common. Legal affairs were overseen by local judges and juries, with a central role for trained lawyers. This promoted the rapid expansion of the legal profession, and dominant role of lawyers in politics was apparent by the 1770s, with notable individuals including John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, among many others.

The American colonies were unique in world context because of the growth of representation of different interest groups. Unlike Europe, where the royal court, aristocratic families and the established church were in control, the American political culture was open to merchants, landlords, petty farmers, artisans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Germans, Scotch Irish, Yankees, Yorkers, and many other identifiable groups.

Over 90% of the representatives elected to the legislature lived in their districts, unlike England where it was common to have a member of Parliament and absentee member of Parliament. Finally, and most dramatically, the Americans were fascinated by and increasingly adopted the political values of Republicanism, which stressed equal rights, the need for virtuous citizens, and the evils of corruption, luxury, and aristocracy.

None of the colonies had political parties of the sort that formed in the 1790s, but each had shifting factions that vied for power.

American ideology:

Republicanism, along with a form of classical liberalism remains the dominant ideology. Central documents include the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Constitution (1787), the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers (1787-1790s), the Bill of Rights (1791), and Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" (1863), among others.

Among the core tenets of this ideology are the following:
  • Civic duty: citizens have the responsibility to understand and support the government, participate in elections, pay taxes, and perform military service.
  • Opposition to Political corruption.
  • Democracy: The government is answerable to citizens, who may change the representatives through elections.
  • Equality before the law: The laws should attach no special privilege to any citizen. Government officials are subject to the law just as others are.
  • Freedom of religion: The government can neither support nor suppress any or all religion.
  • Freedom of speech: The government cannot restrict through law or action the personal, non-violent speech of a citizen; a marketplace of ideas.

At the time of the United States' founding, the economy was predominantly one of agriculture and small private businesses, and state governments left welfare issues to private or local initiative. As in the UK and other industrialized countries, laissez-faire ideology was largely discredited during the Great Depression.

Between the 1930s and 1970s, fiscal policy was characterized by the Keynesian consensus, a time during which modern American liberalism dominated economic policy virtually unchallenged. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, laissez-faire ideology has once more become a powerful force in American politics. While the American welfare state expanded more than threefold after WWII, it has been at 20% of GDP since the late 1970s.

Today, modern American liberalism, and modern American conservatism are engaged in a continuous political battle, characterized by what the Economist describes as "greater divisiveness [and] close, but bitterly fought elections."

Before World War II, the United States pursued a noninterventionist policy of in foreign affairs by not taking sides in conflicts between foreign powers. The country abandoned this policy when it became a superpower, and the country mostly supports internationalism.

Political parties and elections:

The United States Constitution has never formally addressed the issue of political parties, primarily because the Founding Fathers did not originally intend for American politics to be partisan.

In Federalist Papers No. 9 and No. 10, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, respectively, wrote specifically about the dangers of domestic political factions. In addition, the first President of the United States, George Washington, was not a member of any political party at the time of his election or throughout his tenure as president, and remains to this day the only independent to have held the office. Furthermore, he hoped that political parties would not be formed, fearing conflict and stagnation.

Nevertheless, the beginnings of the American two-party system emerged from his immediate circle of advisers, including Hamilton and Madison.

In partisan elections, candidates are nominated by a political party or seek public office as an independent. Each state has significant discretion in deciding how candidates are nominated, and thus eligible to appear on the election ballot. Typically, major party candidates are formally chosen in a party primary or convention, whereas minor party and Independents are required to complete a petitioning process.

Political parties:
Main article: Political parties in the United States

The modern political party system in the United States is a two-party system dominated by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. These two parties have won every United States presidential election since 1852 and have controlled the United States Congress since at least 1856. From time to time, several other third parties have achieved relatively minor representation at the national and state levels.

Among the two major parties, the Democratic Party generally positions itself as center-left in American politics and supports an American liberalism platform, while the Republican Party generally positions itself as center-right and supports an American conservatism platform.

Elections:
Further information: Elections in the United States

Unlike the United Kingdom and other similar parliamentary systems, Americans vote for a specific candidate instead of directly selecting a particular political party. With a federal government, officials are elected at the federal (national), state and local levels.

On a national level, the President is elected indirectly by the people, but instead elected through the Electoral College. In modern times, the electors almost always vote with the popular vote of their state, however in rare occurrences they may vote against the popular vote of their state, becoming what is known as a faithless elector. All members of Congress, and the offices at the state and local levels are directly elected.

Both federal and state laws regulate elections.

The United States Constitution defines (to a basic extent) how federal elections are held, in Article One and Article Two and various amendments. State law regulates most aspects of electoral law, including primaries, the eligibility of voters (beyond the basic constitutional definition), the running of each state's electoral college, and the running of state and local elections.

Organization of American political parties:
See also: Political party strength in U.S. states

American political parties are more loosely organized than those in other countries. The two major parties, in particular, have no formal organization at the national level that controls membership. Thus, for an American to say that he or she is a member of the Democratic or Republican parties is quite different from a Briton's stating that he or she is a member of the Conservative or Labor parties.

In most U.S. states, a voter can register as a member of one or another party and/or vote in the primary election for one or another party. A person may choose to attend meetings of one local party committee one day and another party committee the next day.

Party identification becomes somewhat formalized when a person runs for partisan office. In most states, this means declaring oneself a candidate for the nomination of a particular party and intent to enter that party's primary election for an office. A party committee may choose to endorse one or another of those who is seeking the nomination, but in the end the choice is up to those who choose to vote in the primary, and it is often difficult to tell who is going to do the voting.

The result is that American political parties have weak central organizations and little central ideology, except by consensus. A party really cannot prevent a person who disagrees with the majority of positions of the party or actively works against the party's aims from claiming party membership, so long as the voters who choose to vote in the primary elections elect that person. Once in office, an elected official may change parties simply by declaring such intent.

At the federal level, each of the two major parties has a national committee (See, Democratic National Committee, Republican National Committee) that acts as the hub for much fund-raising and campaign activities, particularly in presidential campaigns. The exact composition of these committees is different for each party, but they are made up primarily of representatives from state parties and affiliated organizations, and others important to the party. However, the national committees do not have the power to direct the activities of members of the party.

Both parties also have separate campaign committees which work to elect candidates at a specific level. The most significant of these are the Hill committees, which work to elect candidates to each house of Congress.

State parties exist in all fifty states, though their structures differ according to state law, as well as party rules at both the national and the state level.

Despite these weak organizations, elections are still usually portrayed as national races between the political parties. In what is known as "presidential coattails", candidates in presidential elections become the de facto leader of their respective party, and thus usually bring out supporters who in turn then vote for his party's candidates for other offices.

On the other hand, federal midterm elections (where only Congress and not the president is up for election) are usually regarded as a referendum on the sitting president's performance, with voters either voting in or out the president's party's candidates, which in turn helps the next session of Congress to either pass or block the president's agenda, respectively.

Political pressure groups:
See also: Advocacy group

Special interest groups advocate the cause of their specific constituency. Business organizations will favor low corporate taxes and restrictions of the right to strike, whereas labor unions will support minimum wage legislation and protection for collective bargaining.

Other private interest groups, such as churches and ethnic groups, are more concerned about broader issues of policy that can affect their organizations or their beliefs.

One type of private interest group that has grown in number and influence in recent years is the political action committee or PAC. These are independent groups, organized around a single issue or set of issues, which contribute money to political campaigns for U.S. Congress or the presidency. PACs are limited in the amounts they can contribute directly to candidates in federal elections.

There are no restrictions, however, on the amounts PACs can spend independently to advocate a point of view or to urge the election of candidates to office. PACs today number in the thousands.

"The number of interest groups has mushroomed, with more and more of them operating offices in Washington, D.C., and representing themselves directly to Congress and federal agencies," says Michael Schudson in his 1998 book The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life.

"Many organizations that keep an eye on Washington seek financial and moral support from ordinary citizens. Since many of them focus on a narrow set of concerns or even on a single issue, and often a single issue of enormous emotional weight, they compete with the parties for citizens' dollars, time, and passion."

The amount of money spent by these special interests continues to grow, as campaigns become increasingly expensive. Many Americans have the feeling that these wealthy interests, whether corporations, unions or PACs, are so powerful that ordinary citizens can do little to counteract their influences.

A survey of members of the American Economic Association find the vast majority regardless of political affiliation to be discontent with the current state of democracy in America.

The primary concern relates to the prevalence and influence of special interest groups within the political process, which tends to lead to policy consequences that only benefit such special interest groups and politicians. Some conjecture that maintenance of the policy status quo and hesitance to stray from it perpetuates a political environment that fails to advance society's welfare.

In 2020, political discontent became more prevalent, putting a severe strain on democratic institutions.

General developments:
See also: History of the United States Republican Party; 
​and History of the United States Democratic Party

Many of America's Founding Fathers hated the thought of political parties. They were sure quarreling factions would be more interested in contending with each other than in working for the common good. They wanted citizens to vote for candidates without the interference of organized groups, but this was not to be.

By the 1790s, different views of the new country's proper course had already developed, and those who held these opposing views tried to win support for their cause by banding together.

The followers of Alexander Hamilton, the Hamiltonian faction, took up the name "Federalist"; they favored a strong central government that would support the interests of commerce and industry.

The followers of Thomas Jefferson, the Jeffersonians and then the "Anti-Federalists," took up the name "Democratic-Republicans"; they preferred a decentralized agrarian republic in which the federal government had limited power.

By 1828, the Federalists had disappeared as an organization, replaced by the Whigs, brought to life in opposition to the election that year of President Andrew Jackson. Jackson's presidency split the Democratic-Republican Party: Jacksonians became the Democratic Party and those following the leadership of John Quincy Adams became the "National Republicans."

The two-party system, still in existence today, was born. (Note: The National Republicans of John Quincy Adams is not the same party as today's Republican Party.)

In the 1850s, the issue of slavery took center stage, with disagreement in particular over the question of whether slavery should be permitted in the country's new territories in the West.

The Whig Party straddled the issue and sank to its death after the overwhelming electoral defeat by Franklin Pierce in the 1852 presidential election.

Ex-Whigs joined the Know Nothings or the newly formed Republican Party. While the Know Nothing party was short-lived, Republicans would survive the intense politics leading up to the Civil War. The primary Republican policy was that slavery be excluded from all the territories.

Just six years later, this new party captured the presidency when Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860. By then, parties were well established as the country's dominant political organizations, and party allegiance had become an important part of most people's consciousness. Party loyalty was passed from fathers to sons, and party activities, including spectacular campaign events, complete with uniformed marching groups and torchlight parades, were a part of the social life of many communities.

By the 1920s, however, this boisterous folksiness had diminished. Municipal reforms, civil service reform, corrupt practices acts, and presidential primaries to replace the power of politicians at national conventions had all helped to clean up politics.

Development of the two-party system in the United States:
See also: Causes of a two-party system

Since the 1790s, the country has been run by two major parties. Many minor or third political parties appear from time to time. They tend to serve a means to advocate policies that eventually are adopted by the two major political parties.

At various times the Socialist Party, the Farmer-Labor Party and the Populist Party for a few years had considerable local strength, and then faded away—although in Minnesota, the Farmer–Labor Party merged into the state's Democratic Party, which is now officially known as the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party.

At present, the Libertarian Party is the most successful third party. New York State has a number of additional third parties, who sometimes run their own candidates for office and sometimes nominate the nominees of the two main parties. In the District of Columbia, the D.C. Statehood Party has served as a strong third party behind the Democratic Party and Republican Party.

Most officials in America are elected from single-member districts and win office by beating out their opponents in a system for determining winners called first-past-the-post; the one who gets the plurality wins, (which is not the same thing as actually getting a majority of votes). This encourages the two-party system: see Duverger's law.

In the absence of multi-seat congressional districts, proportional representation is impossible and third parties cannot thrive. Senators were originally selected by state legislatures, but have been elected by popular vote since 1913. Although elections to the Senate elect two senators per constituency (state), staggered terms effectively result in single-seat constituencies for elections to the Senate.

Another critical factor has been ballot access law. Originally, voters went to the polls and publicly stated which candidate they supported. Later on, this developed into a process whereby each political party would create its own ballot and thus the voter would put the party's ballot into the voting box.

In the late nineteenth century, states began to adopt the Australian Secret Ballot Method, and it eventually became the national standard. The secret ballot method ensured that the privacy of voters would be protected (hence government jobs could no longer be awarded to loyal voters) and each state would be responsible for creating one official ballot.

The fact that state legislatures were dominated by Democrats and Republicans provided these parties an opportunity to pass discriminatory laws against minor political parties, yet such laws did not start to arise until the first Red Scare that hit America after World War I.

State legislatures began to enact tough laws that made it harder for minor political parties to run candidates for office by requiring a high number of petition signatures from citizens and decreasing the length of time that such a petition could legally be circulated.

It should also be noted that while more often than not, party members will "toe the line" and support their party's policies, they are free to vote against their own party and vote with the opposition ("cross the aisle") when they please.

"In America the same political labels (Democratic and Republican) cover virtually all public officeholders, and therefore most voters are everywhere mobilized in the name of these two parties," says Nelson W. Polsby, professor of political science, in the book New Federalist Papers: Essays in Defense of the Constitution.

"Yet Democrats and Republicans are not everywhere the same. Variations (sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant) in the 50 political cultures of the states yield considerable differences overall in what it means to be, or to vote, Democratic or Republican. These differences suggest that one may be justified in referring to the American two-party system as masking something more like a hundred-party system."

Political spectrum of the two major parties:

During the 20th century, the overall political philosophy of both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party underwent a dramatic shift from their earlier philosophies.

From the 1860s to the 1950s the Republican Party was considered to be the more classically liberal of the two major parties and the Democratic Party the more classically conservative/populist of the two.

This changed a great deal with the presidency of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal included the founding of Social Security as well as a variety of other federal services and public works projects. Roosevelt's performance in the twin crises of the Depression and World War II led to a sort of polarization in national politics, centered around him; this combined with his increasingly liberal policies to turn FDR's Democrats to the left and the Republican Party further to the right.

During the 1950s and the early 1960s, both parties essentially expressed a more centrist approach to politics on the national level and had their liberal, moderate, and conservative wings influential within both parties.

From the early 1960s, the conservative wing became more dominant in the Republican Party, and the liberal wing became more dominant in the Democratic Party. The 1964 presidential election heralded the rise of the conservative wing among Republicans.

The liberal and conservative wings within the Democratic Party were competitive until 1972, when George McGovern's candidacy marked the triumph of the liberal wing.

This similarly happened in the Republican Party with the candidacy and later landslide election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, which marked the triumph of the conservative wing.

By the 1980 election, each major party had largely become identified by its dominant political orientation. Strong showings in the 1990s by reformist independent Ross Perot pushed the major parties to put forth more centrist presidential candidates, like Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.

Polarization in Congress was said by some to have been cemented by the Republican takeover of 1994. Others say that this polarization had existed since the late 1980s when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

Liberals within the Republican Party and conservatives within the Democratic Party and the Democratic Leadership Council neoliberals have typically fulfilled the roles of so-called political mavericks, radical centrists, or brokers of compromise between the two major parties. They have also helped their respective parties gain in certain regions that might not ordinarily elect a member of that party; the Republican Party has used this approach with centrist Republicans such as Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Richard Riordan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The 2006 elections sent many centrist or conservative Democrats to state and federal legislatures including several, notably in Kansas and Montana, who switched parties.

Concerns about oligarchy:

Some views suggest that the political structure of the United States is in many respects an oligarchy, where a small economic elite overwhelmingly determines policy and law. Some academic researchers suggest a drift toward oligarchy has been occurring by way of the influence of corporations, wealthy, and other special interest groups, leaving individual citizens with less impact than economic elites and organized interest groups in the political process.
​
A study by political scientists Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern University) released in April 2014 suggested that when the preferences of a majority of citizens conflicts with elites, elites tend to prevail.

While not characterizing the United States as an "oligarchy" or "plutocracy" outright, Gilens and Page do give weight to the idea of a "civil oligarchy" as used by Jeffrey A. Winters, saying, "Winters has posited a comparative theory of 'Oligarchy,' in which the wealthiest citizens – even in a 'civil oligarchy' like the United States – dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth- and income-protection."

In their study, Gilens and Page reached these conclusions:
  • When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.
  • Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it. ... [T]he preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.— Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, 2014
  • E.J. Dionne Jr. described what he considers the effects of ideological and oligarchical interests on the judiciary. The journalist, columnist, and scholar interprets recent Supreme Court decisions as ones that allow wealthy elites to use economic power to influence political outcomes in their favor.
  • "Thus," Dionne wrote, in speaking about the Supreme Court's McCutcheon et al. v. FEC and Citizens United v. FEC decisions, "has this court conferred on wealthy people the right to give vast sums of money to politicians while undercutting the rights of millions of citizens to cast a ballot."

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote:

The stark reality is that we have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people. This threatens to make us a democracy in name only.
— Paul Krugman, 2012

For Reform See also:  ​
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Political Science Pictured below: How To Study Political Science
​Political science, occasionally called politology, is a social science which deals with systems of governance, and the analysis of political activities, political thoughts, associated constitutions and political behavior.

Political science comprises numerous subfields, including: 
Furthermore, political science is related to, and draws upon, the fields of: 
Comparative politics is the science of comparison and teaching of different types of constitutions, political actors, legislature and associated fields, all of them from an intrastate perspective. 

International relations deals with the interaction between nation-states as well as intergovernmental and transnational organizations.

Political theory is more concerned with contributions of various classical and contemporary thinkers and philosophers.

Political science is methodologically diverse and appropriates many methods originating in: 
Approaches include: 
Political science, as one of the social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought: primary sources, such as historical documents and official records, secondary sources such as scholarly journal articles, survey research, statistical analysis, case studies, experimental research, and model building.

​Overview:

Political science is a social study concerning the allocation and transfer of power in decision making, the roles and systems of governance including governments and international organizations, political behavior and public policies. They measure the success of governance and specific policies by examining many factors, including stability, justice, material wealth, peace and public health.

Some political scientists seek to advance positive (attempt to describe how things are, as opposed to how they should be) theses by analyzing politics. Others advance normative theses, by making specific policy recommendations.

Political scientists provide the frameworks from which journalists, special interest groups, politicians, and the electorate analysis issues. According to Chaturvedy,

Political scientists may serve as advisers to specific politicians, or even run for office as politicians themselves. Political scientists can be found working in governments, in political parties or as civil servants. They may be involved with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or political movements.

In a variety of capacities, people educated and trained in political science can add value and expertise to corporations. Private enterprises such as think tanks, research institutes, polling and public relations firms often employ political scientists.

In the United States, political scientists known as "Americanists" look at a variety of data including constitutional development, elections, public opinion, and public policy such as Social Security reform, foreign policy, US Congressional committees, and the US Supreme Court — to name only a few issues.

Because political science is essentially a study of human behavior, in all aspects of politics, observations in controlled environments are often challenging to reproduce or duplicate, though experimental methods are increasingly common (see experimental political science).

Citing this difficulty, former American Political Science Association President Lawrence Lowell once said "We are limited by the impossibility of experiment. Politics is an observational, not an experimental science." Because of this, political scientists have historically observed political elites, institutions, and individual or group behavior in order to identify patterns, draw generalizations, and build theories of politics.

Like all social sciences, political science faces the difficulty of observing human actors that can only be partially observed and who have the capacity for making conscious choices unlike other subjects such as non-human organisms in biology or inanimate objects as in physics.

Despite the complexities, contemporary political science has progressed by adopting a variety of methods and theoretical approaches to understanding politics and methodological pluralism is a defining feature of contemporary political science.

The advent of political science as a university discipline was marked by the creation of university departments and chairs with the title of political science arising in the late 19th century. In fact, the designation "political scientist" is typically for those with a doctorate in the field, but can also apply to those with a master's in the subject.

Integrating political studies of the past into a unified discipline is ongoing, and the history of political science has provided a rich field for the growth of both normative and positive political science, with each part of the discipline sharing some historical predecessors.

The American Political Science Association and the American Political Science Review were founded in 1903 and 1906, respectively, in an effort to distinguish the study of politics from economics and other social phenomena.

Behavioral revolution and new institutionalism:

In the 1950s and the 1960s, a behavioral revolution stressing the systematic and rigorously scientific study of individual and group behavior swept the discipline. A focus on studying political behavior, rather than institutions or interpretation of legal texts, characterized early behavioral political science, including work by Robert Dahl, Philip Converse, and in the collaboration between sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld and public opinion scholar Bernard Berelson.

The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a take off in the use of deductive, game theoretic formal modelling techniques aimed at generating a more analytical corpus of knowledge in the discipline. This period saw a surge of research that borrowed theory and methods from economics to study political institutions, such as the United States Congress, as well as political behavior, such as voting. 

William H. Riker and his colleagues and students at the University of Rochester were the main proponents of this shift.

Despite considerable research progress in the discipline based on all the kinds of scholarship discussed above, it has been observed that progress toward systematic theory has been modest and uneven.

Anticipating of crises:

The theory of political transitions, and the methods of their analysis and anticipating of crises, form an important part of political science. Several general indicators of crises and methods were proposed for anticipating critical transitions.

Among them, a statistical indicator of crisis, simultaneous increase of variance and correlations in large groups, was proposed for crisis anticipation and may be successfully used in various areas. Its applicability for early diagnosis of political crises was demonstrated by the analysis of the prolonged stress period preceding the 2014 Ukrainian economic and political crisis.

There was a simultaneous increase in the total correlation between the 19 major public fears in the Ukrainian society (by about 64%) and also in their statistical dispersion (by 29%) during the pre-crisis years. A feature shared by certain major revolutions is that they were not predicted. The theory of apparent inevitability of crises and revolutions was also developed.

Soviet Union:

In the Soviet Union, political studies were carried out under the guise of some other disciplines like theory of state and law, area studies, international relations, studies of labor movement, "critique of bourgeois theories", etc. Soviet scholars were represented at the International Political Science Association (IPSA) since 1955 (since 1960 by the Soviet Association of Political and State Studies).

In 1979, the 11th World Congress of IPSA took place in Moscow. Until the late years of the Soviet Union, political science as a field was subjected to tight control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was thus subjected to distrust. Anti-communists accused political scientists of being "false" scientists and of having served the old regime.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, two of the major institutions dealing with political science, the Institute of Contemporary Social Theories and the Institute of International Affairs, were disbanded, and most of their members were left without jobs. These institutes were victims of the first wave of anticommunist opinion and ideological attacks.

Today, the Russian Political Science Association unites professional political scientists from all around Russia.

Recent developments:

In 2000, the Perestroika Movement in political science was introduced as a reaction against what supporters of the movement called the mathematicization of political science. Those who identified with the movement argued for a plurality of methodologies and approaches in political science and for more relevance of the discipline to those outside of it.

Some evolutionary psychology theories argue that humans have evolved a highly developed set of psychological mechanisms for dealing with politics. However, these mechanisms evolved for dealing with the small group politics that characterized the ancestral environment and not the much larger political structures in today's world. This is argued to explain many important features and systematic cognitive biases of current politics.

Education:

Political science, possibly like the social sciences as a whole, "as a discipline lives on the fault line between the 'two cultures' in the academy, the sciences and the humanities." Thus, in some American colleges where there is no separate School or College of Arts and Sciences per se, political science may be a separate department housed as part of a division or school of Humanities or Liberal Arts.

Whereas classical political philosophy is primarily defined by a concern for Hellenic and Enlightenment thought, political scientists are also marked by a great concern for "modernity" and the contemporary nation state, along with the study of classical thought, and as such share a greater deal of terminology with sociologists (e.g. structure and agency).

Most United States colleges and universities offer B.A. programs in political science. M.A. or M.A.T. and Ph.D. or Ed.D. programs are common at larger universities. The term political science is more popular in North America than elsewhere; other institutions, especially those outside the United States, see political science as part of a broader discipline of political studies, politics, or government. 

While political science implies use of the scientific method, political studies implies a broader approach, although the naming of degree courses does not necessarily reflect their content. Separate degree granting programs in international relations and public policy are not uncommon at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Master's level programs in political science are common when political scientists engage in public administration.

The national honor society for college and university students of government and politics in the United States is Pi Sigma Alpha.

Cognate fields:

Most political scientists work broadly in one or more of the following five areas:
Some political science departments also classify methodology as well as scholarship on the domestic politics of a particular country as distinct fields. In the United States, American politics is often treated as a separate subfield.

In contrast to this traditional classification, some academic departments organize scholarship into thematic categories, including political philosophy, political behavior (including public opinion, collective action, and identity), and political institutions (including legislatures and international organizations).

Political science conferences and journals often emphasize scholarship in more specific categories. The American Political Science Association, for example, has 42 organized sections that address various methods and topics of political inquiry.

Research methods:

Program evaluation is a systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to answer questions about projects, policies and programs, particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency. In both the public and private sectors, stakeholders often want to know whether the programs they are funding, implementing, voting for, receiving or objecting to are producing the intended effect.

While program evaluation first focuses around this definition, important considerations often include how much the program costs per participant, how the program could be improved, whether the program is worthwhile, whether there are better alternatives, if there are unintended outcomes, and whether the program goals are appropriate and useful.

Policy analysis is a technique used in public administration to enable civil servants, activists, and others to examine and evaluate the available options to implement the goals of laws and elected officials.

History:
Main article: History of political science

As a social political science, contemporary political science started to take shape in the latter half of the 19th century. At that time it began to separate itself from political philosophy, which traces its roots back to the works of Aristotle and Plato, which were written nearly 2,500 years ago.

The term "political science" was not always distinguished from political philosophy, and the modern discipline has a clear set of antecedents including also moral philosophy, political economy, political theology, history, and other fields concerned with normative determinations of what ought to be and with deducing the characteristics and functions of the ideal state.

See also:







Government Accountability Office (GAO), including the Whistleblower Act Pictured below: WHISTLEBLOWERS: Key Practices for Congress to Consider When Receiving and Referring Information
Government Accountability Office

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the United States Congress.

It is the supreme audit institution of the federal government of the United States. It identifies its core "mission values" as: accountability, integrity, and reliability. It is also known as the "congressional watchdog"

Powers of GAO:

Work of GAO is done at the request of congressional committees or subcommittees or is mandated by public laws or committee reports. It also undertakes research under the authority of the Comptroller General. It supports congressional oversight by:
  • auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively;
  • investigating allegations of illegal and improper activities;
  • reporting on how well government programs and policies are meeting their objectives;
  • performing policy analyses and outlining options for congressional consideration;
  • issuing legal decisions and opinions;
  • advising Congress and the heads of executive agencies about ways to make government more efficient and effective.

Products of GAO:

Products of GAO include the following:
  • reports and written correspondence;
  • testimonies and statements for the record, where the former are delivered orally by one or more of GAO senior executives at a congressional hearing and the latter are provided for inclusion in the congressional record;
  • briefings, which are usually given directly to congressional staff members;
  • legal decisions and opinions resolving bid protests and addressing issues of appropriations law as well as opinions on the scope and exercise of authority of federal officers.
GAO also produces special publications on specific issues of general interest to many Americans, such as its report on the fiscal future of the United States, GAO's role in the federal bid protest process, and critical issues for congressional consideration related to improving the nation's image abroad.

​History:

The GAO was established as the General Accounting Office by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. The act required the head of the GAO to
"investigate, at the seat of government or elsewhere, all matters relating to the receipt, disbursement, and application of public funds, and shall make to the President … and to Congress … reports [and] recommendations looking to greater economy or efficiency in public expenditures".

According to the GAO's current mission statement, the agency exists to support the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.

The name was changed in 2004 to Government Accountability Office by the GAO Human Capital Reform Act to better reflect the mission of the office. The GAO's auditors conduct not only financial audits, but also engage in a wide assortment of performance audits.

Over the years, the GAO has been referred to as "The Congressional Watchdog" and "The Taxpayers' Best Friend" for its frequent audits and investigative reports that have uncovered waste and inefficiency in government. News media often draw attention to the GAO's work by publishing stories on the findings, conclusions and recommendations of its reports.

Members of Congress also frequently cite the GAO's work in statements to the press, congressional hearings, and floor debates on proposed legislation.

In 2007 the Partnership for Public Service ranked the GAO second on its list of the best places to work in the federal government and Washingtonian magazine included the GAO on its 2007 list of great places to work in Washington, a list that encompasses the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

The GAO is headed by the Comptroller General of the U.S., a professional and non-partisan position in the U.S. government. The comptroller general is appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, for a 15-year, non-renewable term.

The president selects a nominee from a list of at least three individuals recommended by an eight-member bipartisan, bicameral commission of congressional leaders. During such term, the comptroller general has standing to pursue litigation to compel access to federal agency information.

The comptroller general may not be removed by the president, but only by Congress through impeachment or joint resolution for specific reasons. Since 1921, there have been only seven comptrollers general, and no formal attempt has ever been made to remove a comptroller general.

Labor-management relations became fractious during the nine-year tenure of the seventh comptroller general, David M. Walker. On September 19, 2007, GAO analysts voted by a margin of two to one (897–445), in a 75% turnout, to establish the first union in the GAO's 86-year history. The analysts voted to affiliate with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), a member union of the AFL-CIO.

There are more than 1,800 analysts in the GAO analysts bargaining unit; the local voted to name itself IFPTE Local 1921, in honor of the date of the GAO's establishment. On February 14, 2008, the GAO analysts' union approved its first-ever negotiated pay contract with management; of just over 1,200 votes, 98 percent were in favor of the contract.

The GAO also establishes standards for audits of government organizations, programs, activities, and functions, and of government assistance received by contractors, nonprofit organizations, and other nongovernmental organizations.

These standards, often referred to as Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS), are to be followed by auditors and audit organizations when required by law, regulation, agreement, contract, or policy. These standards pertain to auditors' professional qualifications, the quality of audit effort, and the characteristics of professional and meaningful audit reports.

In 1992 the GAO hosted XIV INCOSAI, the fourteenth triennial convention of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI).

Reports:
​
GAO is a United States government electronic data provider, as all of its reports are available on its website, except for certain reports whose distribution is limited to official use in order to protect national security.

The variety of topics reported on range from Federal Budget and Fiscal Issues to:
  • Financial Management,
  • Education,
  • Retirement Issues,
  • Defense,
  • Homeland Security,
  • Administration of Justice,
  • Health Care,
  • Information Management and Technology,
  • Natural Resources,
  • Environment,
  • International Affairs,
  • Trade,
  • Financial Markets,
  • Housing,
  • Government Management and Human Capital,
  • and Science and Technology Assessment and Analytics.

GAO often produces highlights of its reports that serve as a statement for the record for various subcommittees of the United States Congress.

Most GAO studies and reports are initiated by requests from members of Congress, including requests mandated in statute, and so reflect concerns of current political import, for example to study the impact of a government-wide hiring freeze. Many reports are issued periodically and take a long view of U.S. agencies' operations. GAO also produces annual reports on key issues such as Duplication and Cost savings and High-Risk Update.

The GAO prepares some 900 reports annually. GAO publishes reports and information relating to, inter alia:

Financial Statements of the U.S. government:

Each year the GAO issues an audit report on the financial statements of the United States Government. The 2010 Financial Report of the United States Government was released on December 21, 2010. The accompanying press release states that the GAO 'cannot render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations'.

U.S. Public Debt:

As part of its initiative to advocate sustainability, the GAO publishes a Federal Fiscal Outlook Report, as well as data relating to the deficit. The US deficit is presented on a cash rather than accruals basis, although the GAO notes that the accrual deficit 'provides more information on the longer-term implications of the government's annual operations'.

In FY 2010, the US federal government had a net operating cost of $2,080 billion, although since this includes accounting provisions (estimates of future liabilities), the cash deficit is $1,294 billion.

Quinquennial Strategic Plan:

The most recent GAO strategic plan, for 2018-2023, sets out four goals, namely:
  1. Address current and emerging challenges to the well-being and financial security of the American people;
  2. Help the Congress respond to changing security threats and the challenges of global interdependence;
  3. Help transform the Federal Government to address national challenges;
  4. Maximize the value of GAO by enabling quality, timely service to the Congress and by being a leading practices federal agency.

Forensic Audits and Investigative Service (FAIS):

The Forensic Audits and Investigative Service (FAIS) team provides Congress with high-quality forensic audits and investigations of fraud, waste, and abuse; other special investigations; and security and vulnerability assessments. Its work cuts across a diverse array of government programs administered by IRS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security, among others.

Technology Assessments:

After the closing of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1995, Congress directed GAO to conduct a technology assessment (TA) pilot program.

Between 2002 and 2005, three reports were completed–-use of biometrics for border security, cyber security for critical infrastructure protection, and technologies for protecting structures in wildland fires. 

GAO reports and technology assessments, which are made available to the public, have become essential vehicles for understanding science and technology (S&T) implications of policies considered by the Congress.

Since 2008, Congress has established a permanent TA function within GAO. This new operational role augments GAO's performance audits related to S&T issues, including effectiveness and efficiency of U.S. federal programs.

In 2010, GAO joined European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (EPTA) as an associate member. In 2019, GAO established a new mission team, the Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics team, which has primary responsibility for technology assessments.

GAO has published a TA Design Handbook to help technology assessment teams analyze the impact of technology and make complex issues more easily understood and useful to policymakers.

GAO defines TA as the "thorough and balanced analysis of significant primary, secondary, indirect, and delayed interactions of a technological innovation with society, the environment, and the economy and the present and foreseen consequences and impacts of those interactions."

​Recognizing that the effects of those interactions can have implications, GAO has in some of its products included policy options. The Technology Assessment section of GAO's website lists GAO's public TA reports.

​See also: ___________________________________________________________________________

​Government Accountability Project:

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is a nonprofit whistleblower protection and advocacy organization in the United States. It was founded in 1977.

Activities:

In 1992, GAP represented Aldric Saucier, who had lost his job and security clearance after he criticized the Strategic Defense Initiative.

In December 2012, Eric Ben-Artzi came forward publicly with evidence of multi-billion dollar securities violations at his employer, Deutsche Bank. He internally reported violations stemming from the bank's failure to report the value of its credit derivatives portfolio accurately. The bank retaliated in multiple ways and ultimately dismissed him. GAP filed an official whistleblower complaint on Ben-Artzi's behalf. He was ultimately awarded $8 million from the SEC, which he declined to collect.

GAP provided legal support to Thomas A. Drake, a former senior executive with the National Security Agency (NSA) who blew the whistle on multi-billion dollar programmatic fraud, waste, and abuse; the critical loss and suppression of 9/11 intelligence; and the Stellar Wind project's dragnet electronic mass surveillance and data-mining (conducted on a vast scale by the agency with the approval of the White House after 9/11).

Drake argued that Stellar Wind violated the Constitution and American citizens' civil liberties while weakening national security. In April 2010, the Department of Justice charged him with ten felonies (five under the Espionage Act) and he faced 35 years in prison. He was the first whistleblower charged with espionage by the Obama administration.

All charges were eventually dropped when Drake pleaded to a misdemeanor count of exceeding the authorized use of a government computer with no fine or prison time.

In 2003, Federal Air Marshal (FAM) Robert MacLean revealed a cost-cutting plan to cancel FAM coverage from long distance flights on the eve of a confirmed al-Qaeda suicidal hijacking plan.

The plan never went into effect after Congress protested, based solely on his whistleblowing disclosure. TSA fired him three years later with a single charge of "Unauthorized Disclosure of Sensitive Security Information" – an unclassified "hybrid secrecy" label the TSA retroactively applied to the information that he disclosed.

Jim Schrier is a veteran food safety inspector for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) who was retaliated against after blowing the whistle on violations of humane handling regulations at an agency-regulated Tyson Foods slaughter plant in Iowa.

Serving as an inspector for 29 years, Schrier reported clear humane handling violations involving market hogs to his supervisor, including inadequate stunning techniques and that conscious animals were being shackled and slaughtered.

In early 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden began working with journalists to reveal widespread mass surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency.

Articles based on Snowden's documents have revealed the existence of numerous global surveillance programs run by the NSA with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and other governments. In 2013, the existence of the NSA metadata program was revealed, along with Boundless Informant, the PRISM electronic data mining program, the XKeyscore analytical tool, the Tempora interception project, the MUSCULAR access point and the massive FASCIA database, which contains trillions of device-location records.

In 2014, Britain's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group was revealed, along with the Dishfire database, Squeaky Dolphin's real-time monitoring of social media networks, and the bulk collection of private webcam images via the Optic Nerve program. In June 2013, Snowden became the eighth whistleblower charged under the Espionage Act by the Obama administration.

As an officer at the U.N. peacekeeping operation in Kosovo in 2007, James Wasserstrom blocked an alleged conspiracy to pay a $500 million kickback to senior U.N. and Kosovo officials in connection with the construction of a new coal mine and power plant.

The UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) found he was subjected to serious and protracted retaliation which he faced without protection from the U.N. Ethics Office – the unit established to investigate and act against such reprisals.

Wasserstrom faced relentless negative personal and professional consequences of the retaliation, while none of those who engaged in it suffered consequences themselves. He has since lobbied Congress successfully to strengthen State Department oversight of UN whistleblower protections.

In early 2007, Government Accountability Project was responsible for exposing fraud and abuse at the highest levels of the World Bank. In May 2007, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz left the international organization in the wake of wide-ranging scandals based on multiple releases of documents over the previous two months by Government Accountability Project.

Government Accountability Project released evidence or exposed information showing that: Wolfowitz's companion, Shaha Riza, received salary raises far in excess of those allowable under Bank rules.

Riza received a questionable consulting position with a U.S. defense contractor in 2003 at Wolfowitz' direction that has resulted in State and Defense Department inquiries. 

Juan José Daboub, Bank Managing Director and Wolfowitz-hire, attempted to remove references and funding for "family planning" in Bank projects.

Wolfowitz' office was responsible for weakening a "climate change" strategy document. Bank Senior Management delayed reporting to Bank staff that a fellow staffer had been seriously wounded in a shooting in Iraq. World Bank lending to Africa during Fiscal Year of 2007 has plummeted; and Wolfowitz was trying to broaden the Bank's portfolio in Iraq over Board opposition.

Legislation:

Government Accountability Project advocated in favor of the All Circuit Review Extension Act (H.R. 4197; 113th Congress), a bill that would extend for three years the authority for federal employees who appeal a judgment of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to file their appeal at any federal court, instead of only the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The pilot program was established in the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012 (WPEA) to last only two years. Government Accountability Project calls the program "landmark" and says that it was "the WPEA's most significant structural reform."

Government Accountability Project argued that an extension of the pilot program was needed in order to ensure that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Congress had enough time to see the results of the program before deciding whether to make it permanent.

See also:







​​Campaign Financing in the United StatesPictured below: "As more money flows into campaigns, Americans worry about its influence" by PEW Research Center
Campaign finance in the United States is the financing of electoral campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels. At the federal level, campaign finance law is enacted by Congress and enforced by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), an independent federal agency.

Although most campaign spending is privately financed, public financing is available for qualifying candidates for President of the United States during both the primaries and the general election. Eligibility requirements must be fulfilled to qualify for a government subsidy, and those that do accept government funding are usually subject to spending limits on money.

​Races for non-federal offices are governed by state and local law. Over half the states allow some level of corporate and union contributions. Some states have limits on contributions from individuals that are lower than the national limits, while four states (Missouri, Oregon, Utah and Virginia) have no limits at all. This article deals primarily with campaigns for federal office.

Campaign finance numbers:

In 2008, candidates for office, political parties, and independent groups spent a total of $5.3 billion on federal elections. The amount spent on the presidential race alone was $2.4 billion, and over $1 billion of that was spent by the campaigns of the two major candidates: Barack Obama spent $730 million in his election campaign, and John McCain spent $333 million. The total amount spent by Obama and McCain was a record at the time.

In the 2010 midterm election cycle, candidates for office, political parties, and independent groups spent a total of $3.6 billion on federal elections. The average winner of a seat in the House of Representatives spent $1.4 million on his or her campaign. The average winner of a Senate seat spent $9.8 million.

The money for campaigns for federal office comes from four broad categories of sources: (1) small individual contributors (individuals who contribute $200 or less), (2) large individual contributors (individuals who contribute more than $200), (3) political action committees, and (4) self-financing (the candidate's own money). In the 2010 Congressional races, the sources of campaign contributions broke down as follows:
Sources of campaign funding:

Federal contribution limits:

Federal law restricts how much individuals and organizations may contribute to political campaigns, political parties, and other FEC-regulated organizations. Corporations and unions are banned from donating money directly to candidates ("hard money") or national party committees. ​
​Footnotes for above Table:
  1. Jump up^ “PAC” here refers to a committee that makes contributions to other federal political committees. Independent-expenditure-only political committees (sometimes called “Super PACs”) may accept unlimited contributions, including from corporations and labor organizations.
  2. Jump up^ The limits in this column apply to a national party committee’s accounts for: (i) the presidential nominating convention; (ii) election recounts and contests and other legal proceedings; and (iii) national party headquarters buildings. A party’s national committee, Senate campaign committee and House campaign committee are each considered separate national party committees with separate limits. Only a national party committee, not the parties’ national congressional campaign committees, may have an account for the presidential nominating convention.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Indexed for inflation in odd-numbered years.
  4. Jump up^ Additionally, a national party committee and its Senatorial campaign committee may contribute up to $46,800 combined per campaign to each Senate candidate.

Bundling:

One consequence of the limitation upon personal contributions from any one individual is that campaigns seek out "bundlers"—people who can gather contributions from many individuals in an organization or community and present the sum to the campaign.

Campaigns often recognize these bundlers with honorary titles and, in some cases, exclusive events featuring the candidate.

Although bundling existed in various forms since the enactment of the FECA, bundling became organized in a more structured way in the 2000s, spearheaded by the "Bush Pioneers" for George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. During the 2008 campaign the six leading primary candidates (three Democratic, three Republican) had listed a total of nearly two thousand bundlers.

Lobbying:
Main article: Lobbying in the United States

Lobbyists often assist congresspersons campaign finance by arranging fundraisers, assembling PACs, and seeking donations from other clients. Many lobbyists become campaign treasurers and fundraisers for congresspersons.

Hard and soft money:

Contributions made directly to a specific candidate are called hard money and those made to parties and committees are called soft money. Soft money constitutes an alternative form of financing campaigns that emerged in the last years. It "derives from a major loophole in federal campaign financing and spending law that exempts from regulation those contributions made for party building in general rather than for specific candidates". 

There are no limits on soft money and some examples are donations for stickers, posters, and television and radio spots supporting a particular party platform or idea but not a concrete candidate. For the amounts of soft money contributed in recent years and the legislation that enabled this, see the section on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

Spending by outside organizations:
​
Organizations other than individual campaigns also contribute to election spending. In addition to donating money to political campaigns (according to the limits described above), these organizations can spend money directly to influence elections.

Political action committees:
Main article: Political action committee

Federal law allows for multiple types of political action committees (PACs):

Connected PACs: The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act prohibits corporations and labor unions from making direct contributions or expenditures in connection with federal elections.

These organizations may, however, sponsor a "separate segregated fund" (SSF), known as a "connected PAC". These PACs may receive and raise money only from a "restricted class", generally consisting of managers and shareholders in the case of a corporation and members in the case of a union or other interest group.

In exchange, the sponsor of the PAC may absorb all the administrative costs of operating the PAC and soliciting contributions. As of January 2009, there were 1,598 registered corporate PACs, 272 related to labor unions and 995 to trade organizations.

Nonconnected PACs: A nonconnected PAC is financially independent, meaning that it must pay for its own administrative expenses using the contributions it raises. Although an organization may financially support a nonconnected PAC, these expenditures are considered contributions to the PAC and are subject to the dollar limits and other requirements of the Act.

Leadership PACs: Elected officials and political parties cannot give more than the federal limit directly to candidates. However, they can set up a leadership PAC that makes independent expenditures. Provided the expenditure is not coordinated with the other candidate, this type of spending is not limited. 

Under the FEC rules, leadership PACs are non-connected PACs, and can accept donations from individuals and other PACs. Since current officeholders have an easier time attracting contributions, leadership PACs are a way dominant parties can capture seats from other parties.

A leadership PAC sponsored by an elected official cannot use funds to support that official's own campaign. However, it may fund travel, administrative expenses, consultants, polling, and other non-campaign expenses. Between 2008 and 2009, leadership PACs raised and spent more than $47 million.

"Super PACs": The 2010 election marked the rise of a new political committee, dubbed the "super PAC". They are officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees", because they may not make contributions to candidate campaigns or parties, but rather must do any political spending independently of the campaigns.

Unlike other PACs, there is no legal limit to the funds they can raise from individuals, corporations, unions and other groups, provided they are operated correctly. As of August 23, 2012, 797 super PACS had raised upwards of $349 million, with 60% of that money coming from just 100 donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Super PACs were made possible by two judicial decisions:
Independent expenditures continue to grow with $17 million spent in 2002 on congressional elections, $52 million in 2006, and $290 million in 2010. In 10 states independent spending amounted to 19% of the total amount of money contributed to candidates between 2005 and 2010. In three of those states independent spending was greater than 25% of the contributions given to candidates.

501(c)(4) organizations:
Main article: 501(c) organization § 501(c)(4)

501(c)(4) organizations are defined by the IRS as "social welfare" organizations.
Unlike 501(c)(3) charitable organizations, they may also participate in political campaigns and elections, as long as the organization's "primary purpose" is the promotion of social welfare and not political advocacy. 501(c)(4) organizations are not required to disclose their donors publicly.

This aspect of the law has led to extensive use of 501(c)(4) organizations in raising and donating money for political activity. The NAACP, Planned Parenthood, Sierra Club, and National Rifle Association are well known examples of organizations that operate 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations that engage in political advocacy.

PACs and Super PACs are required by law to disclose all of their donors of over $200. However, 501(c)(4) organizations are only required to disclose their spending on political activity, and not information on their donors unless those donors give for the express purpose of political advocacy.

The use of 501(c)(4) organizations for political advocacy has contributed to the sharp rise in outside spending that occurs without disclosure of donors. In 2006 just a bit more than 1% of political spending other than that done by political parties and campaign committees did not disclose donors, but by 2010 it had risen to 44%. And as of August 2012, two of the biggest 501(c)(4) groups (Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity) had put more money into the presidential campaign than all the super PACs combined, according to ProPublica.

Traditionally 501(c)(4) organizations have been civic leagues and other corporations operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, or local associations of employees with membership limited to a designated company or people in a particular municipality or neighborhood, and with net earnings devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes.

527 organizations:
Main article: 527 organization

​A 527 organization or 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after "Section 527" of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Technically, almost all political committees, including state, local, and federal candidate committees, traditional political action committees, "Super PACs", and political parties are "527s."

However, in common practice the term is usually applied only to such organizations that are not regulated under state or federal campaign finance laws because they do not "expressly advocate" for the election or defeat of a candidate or party. When operated within the law, there are no upper limits on contributions to 527s and no restrictions on who may contribute.

There are no spending limits imposed on these organizations. However, they must register with the IRS, publicly disclose their donors and file periodic reports of contributions and expenditures.

Political parties:

Political party committees may contribute funds directly to candidates, subject to the contribution limits listed above. National and state party committees may make additional "coordinated expenditures," subject to limits, to help their nominees in general elections.

​National party committees may also make unlimited "independent expenditures" to support or oppose federal candidates. However, since 2002, national parties have been prohibited from accepting any funds outside the limits established for elections in the FECA.

Disclosure rules:

Current campaign finance law at the federal level requires candidate committees, party committees, and PACs to file periodic reports disclosing the money they raise and spend. Federal candidate committees must identify, for example, all PACs and party committees that give them contributions, and they must provide the names, occupations, employers and addresses of all individuals who give them more than $200 in an election cycle.

Additionally, they must disclose expenditures to any individual or vendor. The Federal Election Commission maintains this database and publishes the information about campaigns and donors on its web site. (Similar reporting requirements exist in many states for state and local candidates and for PACs and party committees.)

Various organizations, including the Center for Responsive Politics, aggregate data on political contributions to provide insight into the influence of various groups. In August 2014, a new smartphone app called "Buypartisan" was released to allow consumers to scan the barcodes of items in grocery stores and see where that corporation and its leaders directed their political contributions.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Campaign Finance in the United States:

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Campaign Finance Reform in the United States ​including Electoral Reform Pictured below: Despite public's concern, more money than ever flows into Political Campaigns for Federal Elections by PEW Research
Campaign finance reform is the political effort in the United States to change the involvement of money in politics, primarily in political campaigns.

Although attempts to regulate campaign finance by legislation date back to 1867, the modern era of "campaign finance reform" in the United States begins with the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 and, more importantly, 1974 amendments to that Act.

The 1971 FECA required candidates to disclose sources of campaign contributions and campaign expenditures. The 1974 Amendments essentially rewrote the Act from top to bottom.

The 1974 Amendments placed statutory limits on contributions by individuals for the first time, and created the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as an independent enforcement agency. It provided for broad new disclosure requirements, and limited the amounts that candidates could spend on their campaigns, or that citizens could spend separate from candidate campaigns to promote their political views.

Specifically, this amendment attempted to restrict the influence of wealthy individuals by limiting individual donations to $1,000 and donations by political action committees (PACs) to $5,000. However, the Act's provisions limiting expenditures were struck down as unconstitutional in the 1976 Supreme Court decision Buckley v. Valeo.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, also known as "McCain-Feingold", after its sponsors, is the most recent major federal law on campaign finance, the key provisions of which prohibited unregulated contributions (commonly referred to as "soft money") to national political parties and limited the use of corporate and union money to fund ads discussing political issues within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary election.

However, BCRA's provisions limiting corporate and union expenditures for issue advertising were narrowed in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, and later explicitly struck down on constitutional grounds in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Campaign Finance Reform in Federal Elections ___________________________________________________________________________

Electoral reform in the United States refers to efforts to change American elections and the electoral system used in the United States.

Most elections in the U.S. select one person; elections with multiple candidates selected by proportional representation are relatively rare. Typical examples include the U.S. House of Representatives, whose members are elected by a plurality of votes in single-member districts.

The number of representatives from each state is set in proportion to each state's population in the most recent decennial census. District boundaries are usually redrawn after each such census. This process often produces "gerrymandered" district boundaries designed to increase and secure the majority of the party in power, sometimes by offering secure seats to members of the opposition party. This is one of a number of institutional features that increase the advantage of incumbents seeking reelection.

The United States Senate and the U.S. President are also elected by plurality. However, these elections are not affected by gerrymandering (with the possible exception of presidential races in Maine and Nebraska, whose electoral votes are partially allocated by Congressional district)

Proposals for electoral reform have included overturning Citizens United, public and citizen funding of elections, limits and transparency in funding, Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), public or citizen funding of news, a new national holiday called "Deliberation Day" to support voters spending a full day in structured discussions of issues and candidates, abolishing the U.S. Electoral College or nullifying its impact through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and improving ballot access for third parties, among others.

The U.S. Constitution gives states wide latitude to determine how elections are conducted, although some details, such as the ban on poll taxes, are mandated at the federal level.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Electoral Reform in the United States:






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​Lobbying in the United States, including the Conflict of Interest caused by the "Revolving Door" by which Elected Officials later become lobbyists. Pictured below: "Where Have All the Lobbyists Gone?" by The Nation 2/19/2014
​Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interests hire well-connected professional advocates, often lawyers, to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress.

It is a highly controversial phenomenon, often seen in a negative light by journalists and the American public, with some critics describing it as a legal form of bribery or extortion.

While lobbying is subject to extensive and often complex rules which, if not followed, can lead to penalties including jail, the activity of lobbying has been interpreted by court rulings as constitutionally protected free speech and a way to petition the government for the redress of grievances, two of the freedoms protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Since the 1970s, lobbying activity has grown immensely in the United States in terms of the numbers of lobbyists and the size of lobbying budgets, and has become the focus of much criticism of American governance.

It is possible for foreign nations to hire American lobbyists to influence the foreign policy of the United States; for example, in 2016, Taiwanese officials hired American senator-turned-lobbyist Bob Dole to set up a controversial phone call between president-elect Donald Trump and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen, a move marking a shift in US foreign policy.

Since lobbying rules require extensive disclosure, there is a large amount of information in the public sphere about which entities lobby, how, at whom, and for how much. The current pattern suggests much lobbying is done primarily by corporations, although a wide variety of coalitions representing diverse groups also occurs.

Lobbying takes place at every level of government, including federal, state, county, municipal, and even local governments. In Washington, D.C., lobbying usually targets members of Congress, although there have been efforts to influence executive agency officials as well as Supreme Court appointments.

Lobbying can have an important influence on the political system; for example, a study in 2014 suggested that special interest lobbying enhanced the power of elite groups and was a factor shifting the nation's political structure toward an oligarchy in which average citizens have "little or no independent influence".

While the number of lobbyists in Washington is estimated to be over twelve thousand, those with real clout number in the dozens, and a small group of firms handles much of lobbying in terms of expenditures. A report in The Nation in 2014 suggested that while the number of 12,281 registered lobbyists was a decrease since 2002, lobbying activity was increasing and "going underground" as lobbyists use "increasingly sophisticated strategies" to obscure their activity. [see also the above graph and description about this article].

Analyst James A. Thurber estimated that the actual number of working lobbyists was close to 100,000 and that the industry brings in $9 billion annually.

Lobbying has been the subject of academic inquiry in various fields, including law, public policy, and economics.

For more about Political Lobbying in the United States, click on any of the following blue hyperlinks:
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​In politics, the "revolving door" is a movement of personnel between roles as legislators and regulators, on one hand, and members of the industries affected by the legislation and regulation, on the other.I

n some cases, the roles are performed in sequence, but in certain circumstances they may be performed at the same time. Political analysts claim that an unhealthy relationship can develop between the private sector and government, based on the granting of reciprocated privileges to the detriment of the nation, and can lead to regulatory capture.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Revolving Door as a means by which elected Officials in the Federal Government later become lobbyists:






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​Political Action Committees (PAC) in the United States, including a List Note that the charts below were provided by the following PAC:
Pictured below: (courtesy of NACS: Advancing Convenience & Fuel Retailing)
TOP: Look at how much money was spent in the last two elections
BOTTOM: Look at the contributions made by the NACS Political Action Committee (NACSPAC) and other benchmark PACs in the 2010 election.
Click here for a List of Political Action Committees.

​In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a type of organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaign for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation.

The legal term PAC has been created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. This term is quite specific to all activities of campaign finance in the United States.

Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition (see political finance). At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission, according to the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain-Feingold Act).

At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state's election laws.
  • Contributions from corporate or labor union treasuries are illegal, though they may sponsor a PAC and provide financial support for its administration and fundraising;
  • Union-affiliated PACs may only solicit contributions from members;
  • Independent PACs may solicit contributions from the general public and must pay their own costs from those funds.

Federal multi-candidate PACs may contribute to candidates as follows:
  • $5,000 to a candidate or candidate committee for each election (primary and general elections count as separate elections);
  • $15,000 to a political party per year; and
  • $5,000 to another PAC per year.
  • PACs may make unlimited expenditures independently of a candidate or political party

In its 2010 case Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned sections of the Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain-Feingold Act) that had prohibited corporate and union political independent expenditures in political campaigns.

Citizens United made it legal for corporations and unions to spend from their general treasuries to finance independent expenditures related to campaigns, but did not alter the prohibition on direct corporate or union contributions to federal campaigns.

​Organizations seeking to contribute directly to federal candidate campaigns must still rely on traditional PACs for that purpose.

History:

The first PAC was the CIO-PAC, formed in July 1943 under CIO president Philip Murray and headed by Sidney Hillman.

Categories:
Further information: List of political action committees

Federal law formally allows for two types of PACs: connected and non-connected. Judicial decisions added a third classification, independent-expenditure only committees, which are colloquially known as "Super PACs".

​Connected PACs:

Most of the 4,600 active, registered PACs are "connected PACs" established by businesses, labor unions, trade groups, or health organizations. These PACs receive and raise money from a "restricted class", generally consisting of managers and shareholders in the case of a corporation and members in the case of a union or other interest group.

As of January 2009, there were 1,598 registered corporate PACs, 272 related to labor unions and 995 to trade organizations. 

Non-connected PACs:

Groups with an ideological mission, single-issue groups, and members of Congress and other political leaders may form "non-connected PACs". These organizations may accept funds from any individual, connected PAC, or organization. As of January 2009, there were 1,594 non-connected PACs, the fastest-growing category.

Leadership PACs:

Elected officials and political parties cannot give more than the federal limit directly to candidates. However, they can set up a Leadership PAC that makes independent expenditures. Provided the expenditure is not coordinated with the other candidate, this type of spending is not limited.

Under the FEC (Federal Election Commission) rules, leadership PACs are non-connected PACs, and can accept donations from individuals and other PACs. Since current officeholders have an easier time attracting contributions, Leadership PACs are a way dominant parties can capture seats from other parties.

A leadership PAC sponsored by an elected official cannot use funds to support that official's own campaign. However, it may fund travel, administrative expenses, consultants, polling, and other non-campaign expenses.

Between 2008 and 2009, leadership PACs raised and spent more than $47 million.

​Controversial use of leadership PACs:
  • Former Rep. John Doolittle's (R) leadership PAC paid 15% to a firm that only employed his wife. Payouts to his wife's firm were $68,630 in 2003 and 2004, and $224,000 in 2005 and 2006. The Doolittle home was raided in 2007. After years of investigation, the Justice Department dropped the case with no charges in June 2010.
  • One Leadership PAC purchased $2,139 in gifts from Bose Corporation.
  • Former Rep. Richard Pombo (R) used his leadership PAC to pay hotel bills ($22,896) and buy baseball tickets ($320) for donors.Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D) leadership PAC, Team Majority, was fined $21,000 by federal election officials "for improperly accepting donations over federal limits."

Super PACs:

Super PACs, officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees", may not make contributions to candidate campaigns or parties, but may engage in unlimited political spending independently of the campaigns. Unlike traditional PACs, they can raise funds from individuals, corporations, unions, and other groups without any legal limit on donation size.

Super PACs were made possible by two judicial decisions: the aforementioned Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and, two months later, Speechnow.org v. FEC.

In Speechnow.org, the federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that PACs that did not make contributions to candidates, parties, or other PACs could accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions, and corporations (both for profit and not-for-profit) for the purpose of making independent expenditures.

The result of the Citizens United and SpeechNow.org decisions was the rise of a new type of political action committee in 2010, popularly dubbed the "super PAC". In an open meeting on July 22, 2010, the FEC approved two Advisory Opinions to modify FEC policy in accordance with the legal decisions.

These Advisory Opinions were issued in response to requests from two existing PACs, Club for Growth, and Commonsense Ten, which later became Senate Majority PAC. The opinions gave a sample wording letter which all Super PACs must submit to qualify for the deregulated status, and such letters continue to be used by Super PACs up to the present date.

FEC Chairman Steven T. Walther dissented on both opinions and issued a statement giving his thoughts. In the statement, Walther stated "There are provisions of the Act and Commission regulations not addressed by the court in SpeechNow that continue to prohibit Commonsense Ten from soliciting or accepting contributions from political committees in excess of $5,000 annually or any contributions from corporations or labor organizations." (emphasis in original)

The term "Super PAC" was coined by reporter Eliza Newlin Carney. According to Politico, Carney, a staff writer covering lobbying and influence for CQ Roll Call, "made the first identifiable, published reference to 'super PAC' as it’s known today while working at National Journal, writing on June 26, 2010, of a group called Workers’ Voices, that it was a kind of '"super PAC" that could become increasingly popular in the post-Citizens United world.'"

​According to FEC advisories, Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties. This restriction is intended to prevent them from operating campaigns that complement or parallel those of the candidates they support or engaging in negotiations that could result in quid pro quo bargaining between donors to the PAC and the candidate or officeholder.

However, it is legal for candidates and Super PAC managers to discuss campaign strategy and tactics through the media.

2008 Election:

In the 2008 election, the top nine PACs spent a total of $25,794,807 (directly, and via their affiliates and subsidiaries) as follows:
  1. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers PAC $3,344,650
  2. AT&T Federal PAC $3,108,200
  3. American Bankers Association (BANK PAC) $2,918,140
  4. National Beer Wholesalers Association PAC $2,869,000
  5. Dealers Election Action Committee of the National Automobile Dealers Association $2,860,000
  6. International Association of Fire Fighters $2,734,900
  7. International Union of Operating Engineers PAC $2,704,067
  8. American Association for Justice PAC $2,700,500
  9. Laborers' International Union of North America PAC $2,555,350

​2012 presidential election:

Super PACs may support particular candidacies. In the 2012 presidential election, Super PACs played a major role, spending more than the candidates' election campaigns in the Republican primaries.

As of early April 2012, Restore Our Future—a Super PAC usually described as having been created to help Mitt Romney's presidential campaign—had spent $40 million. Winning Our Future (a pro–Newt Gingrich group) spent $16 million. Some Super PACs are run or advised by a candidate's former staff or associates.

In the 2012 election campaign, most of the money given to super PACs came from wealthy individuals, not corporations. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the top 100 individual super PAC donors in 2011–2012 made up just 3.7% of contributors, but accounted for more than 80% of the total money raised, while less than 0.5% of the money given to "the most active Super PACs" was donated by publicly traded corporations.

Super PACs have been criticized for relying heavily on negative ads.

As of February 2012, according to Center for Responsive Politics, 313 groups organized as Super PACs had received $98,650,993 and spent $46,191,479. This means early in the 2012 election cycle, PACs had already greatly exceeded total receipts of 2008. The leading Super PAC on its own raised more money than the combined total spent by the top 9 PACS in the 2008 cycle.

The 2012 figures do not include funds raised by state level PACs.

2016 presidential election:

Disclosure rules: By January 2010, at least 38 states and the federal government required disclosure for all or some independent expenditures or electioneering communications. These disclosures were intended to deter potentially or seemingly corrupting donations.

Yet despite disclosure rules, it is possible to spend money without voters knowing the identities of donors before the election. In federal elections, for example, political action committees have the option to choose to file reports on a "monthly" or "quarterly" basis. This allows funds raised by PACs in the final days of the election to be spent and votes cast before the report is due.

In one high-profile case, a donor to a super PAC kept his name hidden by using an LLC formed for the purpose of hiding their personal name. One super PAC, that originally listed a $250,000 donation from an LLC that no one could find, led to a subsequent filing where the previously "secret donors" were revealed. However, campaign finance experts have argued that this tactic is already illegal, since it would constitute a contribution in the name of another.

See also:​







​VoteSmart and Factcheck.org: Two Non-Partisan Websites helping Voters to know more about their candidates before they vote.
[Your Web Host: the following two non-partisan organizations are trusted sources for me as I perform due-diligence on the candidates prior to any general election.]

Click here for accessing the official Vote Smart Website.

Vote Smart, formerly called Project Vote Smart (PVS), is a non-profit, non-partisan research organization that collects and distributes information on candidates for public office in the United States. It covers candidates and elected officials in six basic areas:
  1. background information,
  2. issue positions (via the Political Courage Test),
  3. voting records, 
  4. campaign finances, 
  5. interest group ratings,
  6. and speeches and public statements.

This information is distributed via their web site, a toll-free phone number, and print publications.

The president of the organization since its founding is Richard Kimball.

PVS also provides records of public statements, contact information for state and local election offices, polling place and absentee ballot information, ballot measure descriptions for each state (where applicable), links to federal and state government agencies, and links to political parties and issue organizations.

​In 1986, Richard Kimball ran unsuccessfully for one of Arizona's two U.S. Senate seats. In a candidates' debate, he described the campaign process to prospective voters: "Understand what we do to you. We spend all of our time raising money, often from strangers we do not even know. Then we spend it in three specific ways: First we measure you, what it is you want to purchase in the political marketplace — just like Campbell's soup or Kellogg's cereal. Next, we hire some consultants who know how to tailor our image to fit what we sell. Lastly, we bombard you with the meaningless, issueless, emotional nonsense that is always the result. And whichever one of us does that best will win."

Kimball used this philosophy to found Vote Smart in 1992. His founding board included:
Originally based at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, PVS established its headquarters and research center in 1999 at the Great Divide Ranch near Philipsburg, Montana.

In 2006, Vote Smart added a branch at The University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Coincident with this move, Vote Smart gave its president Richard Kimball a pay increase which was criticized by some alumni and which contributed to a reduction in its Charity Navigator score.

In December 2010, the Tucson office was closed in preparation for two new satellite research offices. The reason for the closure of the Tucson branch was also related to the university's budget cuts, which eliminated the Vote Smart's "rent-free space at a 1,500- square-foot house off the main campus."

In January 2011, Vote Smart moved its Key Votes Department and Political Courage Test Department to facilities offered by both the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Southern California. Vote Smart has since left the University of Southern California and moved its Political Courage Department to its Montana research center.

In March 2014, Vote Smart laid off six employees, citing financial difficulties. A seventh employee quit because of the sudden layoffs.

In August 2016, Vote Smart announced that it would be selling its 150-acre ranch near Philipsburg, Montana, and relocating its headquarters after the November 2016 U.S. presidential election. Kimball said the ranch's secluded location, which housed 40 interns, had caused issues: “We have all the problems a university does with the experimental, adventurous, hormonal torrent that is the young.

Only in the wilderness such things can become dangerous. Love was requited and denied, marriages were created, fights ensued, drinkers crashed, injuries of every sort, hospital trips too numerous to recall, some to sustain life, and distressingly, three deaths." Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa was later announced as the new headquarters.

Vote Smart says that it does not accept contributions from corporations, labor unions, political parties, or other organizations that lobby, support or oppose candidates or issues.

Donors to the organization have included:
Individual contributors are considered members, and are given the opportunity to visit their headquarters at the Great Divide Ranch where they work as research volunteers alongside interns and staff.

The Political Courage Test: (formerly the National Political Awareness Test, NPAT) is an American initiative intended to increase transparency in American politics.

It is part of the voter education organization Vote Smart's candidate information program. With a view towards elections, the test seeks to obtain answers from election candidates, describing their respective stances on a variety of popular issues in American politics. This information is then made available to voters in a selection-driven, standardized format.

In 2008, Project Vote Smart kicked John McCain off of the organization's board due to his refusal to fill out the Political Courage Test.

The response to the Political Courage Test has dropped, from 72% in 1996 to 48% in 2008, because politicians from both parties are afraid that challengers will use their responses out of context in attack ads, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Rep. Anne Gannon, Democratic leader pro tempore of the Florida House of Representatives, stated: "We tell our candidates not to do it. It sets them up for a hit piece." In response, Vote Smart has tried to shame politicians into it, and lets them leave up to 30% of answers blank.

VoteEasy is "the interactive tool that enables voters to compare their position on various issues with that of a candidate." It was introduced by Vote Smart during the 2010 election season.

Following its launch, VoteEasy was a topic of interest among several national news organizations including CBS News, The New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor.

See also: ___________________________________________________________________________

Click here for the official website for FactCheck.org.

FactCheck.org is a nonprofit non-partisan website that describes itself as a "consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics". It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation.

FactCheck.org has won four Webby Awards in the Politics category, in 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Most of its content consists of rebuttals to what it considers inaccurate, misleading, or false claims made by politicians. FactCheck.org has also targeted misleading claims from various partisan groups. Other features include:
  • Ask FactCheck: users can ask questions that are usually based on an online rumor.
  • Viral Spiral: a page dedicated to the most popular online myths that the site has debunked. It clarifies the answer as well as links readers to a full article on the subject.
  • Party Lines: talking points that have been repeatedly used by multiple members of a political party.
  • Mailbag: page for readers' sent letters and praise or disapproval of something said on the site.

FactCheck.org was launched in December 2003 by Brooks Jackson, a former Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, and CNN reporter who had covered Washington and national politics since 1970.

As a special assignment correspondent at CNN during the 1992 political campaign season, Jackson became well known for his “Ad Police” reports, which monitored candidates' advertising and financing strategies throughout the campaign.

​In 2003, Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center approached Jackson about forming FactCheck.org, and the site was online in December of that year.

In 2007, UnSpun was published. This book was co-written by Brooks Jackson, the Director Emeritus of Factcheck.org and by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. It teaches readers how to be aware of the deceptions, or "spin", that is commonly used in media and by politicians.

In January 2013, Jackson stepped down as director of FactCheck.org. He now holds the title of Director Emeritus. Eugene Kiely, a former reporter and editor at The Record (of Hackensack, New Jersey), The Philadelphia Inquirer and USA Today, is now the site’s director. FactCheck.org employs a staff of four full-time journalists: Kiely, D’Angelo Gore, Robert Farley and Lori Robertson; and offers yearly fellowships to undergraduate students at the University of Pennsylvania.

Topic in the 2004 Vice-presidential debate:

FactCheck.org became a focus of political commentary following the 2004 vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards. Cheney cited the website, claiming that the independent site defended his actions while CEO of Halliburton. Cheney's claim was disputed by FactCheck.org as wrong, saying that "Edwards was mostly right" when talking about "Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles".

​Cheney's reference created some controversy because he incorrectly cited the web site's address as "FactCheck.com." At the time of the debate, factcheck.com was controlled by Frank Schilling's company Name Administration Inc., who quickly redirected the address to point to an anti-Bush website owned by Bush critic George Soros.

Topic in the 2012 Presidential Election:

FactCheck.org also became a focus of national attention in the summer of 2012, during the presidential race between incumbent Democrat Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney. The Obama campaign ran a TV ad accusing Romney of involvement in the outsourcing of American jobs overseas by Bain Capital, the venture capital firm that he had founded in 1984.

FactCheck.org ruled this ad to be false, claiming that the acts of outsourcing occurred after Romney had left the company to head the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. In response, the Obama campaign contested FactCheck.org’s ruling in a six-page letter that was distributed to major news corporations, holding that Romney still retained responsibility for the company’s actions.

2016 Presidential Election:

Since November 2014, FactCheck.org has published twenty-eight pages of articles checking the facts on the many 2016 presidential candidates. As of April 2016, the five remaining candidates had dedicated archives to their fact-checked claims.


Awards and recognition:

The site has gained recognition and won numerous awards for its contributions to political journalism. In 2006, Time magazine named FactCheck.org one of the "25 Sites We Can't Live Without." 

In 2008, PC Magazine called it one of the "20 Best Political Websites." Between 2008 and 2012, the site won four Webby Awards in the Politics category, in 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012; as well as four People’s Voice Awards in Politics, in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012.

FactCheck.org also won a 2010 Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for reporting on deceptive claims made about the federal health care legislation.

See also:






​
Political Systems Worldwide, including a List by Country​Pictured:
LEFT: The United States Constitution wrapped in our flag;
CENTER: United Kingdom Flag including Scotland, N. Ireland, and England;
RIGHT: Australian Dept. of Communications and Arts
 Click here for a List of Countries by System of Government.

A government is the system by which a state or community is controlled. In the Commonwealth of Nations, the word government is also used more narrowly to refer to the collective group of people that exercises executive authority in a state, the usage of which is analogous to what is called an "administration" in American English.

Furthermore, especially in American English, the concepts of the state and the government may be used synonymously to refer to the person or group of people exercising authority over a politically organized territory. Finally, government is also sometimes used in English as a synonym for governance.

In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislators, administrators, and arbitrators. Government is the means by which state policy is enforced, as well as the mechanism for determining the policy of the state. A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political systems and institutions that make up the organisation of a specific government.

Government of any kind currently affects every human activity in many important ways. For this reason, political scientists generally argue that government should not be studied by itself; but should be studied along with:
Classifying Government:

​In political science, it has long been a goal to create a typology or taxonomy of polities, as typologies of political systems are not obvious. It is especially important in the political science fields of comparative politics and international relations.

On the surface, identifying a form of government appears to be simple, as all governments have an official form. The United States is a constitutional republic, while the former Soviet Union was a socialist republic.

However self-identification is not objective, and as Kopstein and Lichbach argue, defining regimes can be tricky. For example, elections are a defining characteristic of an electoral democracy, but in practice elections in the former Soviet Union were not "free and fair" and took place in a one-party state.

Many governments that officially call themselves a "democratic republic" are not democratic, nor a republic; they are usually a dictatorship de facto. Communist dictatorships have been especially prone to use this term. For example, the official name of North Vietnam was "The Democratic Republic of Vietnam." China uses a variant, "The People's Republic of China." Thus in many practical classifications it would not be considered democratic.

Identifying a form of government is also difficult because a large number of political systems originate as socio-economic movements and are then carried into governments by specific parties naming themselves after those movements; all with competing political-ideologies. Experience with those movements in power, and the strong ties they may have to particular forms of government, can cause them to be considered as forms of government in themselves.

Other complications include general non-consensus or deliberate "distortion or bias" of reasonable technical definitions to political ideologies and associated forms of governing, due to the nature of politics in the modern era. For example: The meaning of "conservatism" in the United States has little in common with the way the word's definition is used elsewhere.

As Ribuffo (2011) notes, "what Americans now call conservatism much of the world calls liberalism or neoliberalism". Since the 1950s conservatism in the United States has been chiefly associated with the Republican Party. However, during the era of segregation many Southern Democrats were conservatives, and they played a key role in the Conservative Coalition that controlled Congress from 1937 to 1963.

Researchers from Halmstad University developed a dataset called MaxRange designed to define the level of democracy and institutional structure (its regime-type) on a 100-graded scale where every value represents a unique regimetype. Values are sorted from 1–100 based on level of democracy and political accountability. MaxRange defines the value corresponding to all states and every month from 1789 to the present (continually updated).

Social-Political Ambiguity:

Every country in the world is ruled by a system of governance that combines at least 3 (or more) political and/or economic attributes.

Additionally, opinions vary by individuals concerning the types and properties of governments that exist. "Shades of gray" are commonplace in any government (and its corresponding classification). Even the most liberal democracies limit rival political activity to one extent or another, whilst the most tyrannical dictatorships must organize a broad base of support, thereby creating difficulties for "pigeonholing" governments into narrow categories.

Examples include the claims of the United States as being a plutocracy rather than a democracy since some American voters believe elections are being manipulated by wealthy Super PACs.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for further amplification:

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Elections and Their Electoral Systems Pictured below: Presidential Election Process (USA.Gov)
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated since the 17th century.

Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and for regional and local government. This process is also used in many other private and business organizations, from clubs to voluntary associations and corporations.

The universal use of elections as a tool for selecting representatives in modern representative democracies is in contrast with the practice in the democratic archetype, ancient Athens, where the Elections were considered an oligarchic institution and most political offices were filled using sortition, also known as allotment, by which officeholders were chosen by lot.

Electoral reform describes the process of introducing fair electoral systems where they are not in place, or improving the fairness or effectiveness of existing systems. Psephology is the study of results and other statistics relating to elections (especially with a view to predicting future results).

To elect means "to choose or make a decision", and so sometimes other forms of ballot such as referendums are referred to as elections, especially in the United States.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Elections: ___________________________________________________________________________

​​An electoral system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Political electoral systems are organized by governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, non-profit organisations and informal organisations.

Electoral systems consist of sets of rules that govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted (electoral method), limits on campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the outcome. Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws, are typically conducted by election commissions, and can use multiple types of elections for different offices.

Some electoral systems elect a single winner to a unique position, such as prime minister, president or governor, while others elect multiple winners, such as members of parliament or boards of directors.

There are a large number of variations in electoral systems, but the most common systems are first-past-the-post voting, the two-round (runoff) system, proportional representation and ranked or preferential voting.

Some electoral systems, such as mixed systems, attempt to combine the benefits of non-proportional and proportional systems.

The study of formally defined electoral methods is called social choice theory or voting theory, and this study can take place within the field of political science, economics, or mathematics, and specifically within the subfields of game theory and mechanism design.

Impossibility proofs such as Arrow's impossibility theorem demonstrates that when voters have three or more alternatives, it is not possible to design a ranked voting electoral system that reflects the preferences of individuals in a global preference of the community, present in countries with proportional representation and plurality voting.

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Corruption in the United States including a List of Federal Political ScandalsPictured below: Zephyr Teachout’s ‘Corruption in America’
Click here for a List of Federal Political Corruption Cases

Corruption in the United States is the act of government officials abusing their political powers for private gain, typically through bribery or other methods.

In 2018, Transparency International ranked the United States as the 22nd least corrupt country, falling from 18th since 2016. The United States ranked between France (21) and the United Arab Emirates (23).

In 2019, Transparency International stated that the United States is "experiencing threats to its system of checks and balances", along with an "erosion of ethical norms at the highest levels of power.

US topics related to corruption: Convictions of government officials: Scandals and crimes: See also:







Publicly Funded Elections in the United States Pictured below: The Donors, The Dollars And The Dark Money: How $93 Million Poured Into The 2018 Campaign For Governor
A publicly funded election is an election which is funded with federal tax and/or income tax.

In the United States:
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Methods of publicly funded election legislation have been adopted in the following:
In addition, public funding of elections have been incorporated at the municipal level in several cities.

Wisconsin's 33 year old program was defunded by the state legislature in 2011 by Gov. Scott Walker and the legislature's joint finance committee. California recently overturned its ban on publicly funded elections, but charter cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles were already exempt from the ban and already have some form of public financing.

Some of these laws have run into constitutional problems in the courts. When the Citizens United v. FEC decision defined money as a form of speech, the movement toward limiting campaign spending and publicly financing campaigns was stopped in several cities and states, although many of the core programs were kept in place.

Some portions (such as state supplemental funds for publicly financed candidates whose opponents outspend them) of the Vermont system were found newly unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Randall v. Sorrell., but the core program of full funding of governor and lieutenant governor candidates remains in place.

Portions of Connecticut's statute were held unconstitutional in 2009, on the grounds that it unfairly discriminated against third party and independent candidates, but the core program of full funding of constitutional and legislative candidates remains in place. In July 2010 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld portions of the district court's order but allowed the core program to continue.

On June 27, 2011, ruling in the consolidated cases Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett and McComish v. Bennett, the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional the matching-funds provision of the Arizona law. The decision cast doubt on the new constitutionality of similar provisions in Maine, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. As a result, the Wisconsin legislature eliminated funding for its judicial elections in 2011.

Voters have not supported publicly funded elections in several referendums. In Massachusetts the system was repealed after a 2002 advisory initiative in which voters voted nearly 2 to 1 against using government funds to pay for political campaigns. Portland, Oregon's program was narrowly repealed by voters in a 2010 referendum.

In 2008, a Clean Elections bill, the California Fair Elections Act (AB583) passed the California Assembly and Senate and was signed by Governor Schwarzenegger. Because of the ban on publicly funded elections, the law had to be approved by voters in an initiative in June 2010.

On June 8, 2010, California voters decided against the measure by 57% to 43%. An earlier Clean Elections ballot initiative that suggested funding elections with a business tax, Proposition 89 was also defeated in California in 2006, by 74% against to 26% in favor of a corporate tax to fund elections. A Clean Elections ballot initiative in Alaska failed by a 64% to 35% margin in August 2008.

In 2013, North Carolina repealed its popular "Voter Owned Elections" program of public financing of judicial campaigns with 900 people arrested at the Moral Monday protests in Raleigh.

Comprehensive public funding systems have been in effect in Arizona and Maine since 2000.

In Maine, since enactment, approximately three quarters of state legislators have run their campaigns with government funds provided by the state program.

In Arizona, a majority of the state house and both the Republican and Democratic candidates for Governor ran publicly financed campaigns in 2006. There has not yet been a statewide election in Maine in which both the Republican and Democratic candidates were financed through the public financing system.

Seattle voters approved the Democracy voucher program in 2015, which gives city residents four $25 vouchers to donate to participating candidates.

Denver votes passed the Fair Elections Act in 2018 with 72% of the vote and a win in every precinct in the city. The law went into effect on January 1, 2020. The Fair Elections Act, which began as The Democracy For The People Initiative, has four major features:
  1. a ban on donations from corporations;
  2. the required disclosure of dark money sources;
  3. lowering the relatively high limits for the City of Denver to be on scale with the more reasonable statewide limits in Colorado;
  4. and a public funding component that provides a 9-to-1 match on contributions up to $50 for candidates who opt-in and don't take any money other than contributions from individuals.

​Clean Elections: Differences from traditional reforms:

"Clean Elections" is the name supporters have given to some public financing efforts, used most prominently in Maine and Arizona.

Some Clean Elections laws provide a government grant to candidates who agree to limit their spending and private fundraising. Candidates participating in a Clean Elections system are required to meet certain qualification criteria, which usually includes collecting a number of signatures and small contributions (generally determined by statute and set at $5 in both Maine and Arizona) before the candidate can receive public support.

In most Clean Elections programs, these qualifying contributions must be given by constituents. To receive the government campaign grant, "Clean Candidates" must agree to forgo all other fundraising and accept no other private or personal funds. Candidates who choose not to participate are subject to limits on their fundraising, typically in the form of limits on the size of contributions they may accept and the sources of those contributions (such as limits on corporate or union contributions), and detailed reporting requirements.

In the US, in order to comply with Buckley v. Valeo, participation by candidates is not legally required. Originally, many Clean Elections programs provided that publicly financed candidates who were outspent by a privately funded candidate could receive additional funds (sometimes called "rescue funds") to match their privately funded opponent, up to a cap, with the intent of assuring that a candidate running with private funding would not outspend his government funded opponent.

However, in Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, the U.S. Supreme Court held that such "rescue fund" provisions unconstitutionally burdened the rights of speakers by intentionally limiting the effectiveness of their own speech. Thus since Bennett clean elections systems in the U.S. have been forced to abandon the "rescue funds" approach.

US supporters:

In the US, SB 752, the Fair Elections Now Act, calling for publicly funded elections in U.S. Senate campaigns, was sponsored in the 111th Congress (2009–10) by Senators: Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (D-PA).

A companion bill, H.R. 1826, was introduced in the House, sponsored by John Larson (D-CT), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), and Walter Jones (R-NC). Unlike the Clean Elections laws in Maine and Arizona, H.R. 1826 did not include the "rescue funds" provision, perhaps due to concern about constitutionality in the wake of the Davis decision. Neither bill moved out of committee.

Others who have endorsed clean elections include:
  • Cecil Heftel (D-HI), former U.S. Representative
  • Ned Lamont (D-CT), 89th Governor of Connecticut
  • John McCain (R-AZ), former 2008 U.S. Republican Presidential Candidate and Senator (McCain expressed opposition to a national version of the system and did not endorse or co-sponsor the bills introduced in the U.S. Senate.)
  • Ralph Nader of Connecticut, U.S. Independent Presidential Candidate
  • Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), former governor, former Secretary of Homeland Security
  • Bill Richardson (D-NM), former 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Candidate and Governor
  • Eliot Spitzer (D-NY), former governor 
  • Joe Biden, former vice president and 2020 U.S. Democratic presidential candidate[

​See also:







Political SystemsPictured below: Types of Political Systems
In political science, a political system defines the process for making official government decisions. It is usually compared to the legal system, economic system, cultural system, and other social systems. However, this is a very simplified view of a much more complex system of categories involving the questions of who should have authority and what the government influence on its people and economy should be.

Definition:

According to David Easton, "A political system can be designated as the interactions through which values are authoritatively allocated for a society".

Anthropological classification:

Anthropologists generally recognize four kinds of political systems, two of which are un-centralized and two of which are centralized.
  • Un-centralized systems
    • Band society
      • Small family group, no larger than an extended family or clan; it has been defined as consisting of no more than 30 to 50 individuals.
      • A band can cease to exist if only a small group walks out.
    • Tribe
      • Generally larger, consisting of many families. Tribes have more social institutions, such as a chief or elders.
      • More permanent than bands. Many tribes are sub-divided into bands.
  • Centralized governments
    • Chiefdom
      • More complex than a tribe or a band society, and less complex than a state or a civilization
      • Characterized by pervasive inequality and centralization of authority.
      • A single lineage/family of the elite class becomes the ruling elite of the chiefdom
      • Complex chiefdoms have two or even three tiers of political hierarchy.
      • "An autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief"
    • Sovereign state
      • A sovereign state is a state with a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states.
  • Supranational political systems
    • Supranational political systems are created by independent nations to reach a common goal or gain strength from forming an alliance.
  • Empires
    • Empires are widespread states or communities under a single rule. They are characterized by the rulers desire for unanimous religious affiliation or posing as threat for other empires in times of war. Empires often made considerable progress in ways of democratic structures, creating and building city infrastructures, and maintaining civility within the diverse communities. Because of the intricate organization of the empires, they were often able to hold a large majority of power on a universal level.
  • Leagues
    • Leagues are international organizations composed of states coming together for a single common purpose. In this way leagues are different from empires, as they only seek to fulfill a single goal. Often leagues are formed on the brink of a military or economic downfall. Meetings and hearings are conducted in a neutral location with representatives of all involved nations present.

Sociology:

The sociological interest in political systems is figuring out who holds power within the relationship of the government and its people and how the government’s power is used.

There are three types of political systems that sociologists consider:
  • Authoritarianism
    • In authoritarian governments, the people have no power or representation and it is characterized by absolute or blind obedience to formal authority, as against individual freedom and related to the expectation of unquestioning obedience. The elite leaders handle all economic, military, and foreign relations. A prime example of authoritarianism is a dictatorship.
    • Totalitarianism is the most extreme form of authoritarianism because it controls all aspects of life including the communication between citizens, media censorship, and threatens by the means of terror.
  • Monarchy
    • A monarchy is a government controlled by a king or queen determined by a predisposed line of sovereignty. In other words, it can be seen as an undivided rule or absolute sovereignty by a single person. In the modern world there are two types of monarchies, absolute monarchies and constitutional monarchies. An absolute monarchy works like a dictatorship in that the king has complete rule over his country. A constitutional monarchy gives the royal family limited powers and usually works in accordance with an elected body of officials. Social revolutions of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century overthrew the majority of existing monarchies in favor of more democratic governments and a rising middle class, as well as of authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union.
  • Democracy
    • A democracy is a form of government in which the citizens create and vote for laws directly, or indirectly via representatives (democratic republic). The idea of democracy stems back from ancient Greece and the profound works of ancient academics. However, the presence of democracy does not always mean citizen’s wishes will be equally represented. For example, in many democratic countries immigrants, and racial and ethnic minorities, do not receive the same rights as the majority citizens.
See also:







Theories of Political Behavior and Political Psychology Pictured below: 89 Best Political Psychology Books of All Time
Theories of political behavior

Theories of political behavior, as an aspect of political science, attempt to quantify and explain the influences that define a person's political views, ideology, and levels of political participation.

Broadly speaking, behavior is political whenever individuals or groups try to influence or escape the influence of others. Political behavior is the subset of human behavior that involves politics and powers. Theorists who have had an influence on this field include Karl Deutsch and Theodor Adorno.

​Long-term influences on political orientation:

Interaction with the political views of parental figures is often thought of as the primary long-term influence on political orientation and willingness to take part in the political system.

Teachers and other educational authority figures are also often thought to have a significant impact on political orientation. During the 2003-2004 school year, In the United States, students spent an average of 180.4 days in primary and secondary education each year, with a school day being defined as approximately 6.7 class hours. This means that on average a student will spend around 1,208.68 hours in class each year. 

Post-secondary education appears to have an impact on both voting rates and political identification; as a study of 9,784,931 college students found that they voted at a rate of 68.5% in the 2016 Presidential Election compared to the average of 46.1% for citizens aged 18–29 who voted.

Peers also affect political orientation. Friends often, but not necessarily, have the advantage of being part of the same generation, which collectively develops a unique set of societal issues; Eric L. Dey has argued that "socialisation is the process through which individuals acquire knowledge, habits, and value orientations that will be useful in the future." The ability to relate on this common level is what fuels and enables future ideological growth.

Sociologists and political scientists debate the relationship between age and the formation of political attitudes. The impressionable years hypothesis postulates that political orientation is solidified during early adulthood. By contrast, the "increasing persistence hypothesis" posits that attitudes become less likely to change as individuals become older, while the "life-long openness hypothesis" proposes that the attitudes of individuals remain flexible regardless of age.

Short-term influences on political orientation:

Short-term factors also affect voting behavior; the media and the impact of individual election issues are among these factors. These factors differ from the long-term factors as they are often short-lived. However, they can be just as crucial in modifying political orientation. The ways in which these two sources are interpreted often relies on the individuals specific political ideology formed by the long-term factors.

Most political scientists agree that the mass media have a profound impact on voting behavior. One author asserts that "few would argue with the notion that the institutions of the mass media are important to contemporary politics ... in the transition to liberal democratic politics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the media was a key battleground."
Second, there are election issues. These include campaign issues, debates and commercials.

Election years and political campaigns can shift certain political behaviors based on the candidates involved, which have different degrees of effectiveness in influencing voters.

The influence of social groups on political outcomes:

Recently, some political scientists have been interested in many studies which aimed to analyze the relation between the behavior of social groups and the political outcomes. Some of the social groups included in their studies have been age demographics, gender, and ethnic groups. This can be understood through the lenses of pluralism or social identity theory.

For example, in U.S. politics, the effect of ethnic groups and gender has a great influence on the political outcomes. Hispanic Americans have a profound social impact on the political outcome of their vote and are emerging as a strong up-and-coming political force.

The most noticeable increase in Hispanic American voting was in the 2000 presidential election, although the votes did not share a socially common political view at that time. In the 2006 election, the Hispanic American vote aided tremendously in the election of Florida Senator Mel Martinez, although in the 2004 presidential election, about 44% of Latin Americans voted for Republican President George W. Bush.

However, Hispanic Americans have the lowest voting rate in the United States, with only 47.6% voting in the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States. Currently illegal immigration has been claiming the most attention and Hispanic Americans, although not completely unanimous, are concerned with the education, employment and deportation of illegal immigrants in the United States.

Although the majority of Hispanic Americans vote for Democratic candidates, Cuban Americans are likely the most conservative of Latinos, with 54% of Cuban American voters casting ballots for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election, compared to an average of 35% of all Latinos who voted. Although this was represents a net decrease in support for the Republican Party among Cuban Americans, it continues a trend created by the exile of many Cubans after the Cuban Revolution.

African Americans have the second highest voting rates in the United States and even surpassed white voters in the 2008 Presidential Election, although this has declined in the 2016 Presidential Election. In the 2008 Presidential Election and 2012 Presidential election, African Americans voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidate, Barack Obama.

This trend of African Americans voting for candidates of the Democratic Party continued into the 2016 Presidential Election.

Women in the United States have, in the past 30 years, surpassed male voting rates, with the 2016 Presidential Election having a ratio between females and males of 52 to 48. This trend is often referred to as the Gender Gap and when combined with the tendency of women to vote for Democratic candidates, their effect on political outcomes is extremely important.

Biology and political science:

Interdisciplinary studies in biology and political science aim to identify correlates of political behavior with biological aspects, for example the linkage of biology and political orientation, but also with other aspects like partisanship and voting behavior. This field of study is typically referred to genopolitics although it is sometimes referred to as biopolitics, although the term also has other meanings originating from the work of Michel Foucault.

The study of possible genetic bases of political behavior has grown since the 1980s. The term genopolitics was coined by political scientist James Fowler in the early-2000s to describe research into identifying specific transporter/receptor genes responsible for ideological orientation beyond the sociopsychological realm of political socialization.

Political participation:

Political scientists also aim to understand what drives individuals to participate in the democratic process, either by voting, volunteering for campaigns, signing petitions or protesting. Participation cannot always be explained by rational behavior.

The voting paradox, for example, points out that it cannot be in a citizen's self-interest to vote because the effort it takes to vote will almost always outweigh the benefits of voting, particularly considering a single vote is unlikely to change an electoral outcome.

Political scientists instead propose that citizens vote for psychological or social reasons. Studies show, for example, that individuals are more likely to vote if they see their friends have voted or if someone in their household has received a nudge to vote.

Political psychology:

Political psychology (next topic) aims to explain political behavior through psychological analysis. Examples of theories include right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and system justification theory.

See also: ___________________________________________________________________________

​Political psychology:

Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field dedicated to understanding politics, politicians and political behavior from a psychological perspective.

The relationship between politics and psychology is considered bidirectional, with psychology being used as a lens for understanding politics and politics being used as a lens for understanding psychology.

As an interdisciplinary field, political psychology borrows from a wide range of other disciplines, including: 
Political psychology aims to understand interdependent relationships between individuals and contexts that are influenced by beliefs, motivation, perception, cognition, information processing, learning strategies, socialization and attitude formation.

Political psychological theory and approaches have been applied in many contexts such as: leadership role; domestic and foreign policy making; behavior in ethnic violence, war and genocide; group dynamics and conflict; racist behavior; voting attitudes and motivation; voting and the role of the media; nationalism; and political extremism.

In essence political psychologists study the foundations, dynamics, and outcomes of political behavior using cognitive and social explanations.

History and early influences within the United States:

The first American to be considered a political psychologist was Harold Lasswell (1902–1978) whose research was also spurred by a sociological fascination of World War I. His work Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927) discussed the use of applying psychological theories in order to enhance propaganda technique.

Lasswell moved to Europe shortly after where he started to tie Freudian and Adler personality theories to politics and published Psychopathology and Politics (1930). His major theories involved the motives of the politically active and the relation between propaganda and personality.

Another contributing factor to the development of Political Psychology was the introduction of psychometrics and "The Measurement of Attitude" by Thurstone and Chave (1929). The methodological revolution in social science gave quantitative grounds and therefore more credibility to Political Psychology.

Research into political preference during campaigns was spurred by George Gallup (1901–1984), who founded the "American Institute of Public Opinion". The 1940s election in America drew a lot of attention in connection with the start of World War II. Gallup, Roper and Crossley instigated research into the chances of Roosevelt being re-elected. Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (1944) also conducted a famous panel study "The People's Choice" on the 1940s election campaign.

These studies drew attention to the possibility of measuring political techniques using psychological theories. The entry of the US into World War II spiraled vast research into fields such as war technique, propaganda, group moral, psycho-biography and culture conflict to name a few, with the U.S. army and Navy recruiting young psychologists.

Thus the discipline quickly developed and gained international accreditation.
Hadley Cantril and L. A. Free established the Institute for International Social Research to focus "attention primarily on psychological changes which influence political behavior in ways that have significant effect on international relations." They studied "governments and why, in terms of psychological variables, they behave as they do in regard to international issues."

McGuire identifies three broad phases in the development of political psychology, these three phases are:

(1) The era of personality studies in the 1940s and 1950s dominated by psychoanalysis.
(2) The era of political attitudes and voting behavior studies in the 1960s and 1970s characterized by the popularity of "rational man" assumptions.
(3) An era since the 1980s and 1990s, which has focused on political beliefs, information processing and decision making, and has dealt in particular with international politics.

Personality and politics:

The study of personality in political psychology focuses on the effects of leadership personality on decision-making, and the consequences of mass personality on leadership boundaries. Key personality approaches utilized in political psychology are psychoanalytic theories, trait-based theories and motive-based theories.

A psychoanalytical approach:

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) made significant contributions to the study of personality in political psychology through his theories on the unconscious motives of behavior. Freud suggested that a leader's behavior and decision making skill were largely determined by the interaction in their personality of the id, ego and superego, and their control of the pleasure principle and reality principle.

The psychoanalytic approach has also been used extensively in psychobiographies of political leaders. Psychobiographies draw inferences from personal, social and political development, starting from childhood, to understand behavior patterns that can be implemented to predict decision-making motives and strategies.

A trait-based approach:

Traits are personality characteristics that show to be stable over time and in different situations, creating predispositions to perceive and respond in particular ways. Gordon Allport (1897–1967) realized the study of traits introducing central, secondary, cardinal and common traits. These four distinctions suggest that people demonstrate traits to varying degrees, and further that there is a difference between individual and common traits to be recognized within a society. 

Hans Eysenck (1916–1997) contributed three major traits, currently however Costa and McCrae's (1992) "Big Five" personality dimensions are the most recognized. These include; neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience and conscientiousness. Theories in political psychology induce that one's combination of these traits has implications for leadership style and capacity.

For example, individuals who score highly on extroversion are demonstrated as having superior leadership skills. The Myers-Briggs Type indicator (MBTI) is a personality assessment scale commonly used in the study of political personality and for job profiling.

A motive-based approach:

In terms of political psychology, motivation is viewed as goal-oriented behavior driven by a need for four things; power, affiliation, intimacy, and achievement. These categories were grouped by Winter (1996) from Murray's (1938) twenty suggested common human goals.

Need for power affects the style in which a leader performs. Winter and Stewart (1977) suggested that leaders high in power motivation and low in need of affiliation intimacy motivation make better presidents.

Affiliation-motivated leaders alternatively tend to collaborate joint efforts in the absence of threat. Lastly, achievement motivation has demonstrated to not correspond with political success, especially if it is higher than power motivation (Winter, 2002).

Motivation between a leader and those whom they are ruling needs to be consistent with success. Motives have been shown to be correlated more highly with situation and time since last goal-fulfillment, rather than consistent traits. 

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is commonly used for assessing motives. However, in the case of leadership assessment this test is more difficult to implement therefore more applicable tests are often used such as content analysis of speeches and interviews.

Frameworks for assessing personality:

The authoritarian personality:
Main article: Authoritarian personality

The authoritarian personality is a syndrome theory that was developed by the researchers Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford (1950) at The University of California.

The American Jewish Committee subsidized research and publishing on the theory since it revolved around ideas developed from World War II events. Adorno (1950) explained the authoritarian personality type from a psychoanalytic point of view suggesting it to be a result of highly controlled and conventional parenting.

Adorno (1950) explained that individuals with an authoritarian personality type had been stunted in terms of developing an ability to control the sexual and aggressive id impulses.

This resulted in a fear of them and thus a development of defense mechanisms to avoid confronting them.

Authoritarian personality types are persons described as swinging between depending on yet resenting authority. The syndrome was theorized to encompass nine characteristics:
  1. conventionalism,
  2. authoritarian submission,
  3. authoritarian aggression,
  4. anti-intraception (an opposition to subjective or imaginative tendencies),
  5. superstition and stereotypy,
  6. power and toughness,
  7. destructiveness and cynicism,
  8. sex obsession,
  9. and projectivity.

The authoritarian personality type is suggested to be; ethnocentric, ego-defensive, mentally rigid, conforming and conventional, adverse to the out of the ordinary, and as having conservative political views. The book The Authoritarian Personality (1950) introduces several scales based on different authoritarian personality types.

These are; the F-scale which measures from where and to what degree fascist attitudes develop, the anti-Semitism scale, the ethnocentrism scale and the politico economic conservatism scale. The F-scale however, is the only scale that is expected to measure implicit authoritarian personality tendencies.

Bob Altemeyer (1996) deconstructed the authoritarian personality using trait analysis. He developed a Right-wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale based on the traits; authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. Altmeyer (1996) suggested that those who score high on the F-scale have a low ability for critical thinking and therefore are less able to contradict authority.

Altmeyer's theories also incorporate the psychodynamic point of view, suggesting that authoritarian personality types were taught by their parents to believe that the world was a dangerous place and thus their impulses lead them to make impulsive, emotional and irrational decisions.

The beliefs and behavior of an authoritarian are suggested to be easily manipulated by authority instead of being based on internal values. Altmeyer also theorized that leaders with authoritarian personality types were more susceptible to the fundamental attribution error.

There are many weaknesses associated with this syndrome and the F-scale. It may have been more relevant during the period in which it was produced, being shortly after World War II.

The authoritarian personality is generally related to a fascist image however it is suggested to explain behavior of individuals in all political fields.

Trait-based frameworks:

Trait-based frameworks, excluding the Freudian approach, were suggested by James Barber (1930–2004) in The Presidential Character (1972) who highlighted the importance of psychobiography in political personality analysis. Barber suggested that leadership personality comprised three dimensions; "character", "world view", and "style".

Barber also proposed that leadership typology followed a pattern leading from an individuals first political success and that it is includes two variables; the effort that a leader puts in and the personal satisfaction that the leader gains. This typology is fairly limited in its dimensions.

Etheredge (1978) proposed the importance of the traits; "dominance", "interpersonal trust", "self-esteem" and "introversion-extroversion", in leadership views and policy shaping.

Etheredge found from studies on leaders during the Soviet Union, that those who scored highly on dominance were more likely to support the use of force during debate settlement. He found that the trait introversion can lead to a lack of co-operation, and that extroversion usually leads to cooperation and negotiation. Further he suggested that interpersonal trust and self-esteem were closely related to not advocating force.

Margaret Hermann (1976) introduced the Leader Trait Assessment (LTA) and advocated the development of the Profiler-Plus. The Profiler-Plus is a computer system used to code spontaneous interview answers for seven major characteristics:
  1. need for power,
  2. cognitive complexity,
  3. task-interpersonal emphasis,
  4. self-confidence,
  5. locus of control,
  6. distrust of others,
  7. and ethnocentrism.

This method can profile large bodies of leadership related text whilst removing any subjective bias from content analysis. It is efficient and has high reliability.

Hermann and Preston (1994) suggested 5 distinct variables of leadership style:
  1. their involvement in policy making,
  2. their willingness to tolerate conflict,
  3. their level and reasons for motivation,
  4. their information managing strategies,
  5. and their conflict resolving strategies.

An alternative approach is the Operational-Code method introduced by Nathan Leites (1951) and restructured by Alexander George (1979). The code is based on five philosophical beliefs and five instrumental beliefs. A Verbs in Context (VIC) coding system employed through the Profiler-Plus computer program once again allows substantial bodies of written and spoken speech, interviews and writings to be analyzed subjectively. The method attempts to be able to predict behavior thorough applying knowledge of various beliefs.

Although political behavior is governed and represented by a leader the consequential influence of the leader largely depends upon the context in which they are placed and in which type of political climate they are running. For this reason group behavior is also instrumental for understanding sociopolitical environments.

The political psychology of groups:

Group behavior is key in the structure, stability, popularity and ability to make successful decisions of political parties. Individual behavior deviates substantially in a group setting therefore it is difficult to determine group behavior by looking solely at the individuals that comprise the group. Group form and stability is based upon several variables; size, structure, the purpose that the group serves, group development and influences upon a group.

Group size:

Group size has various consequences. In smaller groups individuals are more committed (Patterson and Schaeffer, 1997) and there is a lower turnover rate (Widmeyer, Brawley and Carron, 1990). Large groups display greater levels of divergence (O'Dell, 1968) and less conformity (Olson and Caddell, 1994). Group performance also diminishes with size increase, due to decreased co-ordination and free-riding. 

The size of a political party or nation can therefore have consequential effects on their ability to co-ordinate and progress.

Group structure:

The structure of a group is altered by member diversity, which largely affects its efficiency. Individual diversity with in a group has proven to demonstrate less communication and therefore to increase conflict (Maznevski, 1994). This has implications for political parties based in strongly colonial or multiracial nations. Member diversity has consequences for; status, role allocation and role strain within a group, all of which can cause disagreement.

Thus maintenance of group cohesion is key. Cohesion is affected by several factors; the amount of time members spend in the group, the amount that members like one another, the amount of reward that the group offers, the amount of external threat to the group and the level of warmth offered by leaders. 

These factors should be considered when attempting to form an efficient political group. President decision efficiency for example is affected by the degree to which members of the advisory group have a hierarchical status and by the roles that each member is assigned.

Group function:

Studying the purpose for formation of a group, whether it is serving a "functional" purpose or an "interpersonal attraction" purpose (Mackie and Goethals, 1987), has implications for political popularity. Often people join groups in order to fulfill certain survival, interpersonal, informational and collective needs. A political party that provides; stability, clear information, offers power to individuals and satisfies a sense of affiliation, will gain popularity. 

Shutz's (1958) "Fundamental interpersonal relations orientation" theory suggests that groups satisfy the need for control, intimacy and inclusion. Groups also form due to natural attraction.

Newcomb (1960) states that we are drawn to others close in socioeconomic status, beliefs, attitudes and physical appearance. Similarity in certain respects can thus be related to how much a person is attracted to joining one group over another.

Group development:

Group development tends to happen in several stages; forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning (Tuckman, 1965). Group awareness of these stages is important in order for members to acknowledge that a process is taking place and that certain stages such as storming are part of progression and that they should not be discouraged or cause fear of instability.

Awareness of group development also allows for models to be implemented in order to manipulate different stages. External influences upon a group will have different effects depending upon which stage the group is at in its course. This has implications for how open a group should be depending upon the stage of development it is at, and on its strength.

Consistency is also a key aspect in a group for success (Wood, 1994).

The influence of conformity in groups:

The application of conformity is key for understanding group influence in political behaviour. Decision making within a group is largely influenced by conformity. It is theorized to occur based on two motives; normative social influence and informational social influence (Asch, 1955).

Chance of conformity is influenced by several factors; an increase in group size but only to a certain degree at which it plateaus, and degree of unanimity and commitment to the group.

Therefore, the degree of popularity of a political group can be influenced by its existing size and the believed unanimity and commitment by the public of the already existing members.

The degree by which the group conforms as a whole can also be influenced by the degree of individuation of its members. Also, the conformity within political groups can be related to the term, political coalition.

Humans represent groups as if there was a special category of an individual. For example, for cognitive simplicity, ancestral groups anthropomorphize each other because they have similar thoughts, values, and a historical background. Even though the member of a group may have an irrational or wrong argument about a political issue, there is a high possibility for the other members to conform to it because of the mere fact that they are in the same coalition.

The influence of power in groups:

Power is another influential factor within a group or between separate groups. The "critical bases of power" developed by French and Raven (1959) allocates the following types of power as the most successful; reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, referent power and expert power. 

The way in which power is exerted upon a group can have repercussive outcomes for popularity. Referent power results in greater popularity of a political group or leader than coercive power (Shaw and Condelli, 1986). This has implications for leaders to manipulate others to identify with them, rather than to enforce consequential punishment.

However, if coercive power is enforced, success and a trusted leader (Friedland, 1976) are necessary in order for group conflict not to escalate. Extrinsic punishment and reward are also suggested to detract from intrinsic motivation. A sense of freedom must be advocated to the group.

Decision-making in groups:

Decision-making is an important political process which influences the course of a country's policy. Group decision-making is largely influenced by three rules; "majority-wins rule", "truth-wins rule", and "first-shift rule".

Decision-making is also coerced by conformity. Irrational decisions are generally made during emotional periods. For example, an unpopular political party may receive more votes during a period of actual or perceived economic or political instability.

Controversial studies by George Marcus (2003) however imply that high levels of anxiety can actually cause an individual to analyze information more rationally and carefully, resulting in more well-informed and successful decisions.

The psychology of decision-making however must be analyzed in accordance with whether it is within a leadership context or a between group context. The implementation of successful decision-making is often enhanced by group decision-making (Hill, 1982) especially if the decision is important to the group and when the group has been working together for an extended period of time (Watson, Michaelson and Sharp, 1991).

However groups can also hinder decision-making if a correct answer is not clear. Janis (1972) introduced the notion of Groupthink that advocates an increased chance of groups making faulty decisions under several conditions; strong group cohesion, isolation of group decision from public review, the presence of a directive leader in the group, and high stress levels. 

Group polarization (Janis, 1972) suggests that group decision-making is often more extreme whether is it more risky or cautious. Groupthink refers to "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action."

Techniques to establish more effective decision making skills in political dimensions have been suggested. Hirt and Markman (1995) claim that implementing an individual in a group to find faults and to critique will enable the members to establish alternative view points.

George (1980) suggested "multiple advocacy" which implements that a neutral person analyses the pros and cons of various advocate suggestions and thus makes an informed decision.

Applied psychology theories to improve productivity of political groups include implementing "team development" techniques, "quality circles" and autonomous work groups.

Using psychology in the understanding of certain political behaviors:

Evolution:

Evolutionary psychology plays a significant role in understanding the state and people of how the current political regime came to be. It is an approach that focuses on the structure of human behavior claiming its dependence on the social and ecological environment.

Developed through natural selection, the human brain functions to react appropriately to environmental challenges of coalitional conflict using psychological mechanisms and modifications. An example of political conflict would involve state aggression such as war.

Psychological mechanisms work to digest what is taken in from internal and external information regarding the current habitat and project it in the most suited form of action such as acts of aggression, retrieval, dominance, and so forth.

Voting behavior:

In order to make inferences and predictions about behavior concerning voting decision, certain key public influences must be considered. These influences include the role of emotions, political socialization, political sophistication, tolerance of diversity of political views and the media.

The effect of these influences on voting behavior is best understood through theories on the formation of attitudes, beliefs, schema, knowledge structures and the practice of information processing. The degree to which voting decision is affected by internal processing systems of political information and external influences, alters the quality of making truly democratic decisions.

Conflict:

The application of psychology for understanding conflict and extreme acts of violence can be understood in both individual and group terms. Political conflict is often a consequence of ethnic disparity and "ethnocentrism" Sumner (1906).

On an individual level participators in situations of conflict can either be perpetrators, bystanders or altruists. The behavior of perpetrators is often explained through the authoritarian personality type.

Individual differences in levels of empathy have been used to explain whether an individual chooses to stand up to authority or ignore a conflict. Rotter's (1954) locus of control theory in personality psychology has also been used to determine individual differences in reaction to situations of conflict.

Group behavior during conflict often affects the actions of an individual. The bystander effect introduced by Darley and Latane (1968) demonstrates that group behavior causes individuals to monitor whether others think it is necessary to react in a situation and thus base their behavior on this judgment. They also found that individuals are more likely to diffuse responsibility in group situations.

These theories can be applied to situations of conflict and genocide in which individuals remove personal responsibility and therefore justify their behavior. Social identity theory explains that during the Holocaust of World War II political leaders used the Jews as an out-group in order to increase in-group cohesion. This allowed for the perpetrators to depersonalize from the situation and to diffuse their responsibility.

The out-groups were held in separate confines and dehumanized in order to aid the in-group to disengage themselves from relating.

Research by Dan Kahan has demonstrated that individuals are resistant to accepting new political views even if they are presented with evidence that challenges their views. The research also demonstrated that if the individual was required to write a few sentences about experiences they enjoyed or spend a few moments affirming their self-worth, the individual was more likely to accept the new political position.

Although somewhat unusual, evolutionary psychology can also explain conflicts in politics and the international society. A journal article by Anthony C. Lopez, Rose McDermott and Michael Bang Petersen uses this idea to give out hypothesis to explain political events.

According to the authors, instincts and psychological characteristics developed through evolution is still existent with modern people. They suggest human being as "adaptation executers"; people designed through natural selection, and not "utility maximizers"; people who strive for utility in every moment.

Though a group of people, perhaps those who are in the same political coalition, may seem as if they pursue a common utility maximization, it is difficult to generalize the theory of "utility maximizers" into a nation-view because people evolved in small groups. This approach helps scholars to explain seemingly irrational behaviors like aggressiveness in politics and international society because "irrational behavior" would be the result of a mismatch between the modern world and evolutionary psychology.

For example, according to evolutionary psychology, coalitional aggression is more commonly found with males. This is because of their psychological mechanism designed since ancestral times.

During those times men had more to earn when winning wars compared to women (they had more chance of finding a mate, or even many mates). Also, the victorious men had more chance of reproduction which eventually led to the succession of aggressive, eager-to-war DNAs. As a result, the authors hypothesize that countries with more men will tend to show more aggressive politics thereby having more possibility of triggering conflicts within and especially among states.

Indeed, some exceptions do exists in this theory as this is just a hypothesis. However it is viable enough to be a hypothesis to be tested to explain certain political events like war and crisis.

Terrorism:

On an individual level terrorism has been explained in terms of psychopathology. Terrorists have demonstrated to show narcissistic personality traits (Lasch, 1979, Pearlstein, 1991). Jerrold Post (2004) argues that narcissistic and borderline personality disorders are found in terrorists and that mechanisms such as splitting and externalization are used by terrorists. Others such as Silke (2004) and Mastors and Deffenbaugh (2007) refute this view.

Crenshaw (2004) showed that certain terrorist groups are actually careful in not enlisting those demonstrating pathology. The authoritarian personality theory has also been used as an explanation for terrorist behavior in individuals.

In terms of explaining reasons for which individuals join terrorist groups, motivational theories such as need for power and need for affiliation intimacy are suggested. Festinger (1954) explained that people often join groups in order to compare their own beliefs and attitudes.

Joining a terrorist group could be a method to remedy individual uncertainty. Taylor and Louis (2004) explained that individuals strive for meaningful behavior. This can also be used to explain why terrorists look for such radical beliefs and demonstrations. Studies on children in northern Ireland by Field (1979) have shown that exposure to violence can lead to terrorist behavior later on.

Implicating the effect of developing acceptable norms in groups. However this view has also been criticized (Taylor, 1998). Other theories suggest that goal frustration can result in aggression (Dollard, Doob. Miller, mower, and Sears, 1939) and that aggression can lead to frustration (Borum, 2004).

Group settings can cause a social identity and terrorist behavior to manifest. Methods such as dehumanization allow individuals to detach more easily from moral responsibility, and group influence increase the chance that individuals will concede to conformity and compliance.

Manipulations of social control and propaganda can also instrument terrorist involvement.
In fact, a strategic model has been proposed to examine the political motivations of terrorists.

The strategic model, the dominant paradigm in terrorism studies, considers terrorists are rational actors who attack civilians for political ends. According to this view, terrorists are political utility maximizers.

The strategic model rests on three core assumptions which are:

(1) terrorists are motivated by relatively stable and consistent political preferences;

(2) terrorists evaluate the expected political payoffs of their available options;

and (3) terrorism is adopted when the expected political return is superior to those of alternative options.

However, it turns out that terrorists' decision-making process does not fully conform to the strategic model. According to Max Abrahms, the author of "What Terrorists Really Want: Terrorist Motives and Counterterrorism Strategy", there are seven common tendencies that represent important empirical puzzles for the strategic model, going against the conventional thought that terrorists are rational actors.

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Propaganda in PoliticsPictured below: The Psychology of Presidential Campaign Signs
Propaganda is communication that is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, companies, religious organizations, the media, and individuals can also produce propaganda.

In the 20th century, the term propaganda has often been associated with a manipulative approach, but propaganda historically is a neutral descriptive term.

A wide range of materials and media are used for conveying propaganda messages, which changed as new technologies were invented, including paintings, cartoons, posters, pamphlets, films, radio shows, TV shows, and websites.

More recently, the digital age has given rise to new ways of disseminating propaganda, for example, through the use of bots and algorithms to create computational propaganda and spread fake or biased news using social media.

Etymology:
Main article: Propaganda Fide

Propaganda is a modern Latin word, ablative singular feminine of the gerundive form of propagare, meaning to spread or to propagate, thus propaganda means for that which is to be propagated.

Originally this word derived from a new administrative body of the Catholic Church (congregation) created in 1622 as part of the Counter-Reformation, called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith), or informally simply Propaganda. Its activity was aimed at "propagating" the Catholic faith in non-Catholic countries.

From the 1790s, the term began being used also to refer to propaganda in secular activities. The term began taking a pejorative or negative connotation in the mid-19th century, when it was used in the political sphere.

Definition:

Harold Lasswell provided a broad definition of the term propaganda, writing it as: “the expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations.”

Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell theorize that propaganda is converted into persuasion, and that propagandists also use persuasive methods in the construction of their propagandist discourse. This theory signifies the similarity and optimization of propaganda using persuasive soft power techniques in the development and cultivation of propagandist materials.

In a 1929 literary debate with Edward Bernays, Everett Dean Martin argues that, "Propaganda is making puppets of us. We are moved by hidden strings which the propagandist manipulates."

Bernays acknowledged in his book Propaganda that “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

​History:
Main article: History of propaganda

​Primitive forms of propaganda have been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists. The Behistun Inscription (c. 515 BC) detailing the rise of Darius I to the Persian throne is viewed by most historians as an early example of propaganda.

Another striking example of propaganda during ancient history is the last Roman civil wars (44-30 BC) during which Octavian and Mark Antony blamed each other for obscure and degrading origins, cruelty, cowardice, oratorical and literary incompetence, debaucheries, luxury, drunkenness and other slanders. This defamation took the form of uituperatio (Roman rhetorical genre of the invective) which was decisive for shaping the Roman public opinion at this time.

Another early example of propaganda was from Genghis Khan. The emperor would send some of his men ahead of his army to spread rumors to the enemy. In most cases, his army was actually smaller than some of his opponents.

Propaganda during the Reformation, helped by the spread of the printing press throughout Europe, and in particular within Germany, caused new ideas, thoughts, and doctrine to be made available to the public in ways that had never been seen before the 16th century.

During the era of the American Revolution, the American colonies had a flourishing network of newspapers and printers who specialized in the topic on behalf of the Patriots (and to a lesser extent on behalf of the Loyalists).

​Barbara Diggs-Brown conceives that the negative connotations of the term “propaganda” are associated with the earlier social and political transformations that occurred during the French Revolutionary period movement of 1789 to 1799 between the and the middle portion of the 19th century, in a time where the word started to be used in a nonclerical and political context.

The first large-scale and organised propagation of government propaganda was occasioned by the outbreak of war in 1914. After the defeat of Germany in the First World War, military officials such as Erich Ludendorff suggested that British propaganda had been instrumental in their defeat. 

Adolf Hitler came to echo this view, believing that it had been a primary cause of the collapse of morale and the revolts in the German home front and Navy in 1918 (see also: Dolchstoßlegende). In Mein Kampf (1925) Hitler expounded his theory of propaganda, which provided a powerful base for his rise to power in 1933.

Historian Robert Ensor explains that "Hitler...puts no limit on what can be done by propaganda; people will believe anything, provided they are told it often enough and emphatically enough, and that contradicters are either silenced or smothered in calumny."

This was to be true in Germany and backed up with their army making it difficult to allow other propaganda to flow in. Most propaganda in Nazi Germany was produced by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels mentions propaganda as a way to see through the masses.

​Symbols are used towards propaganda such as justice, liberty and one's devotion to its country. World War II saw continued use of propaganda as a weapon of war, building on the experience of WWI, by Goebbels and the British Political Warfare Executive, as well as the United States Office of War Information

​In the early 20th century, the invention of motion pictures (as in movies, diafilms) gave propaganda-creators a powerful tool for advancing political and military interests when it came to reaching a broad segment of the population and creating consent or encouraging rejection of the real or imagined enemy.

In the years following the October Revolution of 1917, the Soviet government sponsored the Russian film industry with the purpose of making propaganda films (e.g. the 1925 film The Battleship Potemkin glorifies Communist ideals.) In WWII, Nazi filmmakers produced highly emotional films to create popular support for occupying the Sudetenland and attacking Poland.

The 1930s and 1940s, which saw the rise of totalitarian states and the Second World War, are arguably the "Golden Age of Propaganda". Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker working in Nazi Germany, created one of the best-known propaganda movies, Triumph of the Will.

In the US, animation became popular, especially for winning over youthful audiences and aiding the U.S. war effort, e.g., Der Fuehrer's Face (1942), which ridicules Hitler and advocates the value of freedom. Some American war films in the early 1940s were designed to create a patriotic mindset and convince viewers that sacrifices needed to be made to defeat the Axis Powers.

Others were intended to help Americans understand their Allies in general, as in films like Know Your Ally: Britain and Our Greek Allies.

Apart from its war films, Hollywood did its part to boost American morale in a film intended to show how stars of stage and screen who remained on the home front were doing their part not just in their labors, but also in their understanding that a variety of peoples worked together against the Axis menace: Stage Door Canteen (1943) features one segment meant to dispel Americans' mistrust of the Soviets, and another to dispel their bigotry against the Chinese.

Polish filmmakers in Great Britain created anti-nazi color film Calling Mr. Smith (1943) about current nazi crimes in occupied Europe and about lies of nazi propaganda.
The West and the Soviet Union both used propaganda extensively during the Cold War.

Both sides used film, television, and radio programming to influence their own citizens, each other, and Third World nations. George Orwell's contemporaneous novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four portray the use of propaganda in fictional dystopian societies.

During the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro stressed the importance of propaganda. Propaganda was used extensively by Communist forces in the Vietnam War as means of controlling people's opinions.

During the Yugoslav wars, propaganda was used as a military strategy by governments of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Croatia. Propaganda was used to create fear and hatred, and particularly incite the Serb population against the other ethnicities (Bosniaks, Croats, Albanians and other non-Serbs). Serb media made a great effort in justifying, revising or denying mass war crimes committed by Serb forces during these wars.

Public perceptions:

In the early 20th century the term propaganda was used by the founders of the nascent public relations industry to refer to their people. Literally translated from the Latin gerundive as "things that must be disseminated", in some cultures the term is neutral or even positive, while in others the term has acquired a strong negative connotation.

The connotations of the term "propaganda" can also vary over time. For example, in Portuguese and some Spanish language speaking countries, particularly in the Southern Cone, the word "propaganda" usually refers to the most common manipulative media – "advertising".

​In English, propaganda was originally a neutral term for the dissemination of information in favor of any given cause. During the 20th century, however, the term acquired a thoroughly negative meaning in western countries, representing the intentional dissemination of often false, but certainly "compelling" claims to support or justify political actions or ideologies.

According to Harold Lasswell, the term began to fall out of favor due to growing public suspicion of propaganda in the wake of its use during World War I by the Creel Committee in the United States and the Ministry of Information in Britain: Writing in 1928, Lasswell observed, "In democratic countries the official propaganda bureau was looked upon with genuine alarm, for fear that it might be suborned to party and personal ends.

The outcry in the United States against Mr. Creel's famous Bureau of Public Information (or 'Inflammation') helped to din into the public mind the fact that propaganda existed. ... The public's discovery of propaganda has led to a great of lamentation over it. Propaganda has become an epithet of contempt and hate, and the propagandists have sought protective coloration in such names as 'public relations council,' 'specialist in public education,' 'public relations adviser.' "

In 1949, political science professor Dayton David McKean wrote, "After World War I the word came to be applied to 'what you don’t like of the other fellow’s publicity,' as Edward L. Bernays said...."

Contestation:

The term is essentially contested and some have argued for a neutral definition, arguing that ethics depend on intent and context, while others define it as necessarily unethical and negative.

Dr. Emma Briant defines it as "the deliberate manipulation of representations (including text, pictures, video, speech etc.) with the intention of producing any effect in the audience (e.g. action or inaction; reinforcement or transformation of feelings, ideas, attitudes or behaviors) that is desired by the propagandist."

​The same author explains the importance of consistent terminology across history, particularly as contemporary euphemistic synonyms are used in governments' continual efforts to rebrand their operations such as 'information support' and 'strategic communication'

Types of Propaganda:

Identifying propaganda has always been a problem. The main difficulties have involved differentiating propaganda from other types of persuasion, and avoiding a biased approach.

Richard Alan Nelson provides a definition of the term: "Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels."

The definition focuses on the communicative process involved – or more precisely, on the purpose of the process, and allow "propaganda" to be considered objectively and then interpreted as positive or negative behavior depending on the perspective of the viewer or listener.

According to historian Zbyněk Zeman, propaganda is defined as either white, grey or black. White propaganda openly discloses its source and intent. Grey propaganda has an ambiguous or non-disclosed source or intent.

Black propaganda purports to be published by the enemy or some organization besides its actual origins (compare with black operation, a type of clandestine operation in which the identity of the sponsoring government is hidden).

In scale, these different types of propaganda can also be defined by the potential of true and correct information to compete with the propaganda. For example, opposition to white propaganda is often readily found and may slightly discredit the propaganda source.

Opposition to grey propaganda, when revealed (often by an inside source), may create some level of public outcry. Opposition to black propaganda is often unavailable and may be dangerous to reveal, because public cognizance of black propaganda tactics and sources would undermine or backfire the very campaign the black propagandist supported.
The propagandist seeks to change the way people understand an issue or situation for the purpose of changing their actions and expectations in ways that are desirable to the interest group.

​Propaganda, in this sense, serves as a corollary to censorship in which the same purpose is achieved, not by filling people's minds with approved information, but by preventing people from being confronted with opposing points of view. What sets propaganda apart from other forms of advocacy is the willingness of the propagandist to change people's understanding through deception and confusion rather than persuasion and understanding. The leaders of an organization know the information to be one sided or untrue, but this may not be true for the rank and file members who help to disseminate the propaganda.

Religious:

Propaganda was often used to influence opinions and beliefs on religious issues, particularly during the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches.

More in line with the religious roots of the term, propaganda is also used widely in the debates about new religious movements (NRMs), both by people who defend them and by people who oppose them.

The latter pejoratively call these NRMs cults. Anti-cult activists and Christian countercult activists accuse the leaders of what they consider cults of using propaganda extensively to recruit followers and keep them. Some social scientists, such as the late Jeffrey Hadden, and CESNUR affiliated scholars accuse ex-members of "cults" and the anti-cult movement of making these unusual religious movements look bad without sufficient reasons.

Wartime:

Post–World War II usage of the word "propaganda" more typically refers to political or nationalist uses of these techniques or to the promotion of a set of ideas.

Propaganda is a powerful weapon in war; it is used to dehumanize and create hatred toward a supposed enemy, either internal or external, by creating a false image in the mind of soldiers and citizens. This can be done by using derogatory or racist terms (e.g., the racist terms "Jap" and "gook" used during World War II and the Vietnam War, respectively), avoiding some words or language or by making allegations of enemy atrocities.

The goal of this was to demoralize the opponent into thinking what was being projected was actually true. Most propaganda efforts in wartime require the home population to feel the enemy has inflicted an injustice, which may be fictitious or may be based on facts (e.g., the sinking of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania by the German Navy in World War I).

The home population must also believe that the cause of their nation in the war is just. In these efforts it was difficult to determine the accuracy of how propaganda truly impacted the war.

​In NATO doctrine, propaganda is defined as "Any information, ideas, doctrines, or special appeals disseminated to influence the opinion, emotions, attitudes, or behaviour of any specified group in order to benefit the sponsor either directly or indirectly." Within this perspective, information provided does not need to be necessarily false, but must be instead relevant to specific goals of the "actor" or "system" that performs it.

Propaganda is also one of the methods used in psychological warfare, which may also involve false flag operations in which the identity of the operatives is depicted as those of an enemy nation (e.g., The Bay of Pigs invasion used CIA planes painted in Cuban Air Force markings).

The term propaganda may also refer to false information meant to reinforce the mindsets of people who already believe as the propagandist wishes (e.g., During the First World War, the main purpose of British propaganda was to encourage men join the army, and women to work in the country's industry.

The propaganda posters were used, because radios and TVs were not very common at that time.). The assumption is that, if people believe something false, they will constantly be assailed by doubts. Since these doubts are unpleasant (see cognitive dissonance), people will be eager to have them extinguished, and are therefore receptive to the reassurances of those in power.

For this reason propaganda is often addressed to people who are already sympathetic to the agenda or views being presented. This process of reinforcement uses an individual's predisposition to self-select "agreeable" information sources as a mechanism for maintaining control over populations.

​Propaganda may be administered in insidious ways. For instance, disparaging disinformation about the history of certain groups or foreign countries may be encouraged or tolerated in the educational system.

Since few people actually double-check what they learn at school, such disinformation will be repeated by journalists as well as parents, thus reinforcing the idea that the disinformation item is really a "well-known fact", even though no one repeating the myth is able to point to an authoritative source.

The disinformation is then recycled in the media and in the educational system, without the need for direct governmental intervention on the media. Such permeating propaganda may be used for political goals: by giving citizens a false impression of the quality or policies of their country, they may be incited to reject certain proposals or certain remarks or ignore the experience of others.

In the Soviet Union during the Second World War, the propaganda designed to encourage civilians was controlled by Stalin, who insisted on a heavy-handed style that educated audiences easily saw was inauthentic.

On the other hand, the unofficial rumours about German atrocities were well founded and convincing. Stalin was a Georgian who spoke Russian with a heavy accent. That would not do for a national hero so starting in the 1930s all new visual portraits of Stalin were retouched to erase his Georgian facial characteristics and make him a more generalized Soviet hero. Only his eyes and famous mustache remained unaltered.

Zhores Medvedev and Roy Medvedev say his "majestic new image was devised appropriately to depict the leader of all times and of all peoples."

Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits any propaganda for war as well as any advocacy of national or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence by law.

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
— Hermann Göring

​Simply enough the covenant specifically is not defining the content of propaganda. In simplest terms an act of propaganda if used in a reply to a wartime act is not prohibited.

​Advertising:

Propaganda shares techniques with advertising and public relations, each of which can be thought of as propaganda that promotes a commercial product or shapes the perception of an organization, person, or brand.

​Journalistic theory generally holds that news items should be objective, giving the reader an accurate background and analysis of the subject at hand.

On the other hand, advertisements evolved from the traditional commercial advertisements to include also a new type in the form of paid articles or broadcasts disguised as news. These generally present an issue in a very subjective and often misleading light, primarily meant to persuade rather than inform.

Normally they use only subtle propaganda techniques and not the more obvious ones used in traditional commercial advertisements. If the reader believes that a paid advertisement is in fact a news item, the message the advertiser is trying to communicate will be more easily "believed" or "internalized".

Such advertisements are considered obvious examples of "covert" propaganda because they take on the appearance of objective information rather than the appearance of propaganda, which is misleading. Federal law specifically mandates that any advertisement appearing in the format of a news item must state that the item is in fact a paid advertisement.

​Edmund McGarry illustrates that advertising is more than selling to an audience but a type of propaganda that is trying to persuade the public and not to be balanced in judgement.

Politics
​
Propaganda has become more common in political contexts, in particular to refer to certain efforts sponsored by governments, political groups, but also often covert interests. In the early 20th century, propaganda was exemplified in the form of party slogans.

Propaganda also has much in common with public information campaigns by governments, which are intended to encourage or discourage certain forms of behavior (such as wearing seat belts, not smoking, not littering and so forth). Again, the emphasis is more political in propaganda.

Propaganda can take the form of leaflets, posters, TV and radio broadcasts and can also extend to any other medium. In the case of the United States, there is also an important legal (imposed by law) distinction between advertising (a type of overt propaganda) and what the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an arm of the United States Congress, refers to as "covert propaganda".

Roderick Hindery argues that propaganda exists on the political left, and right, and in mainstream centrist parties. Hindery further argues that debates about most social issues can be productively revisited in the context of asking "what is or is not propaganda?" Not to be overlooked is the link between propaganda, indoctrination, and terrorism/counterterrorism. He argues that threats to destroy are often as socially disruptive as physical devastation itself.

​​Since 9/11 and the appearance of greater media fluidity, propaganda institutions, practices and legal frameworks have been evolving in the US and Britain. Briant shows how this included expansion and integration of the apparatus cross-government and details attempts to coordinate the forms of propaganda for foreign and domestic audiences, with new efforts in strategic communication.

These were subject to contestation within the US Government, resisted by Pentagon Public Affairs and critiqued by some scholars.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (section 1078 (a)) amended the US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (popularly referred to as the Smith-Mundt Act) and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, allowing for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within U.S. borders for the Archivist of the United States.

The Smith-Mundt Act, as amended, provided that "the Secretary and the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall make available to the Archivist of the United States, for domestic distribution, motion pictures, films, videotapes, and other material 12 years after the initial dissemination of the material abroad (...) Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors from engaging in any medium or form of communication, either directly or indirectly, because a United States domestic audience is or may be thereby exposed to program material, or based on a presumption of such exposure."

Public concerns were raised upon passage due to the relaxation of prohibitions of domestic propaganda in the United States.

In the wake of this, the internet has become a prolific method of distributing political propaganda, benefiting from an evolution in coding called bots. Software agents or bots can be used for many things, including populating social media with automated messages and posts with a range of sophistication.

During the 2016 U.S. election a cyber-strategy was implemented using bots to direct US voters to Russian political news and information sources, and to spread politically motivated rumors and false news stories. At this point it is considered commonplace contemporary political strategy around the world to implement bots in achieving political goals.

Techniques:
Further information: Propaganda techniques

​Common media for transmitting propaganda messages include news reports, government reports, historical revision, junk science, books, leaflets, movies, radio, television, and posters. Some propaganda campaigns follow a strategic transmission pattern to indoctrinate the target group. This may begin with a simple transmission, such as a leaflet or advertisement dropped from a plane or an advertisement.

Generally these messages will contain directions on how to obtain more information, via a web site, hot line, radio program, etc. (as it is seen also for selling purposes among other goals). The strategy intends to initiate the individual from information recipient to information seeker through reinforcement, and then from information seeker to opinion leader through indoctrination.

A number of techniques based in social psychological research are used to generate propaganda. Many of these same techniques can be found under logical fallacies, since propagandists use arguments that, while sometimes convincing, are not necessarily valid.

Some time has been spent analyzing the means by which the propaganda messages are transmitted. That work is important but it is clear that information dissemination strategies become propaganda strategies only when coupled with propagandistic messages. Identifying these messages is a necessary prerequisite to study the methods by which those messages are spread.

Propaganda can also be turned on its makers. For example postage stamps have frequently been tools for government advertising, such as North Korea's extensive issues. The presence of Stalin on numerous Soviet stamps is another example. During the Third Reich Hitler frequently appeared on postage stamps in Germany and some of the occupied nations. A British program to parody these, and other Nazi-inspired stamps, involved air dropping them into Germany on letters containing anti-Nazi literature.

In 2018 a scandal broke in which Journalist Carole Cadwalladr, several whistleblowers and the academic Dr Emma Briant revealed advances in digital propaganda techniques showing that online HUMINT techniques used in psychological warfare had been coupled with psychological profiling using illegally obtained social media data for political campaigns in the United States in 2016 to aid Donald Trump by the firm Cambridge Analytica.

The company initially denied breaking laws but later admitted breaking UK law, the scandal provoking a worldwide debate on acceptable use of data for propaganda and influence.

Models:

Persuasion in Social psychology:The field of social psychology includes the study of persuasion. Social psychologists can be sociologists or psychologists. The field includes many theories and approaches to understanding persuasion.

For example, communication theory points out that people can be persuaded by the communicator's credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. The elaboration likelihood model as well as heuristic models of persuasion suggest that a number of factors (e.g., the degree of interest of the recipient of the communication), influence the degree to which people allow superficial factors to persuade them.

Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Herbert A. Simon won the Nobel prize for his theory that people are cognitive misers. That is, in a society of mass information, people are forced to make decisions quickly and often superficially, as opposed to logically.

According to William W. Biddle's 1931 article "A psychological definition of propaganda", the four principles followed in propaganda are:
(1) rely on emotions, never argue;
(2) cast propaganda into the pattern of "we" versus an "enemy";
(3) reach groups as well as individuals;
(4) hide the propagandist as much as possible."

More recently, studies from behavioral science have become significant in understanding and planning propaganda campaigns, these include for example nudge theory which was used by the Obama Campaign in 2008 then adopted by the UK Government Behavioral Insights Team.

Behavioral methodologies then became subject to great controversy in 2016 after the company Cambridge Analytica was revealed to have applied them with millions of people's breached facebook data to elect Donald Trump.

​Herman and Chomsky:
​
The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky which argues systemic biases exist in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes:

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

First presented in their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), the propaganda model views the private media as businesses selling a product – readers and audiences (rather than news) – to other businesses (advertisers) and relying primarily on government and corporate information and propaganda.

The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media: 
​
  1. Ownership of the medium,
  2. the medium's Funding,
  3. Sourcing of the news, 
  4. Flak,
  5. and anti-communist ideology.

The first three (ownership, funding, and sourcing) are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles the model postulates as the cause of media bias.

Self-propaganda:

Self-propaganda is a form of propaganda that refers to the act of an individual convincing them-self of something, no matter how irrational that idea may be. Self propaganda makes it easier for individuals to justify their own actions as well as the actions of others.

Self-propaganda works oftentimes to lessen the cognitive dissonance felt by individuals when their personal actions or the actions of their government do not line up with their moral beliefs. Self-propaganda is a type of self deception. Self-propaganda can have a negative impact on those who perpetuate the beliefs created by using self- propaganda

​Children​:

​Of all the potential targets for propaganda, children are the most vulnerable because they are the least prepared with the critical reasoning and contextual comprehension they need to determine whether a message is propaganda or not.

The attention children give their environment during development, due to the process of developing their understanding of the world, causes them to absorb propaganda indiscriminately.

Also, children are highly imitative: studies by Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross and Sheila A. Ross in the 1960s indicated that, to a degree, socialization, formal education and standardized television programming can be seen as using propaganda for the purpose of indoctrination.

The use of propaganda in schools was highly prevalent during the 1930s and 1940s in Germany in the form of the Hitler Youth.

John Taylor Gatto asserts that modern schooling in the USA is designed to "dumb us down" in order to turn children into material suitable to work in factories. This ties into the Herman and Chomsky thesis of rise of Corporate Power, and its use in creating educational systems which serve its purposes against those of democracy.

Anti-Semitic propaganda for children:

In Nazi Germany, the education system was thoroughly co-opted to indoctrinate the German youth with anti-Semitic ideology. From the 1920’s on, the Nazi Party targeted German youth as one of their special audience for its propaganda messages. Schools and texts mirrored what the Nazis aimed of instilling in German youth through the utilization and promotion of racial theory.

“A key in the rise of anti-Semitic propaganda for children was influenced by Julius Streicher, the editor of Der Sturmer (The Storm Trooper) and head of a publishing house used to disseminate anti-Semitic propaganda throughout the Hitler years. This was accomplished through the National Socialist Teachers League, of which 97% of all German teachers were members in 1937.

The League encouraged the teaching of racial theory. Picture books for children such as Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath, Der Giftpilz (translated into English as The Poisonous Mushroom) and The Poodle-Pug-Dachshund-Pincher were widely circulated (over 100,000 copies of Trust No Fox... were circulated during the late 1930s) and contained depictions of Jews as devils, child molesters and other morally charged figures.

Slogans such as "Judas the Jew betrayed Jesus the German to the Jews" were recited in class.

During the Nuremberg Trial, Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath, and Der Giftpilz were received as documents in evidence because they document the practices of the Nazi’s The following is an example of a propagandistic math problem recommended by the National Socialist Essence of Education: "The Jews are aliens in Germany—in 1933 there were 66,606,000 inhabitants in the German Reich, of whom 499,682 (.75%) were Jews."

​See also:






​
Political Ideologies, including a List Pictured below: YouTube: Political Culture and Ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially as held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones."

Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories and policies, in a tradition going back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, more recent use treats the term as mainly condemnatory.
​
The term was coined by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher, who conceived it in 1796 as the "science of ideas" to develop a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational impulses of the mob.

In political science, the term is used in a descriptive sense to refer to political belief systems.

Etymology and history:

​The term ideology originates from French idéologie, itself deriving from combining Greek: idéā ('notion, pattern'; close to the Lockean sense of idea) and -logíā (-λογῐ́ᾱ, 'the study of').

The term word, and the system of ideas associated with it, was coined in 1796 by Antoine Destutt de Tracy while in prison pending trial during the Reign of Terror, where he read the works of Locke and Condillac.Hoping to form a secure foundation for the moral and political sciences, Tracy devised the term for a "science of ideas," basing such upon two things:
  1. the sensations that people experience as they interact with the material world; and
  2. the ideas that form in their minds due to those sensations.

He conceived ideology as a liberal philosophy that would defend individual liberty, property, free markets, and constitutional limits on state power. He argues that, among these aspects, ideology is the most generic term because the 'science of ideas' also contains the study of their expression and deduction.

The coup that overthrew Maximilien Robespierre allowed Tracy to pursue his work.[ Tracy reacted to the terroristic phase of the revolution (during the Napoleonic regime) by trying to work out a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational mob impulses that had nearly destroyed him.

Perhaps the most accessible source for the near-original meaning of ideology is Hippolyte Taine's work on the Ancien Régime, Origins of Contemporary France I. He describes ideology as rather like teaching philosophy via the Socratic method, though without extending the vocabulary beyond what the general reader already possessed, and without the examples from observation that practical science would require. Taine identifies it not just with Destutt De Tracy, but also with his milieu, and includes Condillac as one of its precursors.

​Napoleon Bonaparte came to view ideology as a term of abuse, which he often hurled against his liberal foes in Tracy's Institutional. According to Karl Mannheim's historical reconstruction of the shifts in the meaning of ideology, the modern meaning of the word was born when Napoleon used it to describe his opponents as "the ideologues." Tracy's major book, The Elements of Ideology, was soon translated into the major languages of Europe.
In the century following Tracy, the term ideology moved back and forth between positive and negative connotations.

During this next generation, when post-Napoleonic governments adopted a reactionary stance, influenced the Italian, Spanish and Russian thinkers who had begun to describe themselves as "liberals" and who attempted to reignite revolutionary activity in the early 1820s, including the Carlist rebels in Spain; the Carbonari societies in France and Italy; and the Decembrists in Russia. Karl Marx adopted Napoleon's negative sense of the term, using it in his writings, in which he once described Tracy as a fischblütige Bourgeoisdoktrinär (a 'fish-blooded bourgeois doctrine').

The term has since dropped some of its pejorative sting, and has become a neutral term in the analysis of differing political opinions and views of social groups. While Marx situated the term within class struggle and domination, others believed it was a necessary part of institutional functioning and social integration.

Definitions and analysis:

There are many different kinds of ideologies, including political, social, epistemological, and ethical.

Recent analysis tends to posit that ideology is a 'coherent system of ideas' that rely on a few basic assumptions about reality that may or may not have any factual basis. Through this system, ideas become coherent, repeated patterns through the subjective ongoing choices that people make. These ideas serve as the seed around which further thought grows. Believers in ideology range from passive acceptance through fervent advocacy to true belief. According to most recent analysis, ideologies are neither necessarily right nor wrong.

Definitions, such as by Manfred Steger and Paul James emphasize both the issue of patterning and contingent claims to truth:

Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations. These conceptual maps help people navigate the complexity of their political universe and carry claims to social truth.

Studies of the concept of ideology itself (rather than specific ideologies) have been carried out under the name of systematic ideology in the works of George Walford and Harold Walsby, who attempt to explore the relationships between ideology and social systems.

David W. Minar describes six different ways the word ideology has been used:
  1. As a collection of certain ideas with certain kinds of content, usually normative;
  2. As the form or internal logical structure that ideas have within a set;
  3. By the role ideas play in human-social interaction;
  4. By the role ideas play in the structure of an organization;
  5. As meaning, whose purpose is persuasion; and
  6. As the locus of social interaction.

For Willard A. Mullins, an ideology should be contrasted with the related (but different) issues of utopia and historical myth.

An ideology is composed of four basic characteristics:
  1. it must have power over cognition;
  2. it must be capable of guiding one's evaluations;
  3. it must provide guidance towards action; and
  4. it must be logically coherent.

Terry Eagleton outlines (more or less in no particular order) some definitions of ideology:
  1. The process of production of meanings, signs and values in social life
  2. A body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class
  3. Ideas that help legitimate a dominant political power
  4. False ideas that help legitimate a dominant political power
  5. Systematically distorted communication
  6. Ideas that offer a position for a subject
  7. Forms of thought motivated by social interests
  8. Identity thinking
  9. Socially necessary illusion
  10. The conjuncture of discourse and power
  11. The medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world
  12. Action-oriented sets of beliefs
  13. The confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality
  14. Semiotic closure:197
  15. The indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure
  16. The process that converts social life to a natural reality

German philosopher Christian Duncker called for a "critical reflection of the ideology concept." In his work, he strove to bring the concept of ideology into the foreground, as well as the closely connected concerns of epistemology and history, defining ideology in terms of a system of presentations that explicitly or implicitly claim to absolute truth.

Marxist interpretation​:

In the Marxist base and superstructure model of society, base denotes the relations of production and modes of production, and superstructure denotes the dominant ideology (i.e. religious, legal, political systems).

The economic base of production determines the political superstructure of a society. Ruling class-interests determine the superstructure and the nature of the justifying ideology—actions feasible because the ruling class control the means of production.

For example, in a feudal mode of production, religious ideology is the most prominent aspect of the superstructure, while in capitalist formations, ideologies such as liberalism and social democracy dominate. Hence the great importance of the ideology justifying a society; it politically confuses the alienated groups of society via false consciousness.

Some explanations have been presented. György Lukács proposes ideology as a projection of the class consciousness of the ruling class. Antonio Gramsci uses cultural hegemony to explain why the working-class have a false ideological conception of what their best interests are. Marx argued that "The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production."

The Marxist formulation of "ideology as an instrument of social reproduction" is conceptually important to the sociology of knowledge, viz. Karl Mannheim, Daniel Bell, and Jürgen Habermas et al. Moreover, Mannheim has developed, and progressed, from the "total" but "special" Marxist conception of ideology to a "general" and "total" ideological conception acknowledging that all ideology (including Marxism) resulted from social life, an idea developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Slavoj Žižek and the earlier Frankfurt School added to the "general theory" of ideology a psychoanalytic insight that ideologies do not include only conscious, but also unconscious ideas.

Ideological state apparatuses (Althusser):

French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser proposed that ideology is "the imagined existence (or idea) of things as it relates to the real conditions of existence" and makes use of a lacunar discourse. A number of propositions, which are never untrue, suggest a number of other propositions, which are. In this way, the essence of the lacunar discourse is what is not told (but is suggested).

For example, the statement "All are equal before the law," which is a theoretical groundwork of current legal systems, suggests that all people may be of equal worth or have equal opportunities.

This is not true, for the concept of private property and power over the means of production results in some people being able to own more (much more) than others. This power disparity contradicts the claim that all share both practical worth and future opportunity equally; for example, the rich can afford better legal representation, which practically privileges them before the law.

Althusser also proffered the concept of the ideological state apparatus to explain his theory of ideology. His first thesis was "ideology has no history": while individual ideologies have histories, interleaved with the general class struggle of society, the general form of ideology is external to history.

For Althusser, beliefs and ideas are the products of social practices, not the reverse. His thesis that "ideas are material" is illustrated by the "scandalous advice" of Pascal toward unbelievers: "Kneel and pray, and then you will believe." What is ultimately ideological for

Althusser are not the subjective beliefs held in the conscious "minds" of human individuals, but rather discourses that produce these beliefs, the material institutions and rituals that individuals take part in without submitting it to conscious examination and so much more critical thinking.

Ideology and the Commodity (Debord):

The French Marxist theorist Guy Debord, founding member of the Situationist International, argued that when the commodity becomes the "essential category" of society, i.e. when the process of commodification has been consummated to its fullest extent, the image of society propagated by the commodity (as it describes all of life as constituted by notions and objects deriving their value only as commodities tradeable in terms of exchange value), colonizes all of life and reduces society to a mere representation, The Society of the Spectacle.

Ideology and rationality (Vietta):

German cultural historian Silvio Vietta described the development and expansion of Western rationality from ancient times onward as often accompanied by and shaped by ideologies like that of the "just war," the "true religion," racism, nationalism, or the vision of future history as a kind of 'heaven on earth' in communism.

He said that ideas like these became ideologies by giving hegemonic political actions an idealistic veneer and equipping their leaders with a higher and, in the "political religions" (Eric Voegelin), nearly God-like power, so that they became masters over the lives (and the deaths) of millions of people. He considered that ideologies therefore contributed to power politics irrational shields of ideas beneath which they could operate as manifestations of idealism.

Unifying agents (Hoffer):

The American philosopher Eric Hoffer identified several elements that unify followers of a particular ideology:
  1. Hatred: "Mass movements can rise and spread without a God, but never without belief in a devil." The "ideal devil" is a foreigner.
  2. Imitation: "The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others…the more we mistrust our judgment and luck, the more are we ready to follow the example of others."
  3. Persuasion: The proselytizing zeal of propagandists derives from "a passionate search for something not yet found more than a desire to bestow something we already have."
  4. Coercion: Hoffer asserts that violence and fanaticism are interdependent. People forcibly converted to Islamic or communist beliefs become as fanatical as those who did the forcing. "It takes fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice."
  5. Leadership: Without the leader, there is no movement. Often the leader must wait long in the wings until the time is ripe. He calls for sacrifices in the present, to justify his vision of a breathtaking future. The skills required include: audacity, brazenness, iron will, fanatical conviction; passionate hatred, cunning, a delight in symbols; ability to inspire blind faith in the masses; and a group of able lieutenants.
  6. Charlatanism is indispensable, and the leader often imitates both friend and foe, "a single-minded fashioning after a model." He will not lead followers towards the "promised land," but only "away from their unwanted selves."
  7. Action: Original thoughts are suppressed, and unity encouraged, if the masses are kept occupied through great projects, marches, exploration and industry.
  8. Suspicion: "There is prying and spying, tense watching and a tense awareness of being watched." This pathological mistrust goes unchallenged and encourages conformity, not dissent.

Ronald Inglehart:

Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan is author of the World Values Survey, which, since 1980, has mapped social attitudes in 100 countries representing 90% of global population. Results indicate that where people live is likely to closely correlate with their ideological beliefs.

In much of Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, people prefer traditional beliefs and are less tolerant of liberal values. Protestant Europe, at the other extreme, adheres more to secular beliefs and liberal values. Alone among high-income countries, the United States is exceptional in its adherence to traditional beliefs, in this case Christianity.

Political ideologies:
See also: List of political ideologies

In social studies, a political ideology is a certain ethical set of ideals, principles, doctrines, myths, or symbols of a social movement, institution, class, or large group that explains how society should work, offering some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order.

Political ideologies are concerned with many different aspects of a society, including (for example):
Political ideologies have two dimensions:
  1. Goals: how society should work; and
  2. Methods : the most appropriate ways to achieve the ideal arrangement.

There are many proposed methods for the classification of political ideologies, each of these different methods generate a specific political spectrum. Ideologies also identify themselves by their position on the spectrum (e.g. the left, the center or the right), though precision in this respect can often become controversial. Finally, ideologies can be distinguished from political strategies (e.g., populism) and from single issues that a party may be built around (e.g. legalization of marijuana).

Philosopher Michael Oakeshott defines such ideology as "the formalized abridgment of the supposed sub-stratum of the rational truth contained in the tradition." Moreover, Charles Blattberg offers an account that distinguishes political ideologies from political philosophies.

A political ideology largely concerns itself with how to allocate power and to what ends power should be used. Some parties follow a certain ideology very closely, while others may take broad inspiration from a group of related ideologies without specifically embracing any one of them.

Each political ideology contains certain ideas on what it considers the best form of government (e.g., democracy, demagogy, theocracy, caliphate etc.), and the best economic system (e.g. capitalism, socialism, etc.). Sometimes the same word is used to identify both an ideology and one of its main ideas. For instance, socialism may refer to an economic system, or it may refer to an ideology that supports that economic system.

After 1991, many commentators claim that we are living in a post-ideological age, in which redemptive, all-encompassing ideologies have failed. This view is often associated with Francis Fukuyama's writings on the end of history. Contrastly, Nienhueser (2011) sees research (in the field of human resource management) as ongoingly "generating ideology."

Slavoj Zizek has pointed out how the very notion of post-ideology can enable the deepest, blindest form of ideology. A sort of false consciousness or false cynicism, engaged in for the purpose of lending one's point of view the respect of being objective, pretending neutral cynicism, without truly being so. Rather than help avoiding ideology, this lapse only deepens the commitment to an existing one. Zizek calls this "a post-modernist trap." Peter Sloterdijk advanced the same idea already in 1988.

There are also several studies that show that affinity to a specific political ideology is heritable.

Ideocracy:

When a political ideology becomes a dominantly pervasive component within a government, one can speak of an ideocracy. Different forms of government utilize ideology in various ways, not always restricted to politics and society. Certain ideas and schools of thought become favored, or rejected, over others, depending on their compatibility with or use for the reigning social order.

As John Maynard Keynes expresses, "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."

How do ideologies become part of government policy? In The Anatomy of Revolution, Crane Brinton said that new ideology spreads when there is discontent with an old regime.

Extremists such as Lenin and Robespierre will overcome more moderate revolutionaries. This stage is soon followed by Thermidor, a reining back of revolutionary enthusiasm under pragmatists like Stalin and Napoleon Bonaparte, who bring "normalcy and equilibrium."

Briton's sequence ("men of ideas>fanatics>practical men of action") is reiterated by J. William Fulbright, while a similar form occurs in Eric Hoffer's The True Believer. The revolution thus becomes established as an ideocracy, though its rise is likely to be checked by a 'political midlife crisis.'

​Epistemological ideologies:
​
Even when the challenging of existing beliefs is encouraged, as in scientific theories, the dominant paradigm or mindset can prevent certain challenges, theories, or experiments from being advanced.

A special case of science that has inspired ideology is ecology, which studies the relationships among living things on Earth. Perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson believed that human perception of ecological relationships was the basis of self-awareness and cognition itself. Linguist George Lakoff has proposed a cognitive science of mathematics wherein even the most fundamental ideas of arithmetic would be seen as consequences or products of human perception—which is itself necessarily evolved within an ecology.

Deep ecology and the modern ecology movement (and, to a lesser degree, Green parties) appear to have adopted ecological sciences as a positive ideology.

Some accuse ecological economics of likewise turning scientific theory into political economy, although theses in that science can often be tested. The modern practice of green economics fuses both approaches and seems to be part science, part ideology.

This is far from the only theory of economics raised to ideology status. Some notable economically based ideologies include: 
​There are also current theories of safe trade and fair trade that can be seen as ideologies.

Ideology and the social sciences:

Psychological research:

A large amount of research in psychology is concerned with the causes, consequences and content of ideology. According to system justification theory, ideologies reflect (unconscious) motivational processes, as opposed to the view that political convictions always reflect independent and unbiased thinking.

Jost, Ledgerwood and Hardin (2008) propose that ideologies may function as prepackaged units of interpretation that spread because of basic human motives to understand the world, avoid existential threat, and maintain valued interpersonal relationships. The authors conclude that such motives may lead disproportionately to the adoption of system-justifying worldviews.

Psychologists generally agree that personality traits, individual difference variables, needs, and ideological beliefs seem to have something in common.

Semiotic theory:

According to semiotician Bob Hodge, [Ideology] identifies a unitary object that incorporates complex sets of meanings with the social agents and processes that produced them. No other term captures this object as well as 'ideology'. Foucault's 'episteme' is too narrow and abstract, not social enough.

His 'discourse', popular because it covers some of ideology's terrain with less baggage, is too confined to verbal systems. 'Worldview' is too metaphysical, 'propaganda' too loaded. Despite or because of its contradictions, 'ideology' still plays a key role in semiotics oriented to social, political life.

Authors such as Michael Freeden have also recently incorporated a semantic analysis to the study of ideologies.

Sociology:

Sociologists define ideology as "cultural beliefs that justify particular social arrangements, including patterns of inequality." Dominant groups use these sets of cultural beliefs and practices to justify the systems of inequality that maintain their group's social power over non-dominant groups.

Ideologies use a society's symbol system to organize social relations in a hierarchy, with some social identities being superior to other social identities, which are considered inferior.

The dominant ideology in a society is passed along through the society's major social institutions, such as the media, the family, education, and religion. As societies changed throughout history, so did the ideologies that justified systems of inequality.

Sociological examples of ideologies include: 
Quotations:
  • "We do not need…to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities. The need for a sense of universal responsibility affects every aspect of modern life." — Dalai Lama.
  • "The function of ideology is to stabilize and perpetuate dominance through masking or illusion." — Sally Haslanger
  • "[A]n ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for all the ‘riddles of the universe,’ or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws, which are supposed to rule nature and man." — Hannah Arendt

​See also:







The Lincoln Project (Official website) Pictured below: ​Why I joined the Lincoln Project: It's leading the 2020 fight to repel Trump and Trumpism (Please click on embedded Video)
The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee formed in late 2019 by several current and former Republicans. The goal of the committee is to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and defeat his supporters in the United States Senate.

In April 2020, the committee announced their endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

History:

The committee was announced on December 17, 2019, in a New York Times op-ed by George Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson. Other co-founders include Jennifer Horn, Ron Steslow, Reed Galen, and Mike Madrid.

Conway is an attorney and the husband of Kellyanne Conway, a former advisor to Trump; Schmidt managed John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, Weaver oversaw McCain's presidential campaign in 2000, and Wilson is a media consultant. All four are outspoken critics of Trump; Schmidt left the Republican Party in 2018. 

Jennifer Rubin, in a Washington Post op-ed, described the four founders as "Some of the most prominent NeverTrump Republicans." Horn is a Republican operative and former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party, Steslow is a marketing strategist and political consultant,[ Galen is an independent political consultant, and Madrid is a former political director for the California Republican Party. Galen serves as the Lincoln Project's treasurer.

The committee is named for Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who fought to keep the country unified. On February 27, 1860, Lincoln delivered his Cooper Union speech in Manhattan during his campaign to be the first Republican president. Several members of the committee—Schmidt, Wilson, Horn, Galen, Madrid, and Steslow—spoke in the same venue on the 160th anniversary of that talk, from the lectern that Lincoln had used.

The group was outspoken in their criticism of Trump and the current divide in the Republican party, with Madrid saying that "two views cannot exist in one party" and Steslow saying he will "vote blue no matter who." Schmidt warned that a second term with Trump would be "unrestrained and validated."

The members of Lincoln Project's advisory board—Conway, Schmidt, Weaver, Wilson, and Reed Galen—published another op-ed in The Washington Post on April 15, 2020, endorsing the presidential candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, writing: "We’ve never backed a Democrat for president. But Trump must be defeated." The op-ed argued that Trump was unqualified to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ensuing economic downturn.

Stuart Stevens announced, on May 28, 2020, that he had joined the project. Stevens had previously been the chief strategist for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012. Prior to that, he had worked for George W. Bush and Bob Dole.

Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, is an adviser to the project.

On June 2, 2020, the project announced the release of their podcast, Republicans Defeating Trump (later renamed The Lincoln Project), hosted by Ron Steslow.

On August 23, 2020, Kellyanne Conway announced that she was leaving her White House position to spend more time with her family. At the same time, George Conway announced that he was withdrawing from The Lincoln Project for similar reasons.

On August 24, 2020, Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele announced that he would be joining the Lincoln Project.

Television ads:

The Lincoln Project has produced a number of anti-Trump and pro-Biden television advertisements. The Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called the project's ads "devastating for several reasons: They are produced with lightning speed, and thereby catch the public debate at just the right moment; they hammer Trump where he is personally most vulnerable (e.g., concerns about his vigor, concerns about foreign corruption); and they rely to a large extent on Trump himself—his words and actions."

About two-thirds of the group's television advertisements focus on the 2020 presidential election, but the Lincoln Project has also created ads backing Democrats in other races, such as an ad in Montana promoting Governor Steve Bullock's Senate candidacy against incumbent Republican Steve Daines.

Additionally, they have released videos attacking Republican Senators Cory Gardner, Martha McSally, Thom Tillis, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, all of whom are up for reelection in 2020, as enablers of Trump.

Note below YouTube Videos of videos the group released to the public:

On March 17, 2020, the committee released a video titled Unfit, which criticized Trump for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
​
On May 4, 2020, the group released Mourning in America, a video styled after Ronald Reagan's Morning in America 1984 campaign ad. It focused on Trump's handling of the coronavirus crisis, and asserted that the country was "weaker and sicker and poor[er]" under President Trump's leadership:


On June 1, 2020, the Lincoln Project released another ad, Flag of Treason, that blasted Trump's record on race relations in the U.S., highlighted the use of the Confederate battle flag by Trump supporters at Trump rallies, and emphasized the support Trump has received from white nationalists. Both ads ran on television in crucial swing states.


In early June 2020, the Lincoln Project released an ad, Mattis, that repeated criticisms of Trump by former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, following the Lafayette Square and Saint John's Church attacks against protesters, and asked viewers, "Who do you trust: the coward or the commander?"
​
The ad also criticized Trump for having "dodged the draft" and for hiding "in a deep bunker—firing off tweets."

On June 17, 2020, the Lincoln Project released two ads. The first, entitled #TrumpIsNotWell, ran 45 seconds and showed a video of Trump walking slowly and haltingly down a ramp at West Point, and a video of Trump appearing to struggle to lift a glass of water, with narration suggesting that Trump was physically unfit.

The ad's voiceover said, over images of Trump: "He's shaky, weak, trouble speaking, trouble walking. So why aren't we talking about this? The most powerful office in the world needs more than a weak, unfit, shaky president. Trump doesn't have the strength to lead, nor the character to admit."

The ad was controversial: some observers viewed it as appropriate in light of Trump's past comments and mockery about the health of his rivals, while disability rights activist Rebecca Cokley of the Center for American Progress criticized the ad as ableist. The second ad released on June 17, Tulsa, criticized Trump for planning a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma (the site of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre) on Juneteenth, a holiday marking the abolition of African American slavery.

On June 18, 2020, the Lincoln Project released an ad entitled Chyna, attacking Trump on his China policy, with narration saying "They know who Donald Trump is: weak, corrupt, ridiculed, China beats him every time. No matter what he says, China's got his number."

The ad attacks Trump for his handling of the trade war with China and makes reference to Ivanka Trump's business dealings in China, including the Chinese government's grant of trademarks to her.

The project released the ad just after Trump's former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, published an excerpt from his memoir, in which Bolton wrote that Trump asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to assist him in getting elected and had told Xi that he should continue building internment camps detaining Uyghurs. The ad makes reference to Bolton's book The Room Where It Happened.

In late June and early July 2020, the Lincoln Project released two ads, entitled Bounty and Betrayed, attacking Trump for failing to respond to U.S. intelligence reports of a Russian bounty program targeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 

In Bounty, a narrator says, "Now we know Vladimir Putin pays a bounty for the murder of American soldiers. Donald Trump knows too and does nothing."


In Betrayed, a former Navy SEAL and emergency room doctor Dan Barkhuff says that "any commander-in-chief with a spine would be stomping the living shit out of some Russians right now—diplomatically, economically, or, if necessary, with the sort of asymmetric warfare they're using to send our kids home in body bags." Barkhuff calls Trump "either a coward who can't stand up to an ex-KGB goon" or "complicit."


The ad entitled Fellow Traveler says in Russian with English subtitles that "Comrade Trump" has once again the blessing of Russia. The ad features communist imagery such as the hammer and sickle, as well as photographs of Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and Soviet leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev.


The group has on occasion released collaborations with figures from the TV and film industry: the ad "Debt" was written by John Orloff, while the ad "Wake Up" was written and directed by Jon Turteltaub.



Fundraising and expenditures:

From its creation to the end of March 2020, the Lincoln Project had raised $2.6 million in contributions and spent $1.4 million of that sum.

Although the Lincoln Project has raised and spent far less than other PACs, the group has achieved success in having its ads go viral and with its "nontraditional strategy of playing mind games with the president." 

The group has few major donors. The top contributors are hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel, who gave $1 million; Silicon Valley investors Ron Conway, Michael Moritz and Chris Sacca, Hollywood producer David Geffen, financier Andrew Redleaf, Walmart heiress and philanthropist Christy Walton, Martha Karsh, who is married to billionaire financier Bruce Karsh, and Continental Cablevision CEO Amos Hostetter Jr.

About 59% of the group's total fundraising comes from small donors ($200 or less). The group's expenditures are mostly in producing, buying, and placing ads.

The Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign-finance watchdog group, wrote that (like most PACs) most of the Lincoln Project's money went to pay subcontractors, "making it difficult to follow the money" to vendors, and that "almost all" of the money raised went to firms run by the group's board members, specifically Galen's Summit Strategic Communications and Steslow's Tusk Digital.

Strategies:

Politico said that the Lincoln Project "successfully established itself as a squatter in Trump's mental space, thanks to several factors: members each boasting hundreds of thousands of social media followers, rapidly cut ads that respond to current events and a single-minded focus on buying airtime wherever Trump is most likely to be bingeing cable news that day, whether it's the D.C. market or his golf courses across the country."

Quoting co-founder George Conway as saying that the project takes advantage of Trump's narcissistic reactivity, inability to take criticism, and inability to think ahead, Roxanne Roberts wrote in The Washington Post that the project's ads are "specifically designed to trigger the president" so that he "talk(s) about things he shouldn’t be talking about", in effect "raising millions of dollars...for the Lincoln Project".

Joanna Weiss of Northeastern University's Experience magazine wrote in Politico that most of the Lincoln Project's ads "pack an emotional punch, using imagery designed to provoke anxiety, anger and fear—aimed at the very voters who were driven to (Trump) by those same feelings in 2016", citing scientific research indicating that fear-mongering ads might be effective with Republican voters. Project co-founder Reed Galen described the strategy as "(speaking) to Republican voters with Republican language and Republican iconography".

In addition to targeting the Washington media market and thus Trump himself, the project has also targeted swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and has spent money against Republican Senate candidates in Arizona, Iowa, Montana, and other states.

Influence:

Project co-founder Reed Galen has said some of the ads are meant for an audience of one: Trump himself. The Lincoln Project's feud with Trump enhanced its national profile, including through earned media, and the group said it raised $1.4 million after Trump's tweets responding to the May 4, 2020 Mourning in America video.

Characterizing the project's ads as "brutal", political science professor Lincoln Mitchell wrote on CNN that "they seem to have been successful at getting inside Trump's head" and that their work is "attracting attention across and beyond the political spectrum".

However, Mitchell said that the project's expenditures (July 2020) are nowhere near enough to buy enough airtime on television—still America's most popular news source—to reach uncommitted voters, and that it is uncertain whether the ability to trend on social media will translate into votes for Joe Biden. 

A May 20, 2020 ad entitled GOP Cribs, which highlights the significant wealth Trump campaign chairman Brad Parscale had built up while working for Trump, is believed to have played a role in Parscale's demotion.
Reception:

In an interview with MSNBC's Brian Williams, Democratic strategist James Carville praised the group for being more efficient and aggressive than Democratic PACs, saying: "Let me tell you, the Lincoln group and The Bulwark, these Never Trumper Republicans, the Democrats could learn a lot from them. They're mean. They fight hard. And we don't fight like that."

Writing in The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin said the Lincoln Project stood "head and shoulders above all the rest in the hard work of beating back President Trump and Trumpism" and wrote of the group's founders: "They made their careers helping to elect Republicans, but in the era of Trump, they have put partisanship aside in the cause of patriotism and defense of American democracy. Their ads have been the most effective and memorable of the presidential campaign, singeing Trump in a way Democrats have not quite mastered."

Author and columnist Max Boot praised the Lincoln Project for "turning out brilliant videos at a relentless pace that puts most political organizations to shame" and for seeking to demolish "the Trumpified GOP" and replace it with "a sane and sober center-right party in America." Boot wrote that the Lincoln Project's founders, by "leading the charge against the Republican Party, ... have shown greater fealty to conservative principles than 99 percent of elected Republicans."

The Lincoln Project was criticized by former Mitt Romney campaign staffer Oren Cass. Writing in The Atlantic, Andrew Ferguson described the ads as "personally abusive, overwrought, pointlessly salacious, and trip-wired with non sequiturs."

Jeet Heer wrote in The Nation that "To the extent that the ads articulate any political vision, it is a desire to return to the hard-line military aggression of the George W. Bush era."

See also:







​Foreign electoral intervention Pictured below: Impeachment Report Says Trump Solicited Foreign Election Interference (NY Times): see below
New York Times Article Above:

The House Intelligence Committee concluded that President Trump tried to “use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election.” (Dec. 13, 2019 report)

Click here to read full report by the New York Times.

Foreign electoral interventions (Wikipedia article) are attempts by governments, covertly or overtly, to influence elections in another country.

There are many ways that nations have accomplished regime change abroad, and electoral intervention is only one of those methods.

Theoretical and empirical research on the effect of foreign electoral intervention had been characterized as weak overall as late as 2011; however, since then a number of such studies have been conducted.

One study indicated that the country intervening in most foreign elections is the United States with 81 interventions, followed by Russia (including the former Soviet Union) with 36 interventions from 1946 to 2000—an average of once in every nine competitive elections.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Foreign electoral interventions:







Political Globalization vs. Nationalism Pictured below: Political Globalization through the United Nations: "44 countries to present their progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals at HLPF 2017"
Pictured below: The Rise of Nationalism Could Put Takeovers on Ice (Bloomberg Businessweek)
​Political globalization refers to the growth of the worldwide political system, both in size and complexity. That system includes national governments, their governmental and intergovernmental organizations as well as government-independent elements of global civil society such as international non-governmental organizations and social movement organizations.

One of the key aspects of the political globalization is the declining importance of the nation-state and the rise of other actors on the political scene. The creation and existence of the United Nations is called one of the classic examples of political globalization.

Political globalization is one of the three main dimensions of globalization commonly found in academic literature, with the two other being economic globalization and cultural globalization.

Definitions:
​
William R. Thompson has defined it as "the expansion of a global political system, and its institutions, in which inter-regional transactions (including, but certainly not limited to trade) are managed".

Valentine M. Moghadam defined it as "an increasing trend toward multilateralism (in which the United Nations plays a key role), to an emerging 'transnational state apparatus,' and toward the emergence of national and international nongovernmental organizations that act as watchdogs over governments and have increased their activities and influence".

Manfred B. Steger in turn wrote that it "refers to the intensification and expansion of political interrelations across the globe". The longer definition by Colin Crouch goes as follows: "Political globalization refers to the growing power of institutions of global governance such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

But it also refers to the spread and influence of international non-governmental organizations, social movement organizations and transnational advocacy networks operating across borders and constituting a kind of global civil society."

Finally, Gerard Delanty and Chris Rumford define it as "a tension between three processes which interact to produce the complex field of global politics: global geopolitics, global normative culture and polycentric networks."

Methodology:

Salvatore Babones discussing sources used by scholars for studying political globalizations noted the usefulness of Europa World Year Book for data on diplomatic relationships between countries, publications of International Institute for Strategic Studies such as The Military Balance for matters of military, and US government publication Patterns of Global Terrorism for matters of terrorism.

Political globalization is measured by aggregating and weighting data on the number of embassies and high commissioners in a country, the number of the country's membership in international organization, its participation in the UN peacekeeping missions, and the number of international treaties signed by said country. This measure has been used by Axel Dreher, Noel Gaston, Pim Martens and Jeffrey Haynes and is available from the KOF institute at ETH Zurich.

Aspects:

Like globalization itself, political globalization has several dimensions and lends itself to a number of interpretations. It has been discussed in the context of new emancipatory possibilities, as well as in the context of loss of autonomy and fragmentation of the social world.

Political globalization can be seen in changes such as democratization of the world, creation of the global civil society, and moving beyond the centrality of the nation-state, particularly as the sole actor in the field of politics.

Some of the questions central to the discussion of the political globalization are related to the future of the nation-state, whether its importance is diminishing and what are the causes for those changes; and understanding the emergence of the concept of global governance.

The creation and existence of the United Nations has been called one of the classic examples of political globalization. Political actions by non-governmental organizations and social movements, concerned about various topics such as environmental protection, is another example.

David Held has proposed that continuing political globalization may lead to the creation of a world government-like cosmopolitan democracy, though this vision has also been criticized as too idealistic.

Political Globalization and Nation State:

There is a heated debate over Political Globalization and Nation State. The question arises whether or not political globalization signifies the decline of the nation-state. Hyper globalists argue that globalization has engulfed today's world in such a way that state boundaries are beginning to lose significance. However, skeptics disregard this as naiveté, believing that the nation-state remains the supreme actor in international relations. 

See also: ___________________________________________________________________________

American nationalism, or United States nationalism, is a form of civic nationalism, cultural nationalism, economic nationalism or ethnic nationalism found in the United States.

Essentially, it indicates the aspects that characterize and distinguish the United States as an autonomous political community. The term often serves to explain efforts to reinforce its national identity and self-determination within their national and international affairs.

All four forms of nationalism have found expression throughout the United States' history, depending on the historical period. American scholars such as Hans Kohn state that the United States government institutionalized a civic nationalism founded upon legal and rational concepts of citizenship, being based on common language and cultural traditions.

The Founding Fathers of the United States established the country upon classical liberal and individualist principles, although forms of ethnic nationalism were also present, as codified in the Naturalization Act of 1790.

History:

The United States traces its origins to the Thirteen Colonies founded by Britain in the 17th and early 18th century. Residents identified with Britain until the mid-18th century when the first sense of being "American" emerged. The Albany Plan proposed a union between the colonies in 1754. Although unsuccessful, it served as a reference for future discussions of independence.

Soon afterward, the colonies faced several common grievances over acts passed by the British Parliament, including taxation without representation. Americans were in general agreement that only their own colonial legislatures—and not Parliament in London—could pass taxes. Parliament vigorously insisted otherwise and no compromise was found.

The London government punished Boston for the Boston Tea Party and the Thirteen Colonies united and formed the Continental Congress, which lasted from 1774 to 1789.

Fighting broke out in 1775 and the sentiment swung to independence in early 1776, influenced especially by the appeal to American nationalism by Thomas Paine. His pamphlet Common Sense was a runaway best seller in 1776.

Congress unanimously issued a Declaration of Independence announcing a new nation had formed, the United States of America. American Patriots won the American Revolutionary War and received generous peace terms from Britain in 1783.

The minority of Loyalists (loyal to King George III) could remain or leave, but about 80% remained and became full American citizens. Frequent parades along with new rituals and ceremonies—and a new flag—provided popular occasions for expressing a spirit of American nationalism.

The new nation operated under the very weak national government set up by the Articles of Confederation and most Americans put loyalty to their state ahead of loyalty to the nation.

Nationalists led by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison had Congress call a constitutional convention in 1787. It produced the Constitution for a strong national government which was debated in every state and unanimously adopted. It went into effect in 1789 with Washington as the first President.

In an 1858 speech, future President Abraham Lincoln alluded to a form of American civic nationalism originating from the tenets of the Declaration of Independence as a force for national unity in the United States, stating that it was a method for uniting diverse peoples of different ethnic ancestries into a common nationality:

"If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal", and then they feel that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote the Declaration, and so they are.

That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world"
— Abraham Lincoln, address to Chicagoan voters, July 10, 1858 (above)

American Civil War:

White Southerners increasingly felt alienated—they saw themselves as becoming second-class citizens as aggressive anti-slavery Northerners tried to end their ability to take slave property to the fast-growing western territories. They questioned whether their loyalty to the nation trumped their loyalty to their state and their way of life since it was so intimately bound up with slavery, whether they owned any slaves or not.

A sense of Southern nationalism was starting to emerge, though it was inchoate as late as 1860 when the election of Lincoln was a signal for most of the slave states in the South to secede and form their own new nation. The Confederate government insisted the nationalism was real and imposed increasing burdens on the population in the name of independence and nationalism.

The fierce combat record of the Confederates demonstrates their commitment to the death for independence. The government and army refused to compromise and were militarily overwhelmed in 1865. By the 1890s, the white South felt vindicated through its belief in the newly constructed memory of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The North came to accept or at least tolerate racial segregation and disfranchisement of black voters in the South. The spirit of American nationalism had returned to Dixie.

The North's triumph in the American Civil War marked a significant transition in American national identity. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment settled the basic question of national identity, such as the criteria for becoming a citizen of the United States.

Everyone born in the territorial boundaries of the United States or those areas and subject to its jurisdiction was an American citizen, regardless of ethnicity or social status (Indians on reservations became citizens in 1924 while Indians off reservations had always been citizens).

With a very fast growing industrial economy, immigrants were welcome from Europe, Canada, Mexico and Cuba and millions came. Becoming a full citizen was an easy process of filling out paperwork over a five-year span.

However, new Asian arrivals were not welcome. Restrictions were imposed on most Chinese immigrants in the 1880s and informal restrictions on most Japanese in 1907. By 1924, it was difficult for any Asian to enter the United States, but children born in the United States to Asian parents were full citizens. The restrictions were ended on the Chinese in the 1940s and on other Asians in 1965.

​Nationalism in the contemporary United States:

Nationalism and Americanism remain topics in the modern United States. Political scientist Paul McCartney, for instance, argues that as a nation defined by a creed and sense of mission Americans tend to equate their interests with those of humanity, which in turn informs their global posture. In certain cases, it may be considered a form of ethnocentrism and American exceptionalism.

Due to the distinctive circumstances involved throughout history in American politics, its nationalism has developed in regards to both loyalty to a set of liberal, universal political ideals and a perceived accountability to propagate those principles globally. Acknowledging the conception of the United States as accountable for spreading liberal change and promoting democracy throughout the world's politics and governance has defined practically all of American foreign policy.

Therefore, democracy promotion is not just another measure of foreign policy, but it is rather the fundamental characteristic of their national identity and political determination.

The September 11 attacks of 2001 led to a wave of nationalist expression in the United States. This was accompanied by a rise in military enlistment that included not only lower-income Americans, but also middle-class and upper-class citizens.

Varieties of American nationalism:

In a paper in the American Sociological Review, "Varieties of American Popular Nationalism", sociologists Bart Bonikowski and Paul DiMaggio report on research findings supporting the existence of at least four kinds of American nationalists, including, groups which range from the smallest to the largest: (1) the disengaged, (2) creedal or civic nationalists, (3) ardent nationalists, and (4) restrictive nationalists.

Bonikowski and Dimaggio's analysis of these four groups found that ardent nationalists made up about 24% of their study, and they comprised the largest of the two groups which Bonikowski and Dimaggio consider "extreme". Members of this group closely identified with the United States, were very proud of their country, and strongly associated themselves with factors of national hubris.

However, although they felt that a "true American" must speak English, and live in the U.S. for most of his or her life, they rejected the belief that a "true American" must be a Christian who was born in the country.

Nevertheless, ardent nationalists did not believe that Jews, Muslims, agnostics and naturalized citizens were true Americans. The second class which Bonikowski and DiMaggio considered "extreme" was the smallest of the four classes, because its members made up 17% of their respondents. 

​The disengaged showed low levels of pride in the institutions of government and they did not fully identify themselves with the United States. Their lack of pride extended to American democracy, American history, the political equality in the U.S., and the country's political influence in the world. This group was the least nationalistic of all of the four groups which they identified.

​The two remaining classes were less homogeneous in their responses than the ardent nationalists and disengaged were. Restrictive nationalists had low levels of pride in America and its institutions, but they defined a "true American" in ways that were markedly "exclusionary".

This group was the largest of the four, because its members made up 38% of the study's respondents. While their levels of national identification and pride were moderate, they espoused beliefs which caused them to hold restrictive definitions of who "true Americans" were, for instance, their definitions excluded non-Christians."

The final group to be identified were creedal nationalists, whose members made up 22% of the study's respondents who were studied. This group believed in liberal values, was proud of the United States, and its members held the fewest restrictions on who could be considered a true American. They closely identified with their country, which they felt "very close" to, and were proud of its achievements. Bonikowski and Dimaggio dubbed the group "creedal" because their beliefs most closely approximated the precepts of what is widely considered the American creed.

As part of their findings, the authors report that the connection between religious belief and national identity is a significant one. The belief that being a Christian is an important part of what it means to be a "true American" is the most significant factor which separates the creedal nationalists and the disengaged from the restrictive and ardent nationalists.

They also determined that their groupings cut across partisan boundaries, and they also help to explain what they perceive is the recent success of populist, nativist and racist rhetoric in American politics, exemplified by the election of Donald Trump.

Trump presidency:
See also: New Nationalism (21st century) § United States, and Trumpism

Donald Trump flag:

President Donald Trump has been described as a nationalist and has embraced the term himself. Several current and former officials within his administration have been described as representing a "nationalist wing" within the federal government , including the following:
In a February 2017 article in The Atlantic, journalist Uri Friedman described "populist economic nationalist" as a new nationalist movement "modeled on the 'populism' of the 19th-century U.S. President Andrew Jackson" which was introduced in Trump's remarks to the Republican National Convention in a speech written by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon.

Miller had adopted Sessions' form of "nation-state populism" while working as his aide. 

By September 2017, The Washington Post journalist Greg Sargent observed that "Trump's nationalism" as "defined" by Bannon, Breitbart, Miller and "the rest of the 'populist economic nationalist' contingent around Trump", was beginning to have wavering support among Trump voters.

Some Republican members of Congress have also been described as nationalists, such as:
During the Trump era, commonly identified American nationalist political commentators include: 
​See also:






​
Dark Money in United States Political Campaigns Pictured below: Film Review: Kimberly Reed’s “Dark Money” is a horrifying look at the money behind American politics
In the politics of the United States, dark money refers to political spending by nonprofit organizations — for example, 501(c)(4) (social welfare) 501(c)(5) (unions) and 501(c)(6) (trade association) groups — that are not required to disclose their donors. Such organizations can receive unlimited donations from corporations, individuals and unions.

In this way, their donors can spend funds to influence elections, without voters knowing where the money came from. Dark money first entered politics with Buckley v. Valeo (1976) when the United States Supreme Court laid out Eight Magic Words that define the difference between electioneering and issue advocacy.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), spending by organizations that do not disclose their donors has increased from less than $5.2 million in 2006 to well over $300 million in the 2012 presidential cycle and more than $174 million in the 2014 midterms."

The New York Times editorial board has opined that the 2014 midterm elections were influenced by "the greatest wave of secret, special-interest money ever raised in a congressional election."

CRP also noted that the 2010 landmark case, Citizens United v. FEC, marked the turning point when dark money contributions surged, stating "there are other groups now free to spend unrestricted funds advocating the election or defeat of candidates.

​These groups contend that they are not required to register with the FEC as any sort of PAC because their primary purpose is something other than electoral politics. This spending itself isn’t new. But the use of funds from a virtually unrestricted range of sources, including corporations, began with the most recent court rulings.


The term "Dark Money" was first used by the Sunlight Foundation to describe undisclosed funds that were used during the United States 2010 mid-term election.

An example of the usage of the term "dark money" can be seen in a letter of resignation to President Donald Trump, by former Federal Election Commissioner (FEC), Ann Ravel: “Since 2010, well over $800 million in dark money has been spent in competitive races. At the same time, elections have become more and more expensive. Most of the funding comes from a tiny, highly unrepresentative part of the population.”

Activities and influence:

The rise of dark money groups was aided by the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (2008) and Citizens United v. FEC (2010). In Citizens United, the Court ruled (by a 5–4 vote) that corporations and unions could spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against political candidates.

In some elections, dark money groups have surpassed traditional political action committees (PAC) and "super PACs" (independent-expenditure-only committees) in the volume of spending.

In 2012, Freedom Partners had the ninth-highest revenues among all U.S. trade associations which filed tax returns that year, more than "established heavyweights" such as the American Petroleum Institute, PhRMA, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Freedom Partners largely acted as a conduit for campaign spending; of the $238 million it spent in 2012, 99 percent went to other groups, and Freedom Partners itself did not have any employees.

This was a major distinction between other high-revenue trade associations, which typically have many employees and devote only about 6 percent of spending to grants to outside groups. In 2014, Freedom Partners was identified as the "poster child" for the rise of dark money.

The largest and most complex network of dark money groups are funded by conservative billionaire business magnates Charles and David Koch; the Koch brothers' network accounted for about a quarter of dark money spending in 2012.

Approaching the 2018 midterm elections, in mid-September, just 15 groups accounted for three-quarters of the anonymous cash.

2010 election cycle:

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, dark money (which it defined as funds from outside groups that did not publicly disclose donors, plus groups that received a substantial portion of their contributions from such non-disclosing groups) accounted for nearly 44% of outside spending in the 2010 election cycle. It was estimated that dark money accounted for around $127 million for this cycle.

2012 election cycle;
Main article: United States elections, 2012

In the 2012 election cycle, more than $308 million in dark money was spent, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.[15] An estimated 86 percent was spent by conservative groups, 11 percent by liberal groups and 3 percent by other groups.

The three dark money groups which spent the largest sums were: 
Karl Rove's American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS ($71 million),
the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity ($36 million) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($35 million), all conservative groups.

The three liberal groups with the largest dark-money expenditures were the League of Conservation Voters ($11 million), Patriot Majority USA, a group focusing on public schools and infrastructure ($7 million), and Planned Parenthood (almost $7 million).

2014 election cycle:

The 2014 election cycle saw the largest amount of dark money ever spent in a congressional election; the New York Times editorial board described 2014 "the greatest wave of secret, special-interest money ever."

On the eve of the election, Republican-leaning dark money groups dominated, with $94.6 million in expenditures, exceeding dark money expenditures by Democratic-leaning dark money groups ($28.4 million), and by expenditures that could not be classified ($1.9 million).

Karl Rove's dark money group Crossroads GPS alone spent over $47 million in the 2014 election cycle.

In the Senate elections, dark money spending was highly concentrated in a handful of targeted competitive states, and especially in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky, and North Carolina. In the eleven most competitive Senate races, $342 million was spent by non-party outside groups, significantly more than the $89 million spent by the political parties.

In the 2014 Kentucky election, a key player was the "Kentucky Opportunity Coalition," a group supporting Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, whom the New York Times editorial board has described as "the most prominent advocate for unlimited secret campaign spending in Washington."

The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, a 501(c)(4) "social welfare" group, raised more than $21 million, while McConnell raised about $32 million and McConnell's opponent, Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, raised about $19 million.

According to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data provided by advertising tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG, the group ran more than 12,400 television advertisements Every Kentucky Opportunity Coalition's television advertisements mentioned either McConnell or Grimes; overall, about 53 percent of the group's ads praised McConnell while the rest were attack ads against Grimes.

The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition relied heavily on political consultants in Washington, D.C. and Virginia linked to Karl Rove's Crossroads groups, and received $390,000 in a grant from Crossroads GPS. Described as "mysterious," the group was listed by a Post Office box, and the only name formally associated with the group was political operative J. Scott Jennings, a deputy political director in the George W. Bush administration, a worker for McConnell's previous campaigns.

Melanie Sloan of the watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said that the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition was "nothing more than a sham."

Dark money also played a role in other competitive Senate seats in 2014. In ten competitive Senate seats, the winners had the following in dark-money support, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law:
​In North Carolina, the pro-Tillis group "Carolina Rising" received nearly all (98.7%) of its funds from Crossroads GPS; the Center for Responsive Politics highlighted this as an example of how Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)(4) group, "evades limits on political activity through grants" to other 501(c)(4) groups.

In the 2014 cycle, Crossroads GPS also gave $5.25 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, $2 million to the American Future Fund, and $390,000 to the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition. In total, Crossroads GPS spent more than $13.6 million on grants to other groups, which it described as being for the purposes of "social welfare."

In 2014, the Democratic Party-aligned dark money group Patriot Majority USA, a 501(c)(4), spent almost $13.7 million on "direct and indirect political campaign activities," airing 15,000 television ads in targeted Senate races. About half of the $30 raised by the group came from five anonymous donors. The group was led by Craig Varoga, "a staunch ally" of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada.

In Alaska, Mark Begich was "one of the few Democratic candidates to come close to receiving as much support from dark money as his Republican opponent." The pro-Begich Alaska Salmon PAC, funded entirely by the League of Conservation Voters and its Alaska affiliate, spent funds in support of Begich.

2016 election cycle:
Main article: United States elections, 2016

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, by October 2015, $4.88 million in dark money had already been spent for the 2016 election cycle, "more than 10 times the $440,000 that was spent at this point during the 2012 cycle." The money was spent by six groups - five conservative groups (including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent $3 million, and Americans for Prosperity, which spent $1.5 million) and one liberal group (Planned Parenthood, which spent just under $75,000).

According to Richard Skinner of the Sunlight Foundation, "the focus of early dark money being spent in the 2016 cycle" is on competitive U.S. Senate elections and some U.S. House of Representatives races.

However, dark money also is playing a role in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries; by June 2015, at least four Republican presidential candidates were raising funds via 501(c)(4) organizations: Bobby Jindal's America Next, Rick Perry's Americans for Economic Freedom, John Kasich's Balanced Budget Forever, and Jeb Bush's Right to Rise.

2018 election cycle:

In September 2018, the Supreme Court ruled against a 40-year FEC dark money loophole, requiring "independent expenditure" groups disclose donations over a certain amount.

Reports revealed that during the 2018 midterm elections, dark money spending by liberal groups accounted for about 54 percent during the election cycle, outpacing conservative and nonpartisan groups spending, which claimed 31 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

​Comparison to (and relationship with) super PACs:
​
501(c) "dark money" groups are distinct from super PACs. While both types of entity can raise and spend unlimited sums of money, super PACs "must disclose their donors," while 501(c) groups "must not have politics as their primary purpose but don't have to disclose who gives them money."

However, a single individual or group can create both types of entity and combine their powers, making it difficult to trace the original source of funds. ProPublica explains: "Say some like-minded people form both a Super-PAC and a nonprofit 501(c)(4).

Corporations and individuals could then donate as much as they want to the nonprofit, which isn't required to publicly disclose funders. The nonprofit could then donate as much as it wanted to the Super-PAC, which lists the nonprofit's donation but not the original contributors."

In at least one high-profile case, a donor to a super PAC kept his name hidden by using an LLC formed for the purpose of hiding their personal name. One super PAC, that originally listed a $250,000 donation from an LLC that no one could find, led to a subsequent filing where the previously "secret donors" were revealed.

During the 2016 election cycle, "dark money" contributions via shell LLCs became increasingly common. The Associated Press, Center for Public Integrity, and Sunlight Foundation all "flagged dozens of donations of anywhere from $50,000 to $1 million routed through non-disclosing LLCs to super PACs" backing various presidential candidates, including: 
Bradley A. Smith, a former FEC chairman who is now with the Center for Competitive Politics, a group that opposes campaign-finance reform, argues that this practice is not problematic, writing that "it is possibly the making of a campaign contribution in the name of another," a violation of existing law.

According to Kathy Kiely, managing editor of the Sunlight Foundation, "untraceable dark money is a preferred tactic of conservatives, while Democrats tend to use traceable super PACs."

Disclosure in U.S. elections:

The first federal law requiring disclosure of campaign contributions, the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, was passed in 1910. By the late 1970s, virtually all states and the federal government required public disclosure of campaign contributions and information on political donors. Most states and the federal government also required public disclosure of information about donors and amounts spent on independent expenditures, that is, expenditures made independently of a candidate's campaign.

In January 2010, at least 38 states and the federal government required disclosure for all or some independent expenditures or electioneering communications, for all sponsors.

Yet despite disclosure rules, it is possible to spend money without voters knowing the identities of donors before the election. In federal elections, for example, political action committees have the option to choose to file reports on a "monthly" or "quarterly" basis. This allows funds raised by PACs in the final days of the election to be spent and votes cast before the report is due.

In addition to PACs, non-profit groups ranging from Planned Parenthood to Crossroads may make expenditures in connection with political races. Since these non-profits are not political committees, as defined in the Federal Election Campaign Act, they have few reporting requirements beyond the amounts of their expenditures. They are not required by law to publicly disclose information on their donors.

As a result, voters do not know who gave money to these groups. Reports have disclosed instances where non-profits were managed by close associates, former staff, or a candidate's family member, and this has led to concern that the candidates benefiting from their expenditures would be able to know who donated the funds to the non-profit group, but the public would not.

For example, in the 2012 election cycle, one organization, the National Organization for Marriage, or NOM, operated two non-profit arms that received millions in donations from just a few donors. It in turn funded several different PACs. While these PACs had to disclose that NOM contributed the funds, they were not required to disclose who gave this money to NOM in the first place.

On March 30, 2012 a U.S. District Court ruled that all groups that spend money on electioneering communications must report all donors that give more than $1,000. However, this ruling was overturned on appeal.

Legislative and regulatory proposals and debate over dark money:

Democrats in the United States Congress have repeatedly introduced the DISCLOSE Act, proposed legislation to require disclosure of election spending by "corporations, labor unions, super-PACs, and, most importantly, politically active nonprofits." 

The 2014 version of the DISCLOSE Act would require covered groups, including 501(c)(4), to reveal the source of election-spending donations of $10,000 or more. The bill also targets the use of pass-through and shell corporations to evade disclosure by requiring that such groups disclose the origin of contributions. Senate Republicans, led by their leader Mitch McConnell, "have blocked earlier iterations of the DISCLOSE Act since 2010."

According to Columbia Law School's Richard Briffault, disclosure of campaign expenditures, contributions, and donors is intended to deter corruption.

The Federal Election Commission, which regulates federal elections, has been unable to control dark money. According to the Center for Public Integrity, FEC commissioners are voting on many fewer enforcement matters than in the past because of "an overtaxed staff and commissioner disagreement."

The IRS (rather than the FEC) is responsible for oversight of 501(c)(4) groups. The IRS "found itself ill-prepared for the groundswell" of such groups taking and spending unlimited amounts of money for political purposes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010.

The agency particularly "struggled to identify which organizations appeared to be spending more than the recommended 50 percent of their annual budgets on political activities—and even to define what 'political spending' was." When the IRS began looking at nonprofit spending, it was accused of improper targeting in a 2013 controversy.

"With the FEC and IRS duly sidelined" advocates for disclosure turned to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); nine academics from universities across the U.S. petitioned the SEC in August 2011 for the agency to "develop rules to require public companies to disclose to shareholders the use of corporate resources for political activities."

The petition received over a million comments in the following month, "a record amount for the SEC, with the overwhelming majority of voters asking for better disclosure."

According to Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard professor of law, economics, and finance who helped draft the petition, the request had drawn the support of "nearly a dozen senators and more than 40 members of the House."

Under current SEC regulations, public corporations must file a Form 8-K report to publicly announce major events of interest to shareholders. The Sunlight Foundation, a group which advocates for a comprehensive disclosure regime, has proposed that the 8-K rule should be updated to require that aggregate spending of $10,000 on political activities (such as monetary contributions, in-kind contributions, and membership dues or other payments to organizations that engage in political activities) should be disclosed and made publicly available via the 8-K system.

In 2015, Republicans in Congress successfully pushed for a rider in a 2015 omnibus spending bill that bars the IRS from clarifying the social-welfare tax exemption to combat dark money "from advocacy groups that claim to be social welfare organizations rather than political committees." Other provisions in the 2015 bill bar the SEC from requiring corporations to disclose campaign spending to shareholders, and a ban application of the gift tax to nonprofit donors.

The Obama administration opposed these provisions, but President Obama eventually acceded to them in December 2015, with the White House declining to comment. The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center said in a statement that the dark-money provision ensures "that the door to secret foreign dollars in U.S. elections remains wide open through secret contributions to these ostensibly 'nonpolitical' groups that run campaign ads without any disclosure of their donors."

The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP), chaired by former FEC chairman Bradley A. Smith, opposes legislation to require the disclosure of dark-money groups, saying: "Our view is that many people will be driven out of politics if they are forced to disclose their names and their personal information. The purpose of disclosure is to help people monitor the government, not for the government to monitor the people."

The Center for Competitive Politics views "dark money" as a pejorative term, stating that the phrase "evokes an emotional, fearful reaction" and contending that "many of the statistics published on the topic aim to mislead rather than enlighten." The CCP maintains that dark money "comprises a very small percentage of total campaign spending," calculating the percent of money spent in federal elections by organizations that did not provide itemized disclosure of their donors as 4.3% in 2012 and 3.7% in 2014.

​In May 2019 the Attorney General of New York Letitia James filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and the IRS for failing to respond to information requests about their guidance reducing donor disclosure requirements for certain tax-exempt groups.

See also:







Mass media and American politics including Political journalism Pictured below: How Donald Trump changed political journalism (continued below picture)
CNN article "How Donald Trump changed political journalism" 
by Dylan Byers @CNNMoney
November 2, 2016: 10:48 AM ET

[Your WebHost: this article appeared before Trump was elected President, but still holds true today, in light of Trump's influence on political journalism]

​Political journalism changed in 2016.Spurred by Donald Trump's unconventional style, controversial statements and tenuous relationship with the truth, many journalists and news organizations became more emboldened in contextualizing, fact-checking and, in some cases, editorializing on developments in the campaign.

The traditional model of "he said, she said" journalism, in which news reports simply put both sides of a story against one another, was thrown out the window in favor of a more aggressive journalism that sought to prioritize accuracy over balance.

To many journalists, political scientists and media experts, this was a welcome change: It unburdened the American press from false equivalency and made them more responsible stewards of information. To critics, especially on the right side of the political spectrum, the whole endeavor laid bare the innate biases of a coastal, liberal news media.

Whatever the interpretation, the change is real, and can be seen in front-page headlines that identify lies, cable news chyrons that fact-check in real time, and the commentary of reporters on television and social media who are more unbridled than ever before in offering their assessments on the state of the race.

"This election has made people appreciate the core value of journalism, which is getting to the truth," Steven Ginsberg, the Washington Post's senior politics editor, told CNNMoney. "Sometimes that means calling something a lie. Sometimes that means saying 'that's not true.'"

"Journalists have been unburdened from their adherence to blanket neutrality that we lived with before Trump came along," said Vivian Schiller, the former president and CEO of National Public Radio.

Brendan Nyhan, the political scientist and Dartmouth University professor, called it "the most consequential election for political journalism in my lifetime." "This election is driving a stake through the heart of he said, she said journalism," he said.

The key question going forward will be whether these changes are an aberration unique to the 2016 campaign or a harbinger of the new normal. Especially if Trump loses the election and American politics return to a relative status quo, it's unclear whether journalists will continue in such an aggressive posture.

"It's hard to know whether there will be another candidate like Trump who will test us this much," said Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post media columnist.

Jay Rosen, the media critic and New York University journalism professor who has long advocated against false equivalency, believes political reporters will revert to the old norms once politics resumes as usual.

If Hillary Clinton is in the White House and Republicans are in control of congress, "the stage is set for a return to the 'partisan warfare' plot line of years past, in which journalists stand in the middle between warring parties and prove their independence by siding with neither," Rosen predicted. "In other words, symmetry will be restored, and the status quo ante will come roaring back."

Trump provided journalists with a unique challenge. In his frequent lies and baseless insinuations, he went against the thing journalists claim to value most: truth. In proposing a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants, promoting a conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama's provenance and refusing to commit to accepting the results of the election, he challenged fundamental American values. In attacking the media, he threatened the freedom and safety of the press itself.

To many journalists, these were not partisan issues. They were at odds with American democracy, some felt, and therefore worthy of an aggressive response, even if that gave the appearance of bias.

But many journalists said that the new approach was likely to endure after 2016, even if Trump loses.

"What we have to remember is that 'he said, she said' journalism was never the best journalism," said Robert Costa, the Washington Post political reporter. "The best journalism has always been aggressive and nuanced."

"Striving for fairness is what the goal is, as opposed to striving for objectivity," said Marc Ambinder, the political journalist who writes for USA Today and The Week.

Conservatives see the matter somewhat differently. Among many on the right, there is a sense that mainstream news organizations are simply becoming more comfortable with their liberal biases.

Rich Lowry, the conservative columnist and editor of National Review, said the national press "always tends to take the side of a Democrat." If the press is more aggressive this cycle, it's only because the press "hates him with a burning passion and has convinced itself it doesn't need to be objective."

The upshot of that, Lowry believes, is that going forward news organizations may become less apologetic about those biases. "It could be a step to a British-style journalism that's a little more partisan and wears its biases on its sleeve," Lowry said, though he added that many news outlets would be reluctant to give up "the trope of objectivity."

Ginsberg disagreed with that assessment: "What people ought to consider about the Trump phenomenon is that the overwhelming number of stories about Donald Trump are about things he's said or things he's done that he does not dispute he's done," he said. "This isn't the media searching for ways to undercut Donald Trump. It's simply the media covering what he says and does."

Should Trump win the election on November 8, the media would almost certainly maintain this aggressive approach toward covering his administration.

But the same would be true of a Clinton administration, many journalists said. The changes that have taken place this cycle may have been spurred by Trump, but they apply to every politician.

"This is going to be bad news for Hillary Clinton as well," said Schiller, the former NPR chief. "There's a newfound toughness, a pugilist form that reporters have been embracing. Trump was the catalyst for it, but that's going to be on Hillary as well if she's president."
"Clinton will get tremendously hard coverage as many in the media try to prove their bona fides and show that they are not biased," Nyhan said.

For now, at least, there is little sign that the press intends to change course and go back to the old model of "he said, she said." In news articles, television reports and especially on Twitter, journalists have not held back in calling the candidates and their campaigns out when they lie or mislead people.

In other words, fact-checking and analysis -- once sidebars to the "news story" -- have taken on larger roles in the news stories themselves.

"In 2008, there was the news story, then there was the fact-check. Now fact-checking has become the news story," David Fahrenthold, the Washington Post reporter, said. "This is a good thing for journalism. Fact-checking is not a separate endeavor."

"We've learned anew and more than ever before that fact-checking shouldn't be a boring segment nestled in the middle of a show that viewers can skip over. It's an essential part of the campaign," Larry Sabato, the political scientist and professor at the University of Virginia, said.

That is a good thing for journalism, and for Americans, Ginsberg said.
"This election should be a wakeup call," he told CNNMoney. "This is what people want the media to do."

[End of CNN Article]
___________________________________________________________________________

Mass media and American politics:

Mass media and American politics covers the role of newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and social media from the colonial era to the present.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Mass Media and American Politics: ___________________________________________________________________________

Political journalism:

​Political journalism is a broad branch of journalism that includes coverage of all aspects of politics and political science, although the term usually refers specifically to coverage of civil governments and political power.

Political journalism aims to provide voters with the information to formulate their own opinion and participate in community, local or national matters that will affect them.

According to Edward Morrissey in an opinion article from theweek.com, political journalism frequently includes opinion journalism, as current political events can be biased in their reporting. The information provided includes facts, its perspective is subjective and leans towards one viewpoint.

Brendan Nyhan and John Sides argue that "Journalists who report on politics are frequently unfamiliar with political science research or question its relevance to their work". Journalists covering politics who are unfamiliar with information that would provide context to their stories can enable the story to take a different spin on what is being reported.

Political journalism is provided through different mediums, in print, broadcast, or online reporting. Digital media use has increased and it provides instant coverage of campaign, politics, event news and an accessible platform for the candidate. Media outlets known for their political journalism like The New York Times and the Washington Post, have increased their use of this medium as well.

Printed, online, and broadcast political humor presented as entertainment has been used to provide updates on aspects of government status, political news, campaign, and election updates. According to Geoffrey Baym, the information provided may not be considered "fake news" but the lines between entertainment and factual news may seem blurred or biased while providing political updates.

This type of journalism is analyzed, interpreted, and discussed by news media pundits and editorialists. It can lack objectivity which can prevent the accuracy of the presented information. The reporting of news with a bias view point can also take away the audience's ability to form their own opinion or beliefs of what has been reported. This type of reporting is subjective with a possible social or political purpose.

​Overview:

Civic journalism has began to develop a strong following again after first emerging as a philosophy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those who find civic journalism to be a new, progressive, and profound method for the media to engage with the public see it as an opportunity to revitalize democracy as we know it.

As technological advances overtake the modern world, it is becoming less common for the general public to buy newspapers or watch TV news to inform themselves on the events in the political sphere. Including this, younger generations, such as Generation X, Generation Y, and even Millennials, are not coming out to the polls due to a variety of reasons.

Overall, democracy is beginning to fail as there is a lack of civic engagement and even interference with democratic processes, such as Russia's involvement with the 2016 United States election, and even electronic voting (e-voting) machines that are being hacked and altering results.

All in all, proponents of civic journalism believe that for democracy to regain its traction and glory in the modern world, the media must be more receptive to feedback from the public and take initiative to engage the public as well.

According to Oxford Research Encyclopedias, the popularity of political journalism is rising, and the area is becoming one of the more dominant domains of journalism. Political journalism is meant to be more of an overseer of democratic process as they relate to civic engagement rather than a scapegoat for the issues with democracy. Including this, there are four key concepts that political journalism can be boiled down to.

​These concepts are the framing of politics as a strategic game, interpretive versus straight news, conflict framing and media negativity, and finally, political or partisan bias. In essence, these can be viewed as the four quintessential pillars of civic journalism.

​Goals:

The goal of civic journalism, or public journalism, is to allow the community to remain engaged with journalists and news outlets, restore democratic values, and rebuild the public's trust in journalists.

The concept of fake news arose due to the fact that it is so easy to manipulate or twist information these days and create a certain narrative that might be entirely incorrect. This has led to an overall decrease in the credibility that people have for journalists and media sources.

Certain media sources or news outlets often come under a lot of heat for certain stories or narratives they push which are built upon fallacies. People argue for participatory democracy, but politics now is largely considered a popularity contest, and consists of politicians making decisions to ensure their reelection. Proponents of civic journalism believe that this philosophy will allow individuals to have a greater say in decision-making and in the broader political sphere.

Given the rise in yellow journalism and search optimization algorithms that create an echo-chamber among mass-media, civic journalism is entering a niche role where it can shift the position of news within public reception.

As of recent, most news publishers undergo more and more observation as their ethics and content come under extensive scrutiny for political biases. In a time where traditional news outlets concern themselves with how to effectively monetize and are not the main distributors of information, civic journalism pivots the role of publishers from distributing information to curating information.

Given one of civic journalism's central tenets - making the press a forum for discussion of community issues - a publisher is able to seek out a niche in bolstering local engagement over spreading knowledge of worldly issues readily available via a web search.

Proponents and Opponents:

According to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications, civic journalism is a polarizing philosophy and has a collection of opponents as well.

These opponents of civic journalism find it to be risky and ineffective. Including this, they find the practice to bring about conflicts of interest, and believe it necessitates involvement into public affairs that is deemed unethical.

John Bender, assistant professor of new editorial at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, claimed that journalists who are the most esteemed and high regarded play active roles in helping their community thrive. This practice would be an example of how civic journalism is indeed beneficial for the future of democracy as proponents believe.

Proponents of civic journalism are steadfast on certain issues. They believe integrating journalism into the democratic process would help inform voters and make them more aware of what is occurring in the political sphere. Including this, it could make a difference in the democratic process if all voters were equally informed.

An important aspect is ensuring that the information received by the public is all accurate and fact-checked. This is an important aspect that sometimes gives journalism, and certain news sources, a bad reputation, as previously mentioned. Accuracy in political news and journalism can enable voters to be more involved in the democratic process.

Civic journalism itself is the process of integrating journalism into the democratic process and allowing voters and the media to play a more active role rather than being witnesses and bystanders in what happens in the political sphere. Moreover, technology also plays an active role in educating voters and determining viewpoints.

Subsets:

Election journalism or electoral journalism is a subgenre of political journalism which focuses upon and analyzes developments related to an approximate election and political campaigns. This type of journalism provides information to the electorate that can educate and help form opinion that empowers a specific vote.

This subgenre, like data journalism, makes use of numerical data, such as statistics, polls and historic data in regards to a candidate's chance of success for office, or a party's change in size in a legislature. It provides knowledge that may make the presented news hold more relevance.

Information added to the reports are of campaign statuses and political events. A politician's strategy can be exaggerated or provided without context or historical perspective. Trends on each party candidate are reported and at times compared to previous party candidates. 

The news on the status of the elections, like other political reporting's, are provided in different mediums. The election report coverage has taken full advantage of the digital era in providing instant access to news.

Defense journalism or military journalism is a subgenre which focuses upon the current status of a nation's military, intelligence and other defense-related faculties. Interest in defense journalism tends to increase during times of violent conflict, with military leaders being the primary actors.

During the course of military journalism, news reporters are sometimes assigned to military units to report news taking place in areas of conflict. The term embedded journalism was used when the media was involved in the reporting of the war in Iraq. Embedded journalism can also be biased because it is one sided.

Information reported has been collected from the area the journalist has been stationed with the possibility to lean towards the agenda of the group they have been assigned to. This subgenre of political journalism is also applied to media coming from journalists embedded in a particular campaign or candidate. Like military assignments, reports can be influenced by the message the campaign or candidate is trying to bring across.

​See also;







Elections are Decided by the Electoral College, not by Individual Voters Pictured below: 
TOP: Composite Electoral College vote tally for the 2016 presidential election. The total number of votes cast was 538, of which Donald Trump received 304 votes (●), Hillary Clinton received 227 (●), Colin Powell received 3 (●), Bernie Sanders received 1 (●), John Kasich received 1 (●), Ron Paul received 1 (●) and Faith Spotted Eagle received 1 (●). The total of electors do not meet together to vote, but rather separately meet in their individual jurisdictions.
BOTTOM: Electoral votes allocated to each state and to the District of Columbia for the 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, based on populations from the 2010 Census (Total: 538)
United States Electoral College
​
​The Electoral College is a body of electors established by the United States Constitution, which forms every four years for the sole purpose of electing the president and vice president of the United States.

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors, and an absolute majority of electoral votes, 270 or more, is required to win the election. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution requires each state legislature to determine how electors for that state are to be chosen, and it disqualifies any person holding a federal office, either elected or appointed, from being an elector.

Following the nationwide presidential election day on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, each state counts its popular votes according to that state's laws to designate presidential electors. In 48 states and Washington D.C., the winner of the plurality of the statewide vote receives all of that state's electors; in Maine and Nebraska, two electors are assigned in this manner and the remaining electors are allocated based on the plurality of votes in each congressional district.

States generally require electors to pledge to vote for that state's winner; to avoid faithless electors, most states have adopted various laws to enforce the elector's pledge. Each state's electors meet in their respective state capital on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December to cast their votes.

The results are counted by Congress, where they are tabulated in the first week of January before a joint meeting of the Senate and House of Representatives, presided over by the vice president, as president of the Senate. Should a majority of votes not be cast for a candidate, the House turns itself into a presidential election session, where one vote is assigned to each of the fifty states. Similarly, the Senate is responsible for electing the vice president, with each senator having one vote. The elected president and vice president are inaugurated on January 20.

The suitability of the Electoral College system is a matter of ongoing debate. Supporters argue that it is fundamental to American federalism, that increases the political influence of small states by the "plus two" Senate count over the number of state Representatives.

The geographic dimension of the Electoral College requires candidates to appeal to voters outside large cities. Parties must form national coalitions with moderating appeals, contributing to stability of the two-party system. Presently, a decisive choice for president is made without the challenges and recounts in every state that would follow a nationwide popular vote.

Critics argue that the Electoral College is less democratic than a national direct popular vote and is subject to manipulation because of faithless electors. Opponents argue that the system is antithetical to a democracy that strives for a standard of "one person, one vote" because it can thwart a presidential choice by the voters with a national majority. 

There can be elections where one candidate wins the popular vote but another wins the electoral vote, as in the 2000 election and 2016 election. Individual citizens in less populated states with 5% of the Electoral College, have proportionately more voting power than those in more populous states, and candidates can win by focusing their resources on just a few “swing states”.

Number of electors:

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution, empowers each state legislature to determine the manner by which the state's electors are chosen. The number of electors in each state is equal to the sum of the state's membership in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Currently, there are 100 senators and 435 state representatives. In addition, the Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961, provides that the District established pursuant to Article I, Section 8 as the seat of the federal government (namely, District of Columbia) is entitled to the number it would have if it were a state, but in no case more than that of the least populous state. U.S. territories are not entitled to any electors. There are currently 538 electors.

Background:

The Constitutional Convention in 1787 used the Virginia Plan as the basis for discussions, as the Virginia proposal was the first. The Virginia Plan called for Congress to elect the president. Delegates from a majority of states agreed to this mode of election. After being debated, however, delegates came to oppose nomination by congress for the reason that it could violate the separation of powers. James Wilson then made a motion for electors for the purpose of choosing the president.

Later in the convention, a committee formed to work out various details including the mode of election of the president, including final recommendations for the electors, a group of people apportioned among the states in the same numbers as their representatives in Congress (the formula for which had been resolved in lengthy debates resulting in the Connecticut Compromise and Three-Fifths Compromise), but chosen by each state "in such manner as its Legislature may direct".

Committee member Gouverneur Morris explained the reasons for the change; among others, there were fears of "intrigue" if the president were chosen by a small group of men who met together regularly, as well as concerns for the independence of the president if he were elected by Congress.

However, once the Electoral College had been decided on, several delegates (Mason, Butler, Morris, Wilson, and Madison) openly recognized its ability to protect the election process from cabal, corruption, intrigue, and faction.

Some delegates, including James Wilson and James Madison, preferred popular election of the executive. Madison acknowledged that while a popular vote would be ideal, it would be difficult to get consensus on the proposal given the prevalence of slavery in the South:

There was one difficulty, however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.

The Convention approved the Committee's Electoral College proposal, with minor modifications, on September 6, 1787. Delegates from states with smaller populations or limited land area, such as Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maryland, generally favored the Electoral College with some consideration for states.

At the compromise providing for a runoff among the top five candidates, the small states supposed that the House of Representatives, with each state delegation casting one vote, would decide most elections.

In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68 laid out what he believed were the key advantages to the Electoral College. The electors come directly from the people and them alone for that purpose only and for that time only. This avoided a party-run legislature or a permanent body that could be influenced by foreign interests before each election. Hamilton explained that the election was to take place among all the states, so no corruption in any state could taint "the great body of the people" in their selection.

The choice was to be made by a majority of the Electoral College, as majority rule is critical to the principles of republican government. Hamilton argued that electors meeting in the state capitals were able to have information unavailable to the general public. Hamilton also argued that since no federal officeholder could be an elector, none of the electors would be beholden to any presidential candidate.

Another consideration was that the decision would be made without "tumult and disorder", as it would be a broad-based one made simultaneously in various locales where the decision makers could deliberate reasonably, not in one place where decision makers could be threatened or intimidated.

If the Electoral College did not achieve a decisive majority, then the House of Representatives was to choose the president from among the top five candidates, ensuring selection of a presiding officer administering the laws would have both ability and good character. Hamilton was also concerned about somebody unqualified but with a talent for "low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" attaining high office.

Additionally, in the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

A republican government (i.e., representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy) combined with the principles of federalism (with distribution of voter rights and separation of government powers), would countervail against factions. Madison further postulated in the Federalist No. 10 that the greater the population and expanse of the Republic, the more difficulty factions would face in organizing due to such issues as sectionalism.

Although the United States Constitution refers to "Electors" and "electors", neither the phrase "Electoral College" nor any other name is used to describe the electors collectively. It was not until the early 19th century that the name "Electoral College" came into general usage as the collective designation for the electors selected to cast votes for president and vice president. The phrase was first written into federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. § 4, in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors".
​
​Modern mechanics:

​Summary:

Even though the aggregate national popular vote is calculated by state officials, media organizations, and the Federal Election Commission, the people only indirectly elect the president. The president and vice president of the United States are elected by the Electoral College, which consists of 538 electors from the fifty states and Washington, D.C. 

Electors are selected state-by-state, as determined by the laws of each state. Since the election of 1824, most states have appointed their electors winner-take-all, based on the statewide popular vote on Election Day. Maine and Nebraska are the only exceptions as both states use the congressional district method, Maine since 1972 and in Nebraska since 1996.

The ballots list the names of the presidential and vice presidential candidates (who run on a ticket). The slate of electors that represent the winning ticket in a state or Washington, D.C., will vote for those two offices. Electors are nominated by a party and pledged to vote for their party's candidate. Many states require an elector to vote for the candidate to which the elector is pledged, and most electors do regardless, but some "faithless electors" have voted for other candidates or refrained from voting.

A candidate must receive an absolute majority of electoral votes (currently 270) to win the presidency or the vice presidency. If no candidate receives a majority in the election for president or vice president, the election is determined via a contingency procedure established by the Twelfth Amendment. In such a situation, the House chooses one of the top three presidential electoral vote winners as the president, while the Senate chooses one of the top two vice presidential electoral vote winners as vice president.

Electors:

Apportionment:
Further information: United States congressional apportionment
​
A state's number of electors equals the number of representatives plus two electors for the senators the state has in the United States Congress. The number of representatives is based on the respective populations, determined every ten years by the United States Census.

Based on the 2010 census, each representative represented on average 711,000 individuals.

Under the Twenty-third Amendment, Washington, D.C., is allocated as many electors as it would have if it were a state but no more electors than the least populous state. Because the least populous state (Wyoming, according to the 2010 census) has three electors, D.C. cannot have more than three electors. Even if D.C. were a state, its population would entitle it to only three electors. Based on its population per electoral vote, D.C. has the second highest per capita Electoral College representation, after Wyoming.

Currently, there are 538 electors, based on 435 representatives, 100 senators from the fifty states and three electors from Washington, D.C. The six states with the most electors are: 
The District of Columbia and the seven least populous states — Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming — have three electors each.

Nominations:

The custom of allowing recognized political parties to select a slate of prospective electors developed early. In contemporary practice, each presidential-vice presidential ticket has an associated slate of potential electors. Then on Election Day, the voters select a ticket and thereby select the associated electors.

Candidates for elector are nominated by state chapters of nationally oriented political parties in the months prior to Election Day. In some states, the electors are nominated by voters in primaries the same way other presidential candidates are nominated. In some states, such as Oklahoma, Virginia, and North Carolina, electors are nominated in party conventions.

In Pennsylvania, the campaign committee of each candidate names their respective electoral college candidates (an attempt to discourage faithless electors). Varying by state, electors may also be elected by state legislatures or appointed by the parties themselves.

Selection process:

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution requires each state legislature to determine how electors for the state are to be chosen, but it disqualifies any person holding a federal office, either elected or appointed, from being an elector.

Under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, any person who has sworn an oath to support the United States Constitution in order to hold either a state or federal office, and later rebelled against the United States directly or by giving assistance to those doing so, is disqualified from being an elector. However, Congress may remove this disqualification by a two-thirds vote in each House.

All states currently choose presidential electors by popular vote. Except for eight states, the "short ballot" is used. The short ballot displays the names of the candidates for president and vice president, rather than the names of prospective electors. Some states support voting for write-in candidates; those that do may require pre-registration of write-in candidacy, with designation of electors being done at that time.

Since 1996, all but two states have followed the winner takes all method of allocating electors by which every person named on the slate for the ticket winning the statewide popular vote are named as presidential electors. Maine and Nebraska are the only states not using this method. 

In those states, the winner of the popular vote in each of its congressional districts is awarded one elector, and the winner of the statewide vote is then awarded the state's remaining two electors. This method has been used in Maine since 1972 and in Nebraska since 1996. The Supreme Court previously upheld the power for a state to choose electors on the basis of congressional districts, holding that states possess plenary power to decide how electors are appointed in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 (1892).

The Tuesday following the first Monday in November has been fixed as the day for holding federal elections, called the Election Day. After the election, each state prepares seven Certificates of Ascertainment, each listing the candidates for president and vice president, their pledged electors, and the total votes each candidacy received.

One certificate is sent, as soon after Election Day as practicable, to the National Archivist in Washington. The Certificates of Ascertainment are mandated to carry the state seal and the signature of the governor (or mayor of D.C.).

Meetings:

​The Electoral College never meets as one body. Electors meet in their respective state capitals (electors for the District of Columbia meet within the District) on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December, at which time they cast their electoral votes on separate ballots for president and vice president.

Although procedures in each state vary slightly, the electors generally follow a similar series of steps, and the Congress has constitutional authority to regulate the procedures the states follow. The meeting is opened by the election certification official – often that state's secretary of state or equivalent — who reads the Certificate of Ascertainment.

This document sets forth who was chosen to cast the electoral votes. The attendance of the electors is taken and any vacancies are noted in writing. The next step is the selection of a president or chairman of the meeting, sometimes also with a vice chairman. The electors sometimes choose a secretary, often not himself an elector, to take the minutes of the meeting. In many states, political officials give short speeches at this point in the proceedings.

When the time for balloting arrives, the electors choose one or two people to act as tellers. Some states provide for the placing in nomination of a candidate to receive the electoral votes (the candidate for president of the political party of the electors).

Each elector submits a written ballot with the name of a candidate for president. Ballot formats vary between the states: in New Jersey for example, the electors cast ballots by checking the name of the candidate on a pre-printed card; in North Carolina, the electors write the name of the candidate on a blank card. The tellers count the ballots and announce the result. The next step is the casting of the vote for vice president, which follows a similar pattern.

Under the Electoral Count Act (updated and codified in 3 U.S.C. § 9), each state's electors must complete six Certificates of Vote. Each Certificate of Vote must be signed by all of the electors and a Certificate of Ascertainment must be attached to each of the Certificates of Vote.

Each Certificate of Vote must include the names of those who received an electoral vote for either the office of president or of vice president. The electors certify the Certificates of Vote, and copies of the Certificates are then sent in the following fashion:
A staff member of the President of the Senate collects the Certificates of Vote as they arrive and prepares them for the joint session of the Congress. The Certificates are arranged – unopened – in alphabetical order and placed in two special mahogany boxes. 

Alabama through Missouri (including the District of Columbia) are placed in one box and Montana through Wyoming are placed in the other box. Before 1950, the Secretary of State's office oversaw the certifications, but since then the Office of Federal Register in the Archivist's office reviews them to make sure the documents sent to the archive and Congress match and that all formalities have been followed, sometimes requiring states to correct the documents.

Faithlessness:
Main article: Faithless elector

An elector votes for each office, but at least one of these votes (president or vice president) must be cast for a person who is not a resident of the same state as that elector. A "faithless elector" is one who does not cast an electoral vote for the candidate of the party for whom that elector pledged to vote.

Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have laws against faithless electors, which were first enforced after the 2016 election, where ten electors voted or attempted to vote contrary to their pledges.

Faithless electors have never changed the outcome of a U.S. election for president. Altogether, 23,529 electors have taken part in the Electoral College as of the 2016 election; only 165 electors have cast votes for someone other than their party's nominee. Of that group, 71 did so because the nominee had died – 63 Democratic Party electors in 1872, when presidential nominee Horace Greeley died; and eight Republican Party electors in 1912, when vice presidential nominee James S. Sherman died.

While faithless electors have never changed the outcome of any presidential election, there are two occasions where the vice presidential race outcome has been influenced by faithless electors:
  • In the 1796 election, 18 electors pledged to the Federalist Party ticket cast their first vote as pledged for John Adams, electing him president, but did not cast their second vote for his running mate Thomas Pinckney. As a result, Adams attained 71 electoral votes, Jefferson received 68, and Pinckney received 59, meaning Jefferson, rather than Pinckney, became vice president.
  • In the 1836 election, Virginia's 23 electors, who were pledged to Richard Mentor Johnson, voted instead for former U.S. Senator William Smith, which left Johnson one vote short of the majority needed to be elected. In accordance with the Twelfth Amendment, a contingent election was held in the Senate between the top two receivers of electoral votes, Johnson and Francis Granger, for vice president, with Johnson being elected on the first ballot.

Some constitutional scholars argued that state restrictions would be struck down if challenged based on Article II and the Twelfth Amendment. However, the United States Supreme Court has consistently ruled that state restrictions are allowed under the Constitution.

In Ray v. Blair, 343 U.S. 214 (1952), the Court ruled in favor of state laws requiring electors to pledge to vote for the winning candidate, as well as removing electors who refuse to pledge. As stated in the ruling, electors are acting as a functionary of the state, not the federal government.

In Chiafalo v. Washington, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), and a related case, the Court held that electors must vote in accord with their state's laws. Faithless electors also may face censure from their political party, as they are usually chosen based on their perceived party loyalty.

Joint session of Congress:
Main article: Electoral Count Act

​The Twelfth Amendment mandates Congress assemble in joint session to count the electoral votes and declare the winners of the election. The session is ordinarily required to take place on January 6 in the calendar year immediately following the meetings of the presidential electors. Since the Twentieth Amendment, the newly elected Congress declares the winner of the election; all elections before 1936 were determined by the outgoing House.

The Office of the Federal Register is charged with administering the Electoral College The meeting is held at 1 p.m. in the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. The sitting vice president is expected to preside, but in several cases the president pro tempore of the Senate has chaired the proceedings. The vice president and the Speaker of the House sit at the podium, with the vice president in the seat of the Speaker of the House.

Senate pages bring in the two mahogany boxes containing each state's certified vote and place them on tables in front of the senators and representatives. Each house appoints two tellers to count the vote (normally one member of each political party). Relevant portions of the certificate of vote are read for each state, in alphabetical order.

Members of Congress can object to any state's vote count, provided objection is presented in writing and is signed by at least one member of each house of Congress. An objection supported by at least one senator and one representative will be followed by the suspension of the joint session and by separate debates and votes in each House of Congress; after both Houses deliberate on the objection, the joint session is resumed.

A state's certificate of vote can be rejected only if both Houses of Congress vote to accept the objection, meaning the votes from the State in question are not counted. Individual votes can also be rejected, and are also not counted.

In 1864, all of the votes from Louisiana and Tennessee were rejected, and in 1872, all of the votes from Arkansas and Louisiana plus three of the eleven electoral votes from Georgia were rejected.

Objections to the electoral vote count are rarely raised, although it did occur during the vote count in 2001 after the close 2000 presidential election between Governor George W. Bush of Texas and the vice president of the United States, Al Gore. Gore, who as vice president was required to preside over his own Electoral College defeat (by five electoral votes), denied the objections, all of which were raised by only several representatives and would have favored his candidacy, after no senators would agree to jointly object.

Objections were again raised in the vote count of the 2004 elections, and on that occasion the document was presented by one representative and one senator. Although the joint session was suspended, the objections were quickly disposed of and rejected by both Houses of Congress.

If there are no objections or all objections are overruled, the presiding officer simply includes a state's votes, as declared in the certificate of vote, in the official tally.

After the certificates from all states are read and the respective votes are counted, the presiding officer simply announces the final state of the vote. This announcement concludes the joint session and formalizes the recognition of the president-elect and of the vice president-elect. The senators then depart from the House Chamber. The final tally is printed in the Senate and House journals.

Contingencies:
Further information: Contingent election

Contingent presidential election by House: The Twelfth Amendment requires the House of Representatives to go into session immediately to vote for a president if no candidate for president receives a majority of the electoral votes (since 1964, 270 of the 538 electoral votes).

In this event, the House of Representatives is limited to choosing from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes for president. Each state delegation votes en bloc — each delegation having a single vote; the District of Columbia does not get to vote.

A candidate must receive an absolute majority of state delegation votes (i.e., at present, a minimum of 26 votes) in order for that candidate to become the president-elect. Additionally, delegations from at least two thirds of all the states must be present for voting to take place. The House continues balloting until it elects a president.

The House of Representatives has chosen the president only twice: in 1801 under Article II, Section 1, Clause 3; and in 1825 under the Twelfth Amendment.

Contingent vice presidential election by Senate:

If no candidate for vice president receives an absolute majority of electoral votes, then the Senate must go into session to elect a vice president. The Senate is limited to choosing from the two candidates who received the most electoral votes for vice president.

Normally this would mean two candidates, one less than the number of candidates available in the House vote. However, the text is written in such a way that all candidates with the most and second most electoral votes are eligible for the Senate election – this number could theoretically be larger than two. The Senate votes in the normal manner in this case (i.e., ballots are individually cast by each senator, not by state delegations). However, two-thirds of the senators must be present for voting to take place.

Additionally, the Twelfth Amendment states a "majority of the whole number" of senators (currently 51 of 100) is necessary for election. Further, the language requiring an absolute majority of Senate votes precludes the sitting vice president from breaking any tie that might occur, although some academics and journalists have speculated to the contrary.

The only time the Senate chose the vice president was in 1837. In that instance, the Senate adopted an alphabetical roll call and voting aloud. The rules further stated, "[I]f a majority of the number of senators shall vote for either the said Richard M. Johnson or Francis Granger, he shall be declared by the presiding officer of the Senate constitutionally elected Vice President of the United States"; the Senate chose Johnson.

Deadlocked election:

Section 3 of the Twentieth Amendment specifies if the House of Representatives has not chosen a president-elect in time for the inauguration (noon EST on January 20), then the vice president-elect becomes acting president until the House selects a president.

​Section 3 also specifies Congress may statutorily provide for who will be acting president if there is neither a president-elect nor a vice president-elect in time for the inauguration. Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the Speaker of the House would become acting president until either the House selects a president or the Senate selects a vice president. Neither of these situations has ever occurred.

​Current electoral vote distribution:
​(Click here to view Chronological table)
See also: Electoral vote changes between United States presidential elections

​Alternative methods of choosing electors:

Before the advent of the short ballot in the early 20th century, as described above, the most common means of electing the presidential electors was through the general ticket. The general ticket is quite similar to the current system and is often confused with it.

In the general ticket, voters cast ballots for individuals running for presidential elector (while in the short ballot, voters cast ballots for an entire slate of electors). In the general ticket, the state canvass would report the number of votes cast for each candidate for elector, a complicated process in states like New York with multiple positions to fill. Both the general ticket and the short ballot are often considered at-large or winner-takes-all voting.

The short ballot was adopted by the various states at different times; it was adopted for use by North Carolina and Ohio in 1932. Alabama was still using the general ticket as late as 1960 and was one of the last states to switch to the short ballot.

The question of the extent to which state constitutions may constrain the legislature's choice of a method of choosing electors has been touched on in two U.S. Supreme Court cases.

In McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 (1892), the Court cited Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 which states that a state's electors are selected "in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct" and wrote these words "operat[e] as a limitation upon the state in respect of any attempt to circumscribe the legislative power".

In Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000), a Florida Supreme Court decision was vacated (not reversed) based on McPherson. On the other hand, three dissenting justices in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), wrote: "[N]othing in Article II of the Federal Constitution frees the state legislature from the constraints in the State Constitution that created it."

Appointment by state legislature:

In the earliest presidential elections, state legislative choice was the most common method of choosing electors. A majority of the state legislatures selected presidential electors in both 1792 (9 of 15) and 1800 (10 of 16), and half of them did so in 1812.

Even in the 1824 election, a quarter of state legislatures (6 of 24) chose electors. (In that election, Andrew Jackson lost in spite of having plurality of the popular vote and the number of electoral votes representing them, but six state legislatures chose electors that overturned that result.)

Some state legislatures simply chose electors, while other states used a hybrid method in which state legislatures chose from a group of electors elected by popular vote. By 1828, with the rise of Jacksonian democracy, only Delaware and South Carolina used legislative choice.

Delaware ended its practice the following election (1832), while South Carolina continued using the method until it seceded from the Union in December 1860. South Carolina used the popular vote for the first time in the 1868 election.

Excluding South Carolina, legislative appointment was used in only four situations after 1832:
  • In 1848, Massachusetts statute awarded the state's electoral votes to the winner of the at-large popular vote, but only if that candidate won an absolute majority. When the vote produced no winner between the Democratic, Free Soil, and Whig parties, the state legislature selected the electors, giving all 12 electoral votes to the Whigs.
  • In 1864, Nevada, having joined the Union only a few days prior to Election Day, had no choice but to legislatively appoint.
  • In 1868, the newly reconstructed state of Florida legislatively appointed its electors, having been readmitted too late to hold elections.
  • Finally, in 1876, the legislature of the newly admitted state of Colorado used legislative choice due to a lack of time and money to hold a popular election.

Legislative appointment was brandished as a possibility in the 2000 election. Had the recount continued, the Florida legislature was prepared to appoint the Republican slate of electors to avoid missing the federal safe-harbor deadline for choosing electors.

The Constitution gives each state legislature the power to decide how its state's electors are chosen and it can be easier and cheaper for a state legislature to simply appoint a slate of electors than to create a legislative framework for holding elections to determine the electors.

As noted above, the two situations in which legislative choice has been used since the Civil War have both been because there was not enough time or money to prepare for an election.

However, appointment by state legislature can have negative consequences: bicameral legislatures can deadlock more easily than the electorate. This is precisely what happened to New York in 1789 when the legislature failed to appoint any electors.

Electoral districts:

Another method used early in U.S. history was to divide the state into electoral districts. By this method, voters in each district would cast their ballots for the electors they supported and the winner in each district would become the elector. This was similar to how states are currently separated into congressional districts.

However, the difference stems from the fact that every state always had two more electoral districts than congressional districts. As with congressional districts, moreover, this method is vulnerable to gerrymandering.

Proportional vote:

In a proportional system, electors would be selected in proportion to the votes cast for their candidate or party, rather than being selected by the statewide plurality vote.

Congressional district method:

There are two versions of the congressional district method: one has been implemented in Maine and Nebraska; another has been proposed in Virginia. Under the implemented congressional district method, the electoral votes go to the winner of a plurality of the popular vote within each of the states' congressional districts; the statewide popular vote winner receives two additional electoral votes.

While this method may result in a more proportional allocation of electors, this is not necessarily the case. For example, in 1992, George H. W. Bush won all five of Nebraska's electoral votes with 47% of the vote; in a proportional system, he would have received three and Bill Clinton and Ross Perot each would have received one.

In 2013, a different version of the congressional district method was proposed in Virginia. This version would distribute Virginia's electoral votes based on the popular vote winner within each of Virginia's congressional districts; the two statewide electoral votes would be awarded based on which candidate won the most congressional districts, rather than on who won Virginia's statewide popular vote.

The congressional district method can more easily be implemented than other alternatives to the winner-takes-all method, in view of major party resistance to relatively enabling third parties under the proportional method. State legislation is sufficient to use this method. 

Advocates of the congressional district method believe the system would encourage higher voter turnout and incentivize presidential candidates to broaden their campaigns in non-competitive states. Winner-take-all systems ignore thousands of popular votes; in Democratic California there are Republican districts, in Republican Texas there are Democratic districts.

Because candidates have an incentive to campaign in competitive districts, with a district plan, candidates have an incentive to actively campaign in over thirty states versus seven "swing" states. Opponents of the system, however, argue candidates might only spend time in certain battleground districts instead of the entire state and cases of gerrymandering could become exacerbated as political parties attempt to draw as many safe districts as they can.

Unlike simple congressional district comparisons, the district plan popular vote bonus in the 2008 election would have given Obama 56% of the Electoral College versus the 68% he did win; it "would have more closely approximated the percentage of the popular vote won [53%]".

Implementation:

Of the 43 multi-district states whose 514 electoral votes could be affected by the congressional district method, only Maine (4 EV) and Nebraska (5 EV) currently utilize this allocation method. Maine began using the congressional district method in the election of 1972. Nebraska has used the congressional district method since the election of 1992.

Michigan used the system for the 1892 presidential election, and several other states used various forms of the district plan before 1840: Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, and New York.

The congressional district method allows a state the chance to split its electoral votes between multiple candidates. Prior to 2008, neither Maine nor Nebraska had ever split their electoral votes. Nebraska split its electoral votes for the first time in 2008, giving John McCain its statewide electors and those of two congressional districts, while Barack Obama won the electoral vote of Nebraska's 2nd congressional district.

Following the 2008 split, some Nebraska Republicans made efforts to discard the congressional district method and return to the winner-takes-all system. In January 2010, a bill was introduced in the Nebraska legislature to revert to a winner-take-all system; the bill died in committee in March 2011. 

Republicans had also passed bills in 1995 and 1997 to eliminate the congressional district method in Nebraska, but those bills were vetoed by Democratic Governor Ben Nelson.

In 2010, Republicans in Pennsylvania, who controlled both houses of the legislature as well as the governorship, put forward a plan to change the state's winner-takes-all system to a congressional district method system. Pennsylvania had voted for the Democratic candidate in the five previous presidential elections, so some saw this as an attempt to take away Democratic electoral votes.

Although Democrat Barack Obama won Pennsylvania in 2008, he won only 55% of Pennsylvania's popular vote. The district plan would have awarded him 11 of its 21 electoral votes, a 52.4% which was much closer to the popular vote percentage. The plan later lost support. Other Republicans, including Michigan state representative Pete Lund, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, have floated similar ideas.

Contemporary issues:

Arguments between proponents and opponents of the current electoral system include four separate but related topics: indirect election, disproportionate voting power by some states, the winner-takes-all distribution method (as chosen by 48 of the 50 states), and federalism.

Arguments against the Electoral College in common discussion focus mostly on the allocation of the voting power among the states. Gary Bugh's research of congressional debates over proposed constitutional amendments to abolish the Electoral College reveals reform opponents have often appealed to a traditional republican version of representation, whereas reform advocates have tended to reference a more democratic view.

Criticism:

Nondeterminacy of popular vote:
See also: List of United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote

​The elections of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive at least a plurality of the nationwide popular vote.

In 1824, there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, so it is uncertain what the national popular vote would have been if all presidential electors had been popularly elected.

When no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in 1824, the election was decided by the House of Representatives and so could be considered distinct from the latter four elections in which all of the states had popular selection of electors. The true national popular vote was also uncertain in the 1960 election, and the plurality for the winner depends on how votes for Alabama electors are allocated.

Opponents of the Electoral College claim such outcomes do not logically follow the normative concept of how a democratic system should function. One view is the Electoral College violates the principle of political equality, since presidential elections are not decided by the one-person one-vote principle.

Outcomes of this sort are attributable to the federal nature of the system. Supporters of the Electoral College argue candidates must build a popular base that is geographically broader and more diverse in voter interests than either a simple national plurality or majority. Neither is this feature attributable to having intermediate elections of presidents, caused instead by the winner-takes-all method of allocating each state's slate of electors. Allocation of electors in proportion to the state's popular vote could reduce this effect.

Proponents of a national popular vote point out that the combined population of the 50 biggest cities (not including metropolitan areas) amounts to only 15% of the population. They also assert that candidates in popular vote elections for governor and U.S. Senate, and for statewide allocation of electoral votes, do not ignore voters in less populated areas.

In addition, it is already possible to win the required 270 electoral votes by winning only the 11 most populous states; what currently prevents such a result is the organic political diversity between those states (three reliably Republican states, four swing states, and four reliably Democratic states), not any inherent quality of the Electoral College itself.

Comparison of the four elections in which the Electoral College winner lost the popular vote.

Elections where the winning candidate loses the national popular vote typically result when the winner builds the requisite configuration of states (and thus captures their electoral votes) by small margins, but the losing candidate secures large voter margins in the remaining states.

In this case, the very large margins secured by the losing candidate in the other states would aggregate to a plurality of the ballots cast nationally. However, commentators question the legitimacy of this national popular vote. They point out that the national popular vote observed under the Electoral College system does not reflect the popular vote observed under a National Popular Vote system, as each electoral institution produces different incentives for, and strategy choices by, presidential campaigns.

Because the national popular vote is irrelevant under the electoral college system, it is generally presumed that candidates base their campaign strategies around the existence of the Electoral College; any close race has candidates campaigning to maximize electoral votes by focusing their get-out-the-vote efforts in crucially needed swing states and not attempting to maximize national popular vote totals by using finite campaign resources to run up margins or close up gaps in states considered "safe" for themselves or their opponents, respectively.

​Conversely, the institutional structure of a national popular vote system would encourage candidates to pursue voter turnout wherever votes could be found, even in "safe" states they are already expected to win, and in "safe" states they have no hope of winning.

Exclusive focus on large swing states:
Main article: Swing state

According to this criticism, the Electoral College encourages political campaigners to focus on a few so-called "swing states" while ignoring the rest of the country. Populous states in which pre-election poll results show no clear favorite are inundated with campaign visits, saturation television advertising, get-out-the-vote efforts by party organizers, and debates, while "four out of five" voters in the national election are "absolutely ignored", according to one assessment.

Since most states use a winner-takes-all arrangement in which the candidate with the most votes in that state receives all of the state's electoral votes, there is a clear incentive to focus almost exclusively on only a few key undecided states; in recent elections, these states have included Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida in 2004 and 2008, and included Colorado in 2012.

In contrast, states with large populations such as California, Texas, and New York, have in recent elections been considered "safe" for a particular party — Democratic for California and New York and Republican for Texas — and therefore campaigns spend less time and money there.

Many small states are also considered to be "safe" for one of the two political parties and are also generally ignored by campaigners: of the 13 smallest states, six are reliably Democratic, six are reliably Republican, and only New Hampshire is considered as a swing state, according to critic George C. Edwards III in 2011. Edwards also asserted that in the 2008 election, the campaigns did not mount nationwide efforts but rather focused on select states.

Discouragement of turnout and participation:

Except in closely fought swing states, voter turnout is largely insignificant due to entrenched political party domination in most states. The Electoral College decreases the advantage a political party or campaign might gain for encouraging voters to turn out, except in those swing states.

If the presidential election were decided by a national popular vote, in contrast, campaigns and parties would have a strong incentive to work to increase turnout everywhere. 

Individuals would similarly have a stronger incentive to persuade their friends and neighbors to turn out to vote. The differences in turnout between swing states and non-swing states under the current electoral college system suggest that replacing the Electoral College with direct election by popular vote would likely increase turnout and participation significantly.

Obscuring disenfranchisement within states:

According to this criticism, the electoral college reduces elections to a mere count of electors for a particular state, and, as a result, it obscures any voting problems within a particular state. For example, if a particular state blocks some groups from voting, perhaps by voter suppression methods such as imposing reading tests, poll taxes, registration requirements, or legally disfranchising specific minority groups, then voting inside that state would be reduced, but as the state's electoral count would be the same, disenfranchisement has no effect on the overall electoral tally.

Critics contend that such disenfranchisement is partially obscured by the Electoral College. A related argument is the Electoral College may have a dampening effect on voter turnout: there is no incentive for states to reach out to more of its citizens to include them in elections because the state's electoral count remains fixed in any event.

According to this view, if elections were by popular vote, then states would be motivated to include more citizens in elections since the state would then have more political clout nationally. Critics contend the electoral college system insulates states from negative publicity as well as possible federal penalties for disenfranching subgroups of citizens.

Legal scholars Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar have argued that the original Electoral College compromise was enacted partially because it enabled Southern states to disenfranchise their slave populations.

It permitted Southern states to disfranchise large numbers of slaves while allowing these states to maintain political clout within the federation by using the Three-Fifths Compromise. They noted that James Madison believed the question of counting slaves had presented a serious challenge, but that "the substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections." 

Akhil and Vikram Amar added: "The founders' system also encouraged the continued disfranchisement of women. In a direct national election system, any state that gave women the vote would automatically have doubled its national clout.

Under the Electoral College, however, a state had no such incentive to increase the franchise; as with slaves, what mattered was how many women lived in a state, not how many were empowered ... a state with low voter turnout gets precisely the same number of electoral votes as if it had a high turnout. By contrast, a well-designed direct election system could spur states to get out the vote."

Lack of enfranchisement of U.S. territories:
See also: Voting rights in the United States § Overseas and nonresident citizens

U.S. territories are not entitled to electors in presidential elections. Constitutionally, only U.S. states (per Article II, Section 1, Clause 2) and Washington, D.C. (per the Twenty-third Amendment) are entitled to electors. As a result of this restriction, roughly four million Americans in Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam, do not have a vote in presidential elections. 

Various scholars consequently conclude that the U.S. national-electoral process is not fully democratic. Guam has held non-binding straw polls for president since the 1980s to draw attention to this fact. The Democratic and Republican parties, as well as other third parties, have, however, made it possible for people in U.S. territories to vote in party presidential primaries.

Advantage based on state population:

Researchers have variously attempted to measure which states' voters have the greatest impact in such an indirect election.

Each state gets a minimum of three electoral votes, regardless of population, which gives low-population states a disproportionate number of electors per capita. For example, an electoral vote represents nearly four times as many people in California as in Wyoming. 

Sparsely populated states are likely to be increasingly overrepresented in the electoral college over time, because Americans are increasingly moving to big cities and because cities are growing especially in the biggest states. This analysis gives a strong advantage to the smallest states, but ignores any extra influence that comes from larger states' ability to deliver their votes as a single bloc.

Countervailing analyses which do take into consideration the sizes of the electoral voting blocs, such as the Banzhaf power index (BPI) model based on probability theory lead to very different conclusions about voters relative power.

In 1968, John F. Banzhaf III (who developed the Banzhaf power index) determined that a voter in the state of New York had, on average, 3.312 times as much voting power in presidential elections as a voter in any other U.S. state. It was found that based on 1990 census and districting, individual voters in California, the largest state, had 3.3 times more individual power to choose a president than voters of Montana, the largest of the states allocating the minimum of three electors. 

Because Banzhaf's method ignores the demographic makeup of the states, it has been criticized for treating votes like independent coin-flips. More empirically based models of voting yield results that seem to favor larger states less.

Disadvantage for third parties:
See also: Duverger's law and Causes of a two-party system

In practice, the winner-take-all manner of allocating a state's electors generally decreases the importance of minor parties. However, it has been argued that the Electoral College is not a cause of the two-party system, and that it had a tendency to improve the chances of third-party candidates in some situations.

Support:

​​Maintenance of the federal character of the nation:

The United States of America is a federal republic that consists of component states. Proponents of the current system argue the collective opinion of even a small state merits attention at the federal level greater than that given to a small, though numerically equivalent, portion of a very populous state.

The system also allows each state the freedom, within constitutional bounds, to design its own laws on voting and enfranchisement without an undue incentive to maximize the number of votes cast.

For many years early in the nation's history, up until the Jacksonian Era, many states appointed their electors by a vote of the state legislature, and proponents argue that, in the end, the election of the president must still come down to the decisions of each state, or the federal nature of the United States will give way to a single massive, centralized government.

In his book A More Perfect Constitution, Professor Larry Sabato elaborated on this advantage of the Electoral College, arguing to "mend it, don't end it," in part because of its usefulness in forcing candidates to pay attention to lightly populated states and reinforcing the role of states in federalism.

Enhancement of the status of minority groups:

Instead of decreasing the power of minority groups by depressing voter turnout, proponents argue that by making the votes of a given state an all-or-nothing affair, minority groups can provide the critical edge that allows a candidate to win. This encourages candidates to court a wide variety of such minorities and advocacy groups.

Encouragement of stability through the two-party system:
Main article: Two party system

Proponents of the Electoral College see its negative effect on third parties as beneficial. They argue that the two party system has provided stability because it encourages a delayed adjustment during times of rapid political and cultural change. They believe it protects the most powerful office in the country from control by what these proponents view as regional minorities until they can moderate their views to win broad, long-term support across the nation.

Advocates of a national popular vote for president suggest that this effect would also be true in popular vote elections. Of 918 elections for governor between 1948 and 2009, for example, more than 90% were won by candidates securing more than 50% of the vote, and none have been won with less than 35% of the vote.

Flexibility if a presidential candidate dies:

According to this argument, the fact the Electoral College is made up of real people instead of mere numbers allows for human judgment and flexibility to make a decision, if it happens that a candidate dies or becomes legally disabled around the time of the election.

Advocates of the current system argue that human electors would be in a better position to choose a suitable replacement than the general voting public: according to this view, electors could act decisively during the critical time interval between when ballot choices become fixed in state ballots until mid-December when the electors formally cast their ballots.

In the election of 1872, defeated Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley died during this time interval, which resulted in disarray for the Democratic Party, who also supported Greeley, but 63 of the 66 the Greeley electors were able to split their votes for four alternate candidates. A situation in which the winning candidate died has never happened.

In the election of 1912, vice president Sherman died six days before the election, when it was far too late for states to remove his name from their ballots; accordingly, Sherman was listed posthumously, with the eight electoral votes he would have received being cast instead for Nicholas Murray Butler.

Isolation of election problems:

Some supporters of the Electoral College note that it isolates the impact of any election fraud, or other such problems, to the state where it occurs. It prevents instances where a party dominant in one state may dishonestly inflate the votes for a candidate and thereby affect the election outcome. For instance, recounts occur only on a state-by-state basis, not nationwide.

However, results in a single state where the popular vote is very close — such as Florida in 2000 — can decide the national election.

Public opinion:

Most polls since 1967 have shown that a majority of Americans favor the president and vice president being elected by the nationwide popular vote, instead of by the Electoral College, though polls taken since 2016 have shown an increase in support for keeping the Electoral College.

A Gallup poll taken just after the 2016 election showed that Americans' support for keeping the Electoral College system for electing presidents had increased sharply, from 35% in 2011 to 47% in 2016. Support among Democrats for amending the Constitution in favor of using the popular vote rose from 69% to 81% and support among Republicans fell from 54% to 19%.

According to a Pew Research poll done in March 2018, 75% of Democrats supported moving to a popular-vote system compared to 32% of Republicans, with overall support for a popular vote at 55% for versus 41% against.

Efforts to abolish or reform:
Main article: Efforts to reform the United States Electoral College

Bayh–Celler amendment:

The closest the United States has come to abolishing the Electoral College occurred during the 91st Congress (1969–1971). The presidential election of 1968 resulted in Richard Nixon receiving 301 electoral votes (56% of electors), Hubert Humphrey 191 (35.5%), and George Wallace 46 (8.5%) with 13.5% of the popular vote.

However, Nixon had received only 511,944 more popular votes than Humphrey, 43.5% to 42.9%, less than 1% of the national total.

Representative Emanuel Celler (D–New York), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to public concerns over the disparity between the popular vote and electoral vote by introducing House Joint Resolution 681, a proposed Constitutional amendment that would have replaced the Electoral College with a simpler plurality system based on the national popular vote.

With this system, the pair of candidates who had received the highest number of votes would win the presidency and vice presidency provided they won at least 40% of the national popular vote. If no pair received 40% of the popular vote, a runoff election would be held in which the choice of president and vice president would be made from the two pairs of persons who had received the highest number of votes in the first election. The word "pair" was defined as "two persons who shall have consented to the joining of their names as candidates for the offices of president and vice president."

On April 29, 1969, the House Judiciary Committee voted 28 to 6 to approve the proposal. Debate on the proposal before the full House of Representatives ended on September 11, 1969 and was eventually passed with bipartisan support on September 18, 1969, by a vote of 339 to 70.

On September 30, 1969, President Richard Nixon gave his endorsement for adoption of the proposal, encouraging the Senate to pass its version of the proposal, which had been sponsored as Senate Joint Resolution 1 by Senator Birch Bayh (D–Indiana).

On October 8, 1969, the New York Times reported that 30 state legislatures were "either certain or likely to approve a constitutional amendment embodying the direct election plan if it passes its final Congressional test in the Senate." Ratification of 38 state legislatures would have been needed for adoption. The paper also reported that six other states had yet to state a preference, six were leaning toward opposition, and eight were solidly opposed.

On August 14, 1970, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent its report advocating passage of the proposal to the full Senate. The Judiciary Committee had approved the proposal by a vote of 11 to 6.

The six members who opposed the plan, Democratic senators James Eastland of Mississippi, John Little McClellan of Arkansas, and Sam Ervin of North Carolina, along with Republican senators Roman Hruska of Nebraska, Hiram Fong of Hawaii, and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, all argued that although the present system had potential loopholes, it had worked well throughout the years.

Senator Bayh indicated that supporters of the measure were about a dozen votes shy from the 67 needed for the proposal to pass the full Senate. He called upon President Nixon to attempt to persuade undecided Republican senators to support the proposal.

However, Nixon, while not reneging on his previous endorsement, chose not to make any further personal appeals to back the proposal.

On September 8, 1970, the Senate commenced openly debating the proposal, and the proposal was quickly filibustered. The lead objectors to the proposal were mostly Southern senators and conservatives from small states, both Democrats and Republicans, who argued that abolishing the Electoral College would reduce their states' political influence.

On September 17, 1970, a motion for cloture, which would have ended the filibuster, received 54 votes to 36 for cloture, failing to receive the then-required two-thirds majority of senators voting. A second motion for cloture on September 29, 1970, also failed, by 53 to 34.

Thereafter, the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana, moved to lay the proposal aside so the Senate could attend to other business. However, the proposal was never considered again and died when the 91st Congress ended on January 3, 1971.

Carter proposal:

On March 22, 1977, President Jimmy Carter wrote a letter of reform to Congress that also included his expression of essentially abolishing the Electoral College. The letter read in part:
"My fourth recommendation is that the Congress adopt a Constitutional amendment to provide for direct popular election of the President.

Such an amendment, which would abolish the Electoral College, will ensure that the candidate chosen by the voters actually becomes President. Under the Electoral College, it is always possible that the winner of the popular vote will not be elected. This has already happened in three elections, 1824, 1876, and 1888.

In the last election, the result could have been changed by a small shift of votes in Ohio and Hawaii, despite a popular vote difference of 1.7 million. I do not recommend a Constitutional amendment lightly.

I think the amendment process must be reserved for an issue of overriding governmental significance. But the method by which we elect our President is such an issue. I will not be proposing a specific direct election amendment. I prefer to allow the Congress to proceed with its work without the interruption of a new proposal."

President Carter's proposed program for the reform of the Electoral College was very liberal for a modern president during this time, and in some aspects of the package, it went beyond original expectations. Newspapers like The New York Times saw President Carter's proposal at that time as "a modest surprise" because of the indication of Carter that he would be interested in only eliminating the electors but retaining the electoral vote system in a modified form.

Newspaper reaction to Carter's proposal ranged from some editorials praising the proposal to other editorials, like that in the Chicago Tribune, criticizing the president for proposing the end of the Electoral College.

In a letter to The New York Times, Representative Jonathan B. Bingham (D-New York) highlighted the danger of the "flawed, outdated mechanism of the Electoral College" by underscoring how a shift of fewer than 10,000 votes in two key states would have led to President Gerald Ford being reelected despite Jimmy Carter's nationwide 1.7 million-vote margin.

Current proposals to abolish:

Since January 3, 2019, joint resolutions have been made proposing constitutional amendments that would replace the Electoral College with the popular election of the president and vice president. Unlike the Bayh–Celler amendment, with its 40% threshold for election, these proposals do not require a candidate to achieve a certain percentage of votes to be elected.

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact:
Main article: National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

Several states plus the District of Columbia have joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Those jurisdictions joining the compact agree to eventually pledge their electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The compact will not go into effect until the number of states agreeing to the compact form a majority (at least 270) of all electors.

The compact is based on the current rule in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution, which gives each state legislature the plenary power to determine how it chooses its electors.

Some scholars have suggested that Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution requires congressional consent before the compact could be enforceable; thus, any attempted implementation of the compact without congressional consent could face court challenges to its constitutionality. Others have suggested that the compact's legality was strengthened by Chiafalo v. Washington, in which the Supreme Court upheld the power of states to enforce electors' pledges.

As of 2020, 15 states and the District of Columbia have joined the compact; collectively, these jurisdictions control 196 electoral votes, which is 73% of the 270 required for the compact to take effect.

See also:







[Under this web page "Politics", the next three topics cover how Congress and its branches legislate in their attempt to act in the best interest of all Americans.]

Procedures of the United States Congress Pictured below: How U. S. federal legislation is made
Procedures of the United States Congress are established ways of doing legislative business. Congress has two-year terms with one session each year. There are rules and procedures, often complex, which guide how it converts ideas for legislation into laws.

Sessions:
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A term of Congress is divided into two "sessions", one for each year; Congress has occasionally also been called into an extra, (or special) session (the Constitution requires Congress to meet at least once each year).

A new session commences on January 3 (or another date, if Congress so chooses) each year. Before the Twentieth Amendment, Congress met from the first Monday in December to April or May in the first session of their term (the "long session"); and from December to March 4 in the second "short session". (The new Congress would then meet for some days, for the inauguration, swearing in new members, and organization.)

The Constitution forbids either house from meeting any place outside the Capitol, or from adjourning for more than three days, without the consent of the other house. The provision was intended to prevent one house from thwarting legislative business simply by refusing to meet.

To avoid obtaining consent during long recesses, the House or Senate may sometimes hold pro forma meetings, sometimes only minutes long, every three days. The consent of both bodies is required for Congress's final adjournment, or adjournment sine die, at the end of each congressional session. If the two houses cannot agree on a date, the Constitution permits the President to settle the dispute.

Joint sessions:
Main article: Joint session of the United States Congress

​Joint Sessions of the United States Congress occur on special occasions that require a concurrent resolution from both House and Senate. These sessions include the counting of electoral votes following a Presidential election and the President's State of the Union address.

Other meetings of both House and Senate are called Joint Meetings of Congress, held after unanimous consent agreements to recess and meet. Meetings of Congress for Presidential Inaugurations may also be Joint Sessions, if both House and Senate are in session at the time, otherwise they are formal joint gatherings.

At some time during the first two months of each session, the President customarily delivers the State of the Union Address, a speech in which he assesses the situation of the country and outlines his legislative proposals for the congressional session.

The speech is modeled on the Speech from the Throne given by the British monarch, and is mandated by the Constitution of the United States—though it is not necessarily required to be delivered each year or in the customary manner. 

Thomas Jefferson discontinued the original practice of delivering the speech in person before both houses of Congress, deeming it too monarchical. Instead, Jefferson and his successors sent a written message to Congress each year.

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson reestablished the practice of personally attending to deliver the speech; few Presidents have deviated from this custom since.

Joint Sessions and Joint Meetings are traditionally presided over by the Speaker of the House except for the joint session to count electoral votes for President, when the Constitution requires the President of the Senate (the Vice President of the United States) to preside.

Bills and resolutions:

Ideas for legislation can come from many areas, including members, lobbyists, state legislatures, constituents, legislative counsel, an executive agency such as the president or cabinet officer or executive agency, and the usual next step is for the proposal to be passed to a committee for review.

A proposal has usually one of four principal forms: the bill, the joint resolution, the concurrent resolution, and the simple resolution.
  • Bills are laws in the making. A House-originated bill begins with the letters "H.R." for "House of Representatives", followed by a number kept as it progresses. It is presented to the president after both Houses agree.
  • Joint resolutions There is little practical difference between a bill and a joint resolution since both are treated similarly; a joint resolution originating from the House, for example, begins "H.J.Res." followed by its number.
  • Concurrent Resolutions affect only the House and Senate, and accordingly aren't presented to the president for approval later. In the House, it begins with "H.Con.Res."
  • Simple resolutions concern only the House or only the Senate and begin with "H.Res."

Any member of Congress may introduce a bill at any time while the House is in session by placing it in the hopper on the Clerk's desk. A sponsor's signature is required, and there can be many co-sponsors. It's assigned a number by the Clerk. Then it's referred to a committee. Committees study each bill intensely at this stage.

The most important executive communication is usually the president's annual message which contains a lengthy budget proposal. Drafting statutes is an art that requires "great skill, knowledge, and experience." Congressional committees sometimes draft bills after studies and hearings covering periods of a year or more.

A proposal may be introduced in Congress as a bill, a joint resolution, a concurrent resolution, or a simple resolution. Most legislative proposals are introduced as bills, but some are introduced as joint resolutions. There is little practical difference between the two, except that joint resolutions may include preambles but bills may not.

Joint resolutions are the normal method used to propose a constitutional amendment or to declare war. On the other hand, concurrent resolutions (passed by both houses) and simple resolutions (passed by only one house) do not have the force of law. Instead, they serve to express the opinion of Congress, or to regulate procedure.

​In many cases, lobbyists write legislation and submit it to a member for introduction. Congressional lobbyists are legally required to be registered in a central database.

​How bills become laws:

Bills may be introduced by any member of either house. However, the Constitution provides that: "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives." As a result, the Senate does not have the power to initiate bills imposing taxes.

Furthermore, the House of Representatives holds that the Senate does not have the power to originate appropriation bills, or bills authorizing the expenditure of federal funds.

Historically, the Senate has disputed the interpretation advocated by the House. However, whenever the Senate originates an appropriations bill, the House simply refuses to consider it, thereby settling the dispute in practice.

Nevertheless, while the Senate cannot originate revenue and appropriation bills, it does retain the power to amend or reject them. A congressional act in 1974 established procedures to try to establish appropriate annual spending levels.

​Each bill goes through several stages in each house. The first stage involves consideration by a committee which often seeks input from relevant departments as well as requests feedback from the Government Accountability Office.

Most legislation is considered by standing committees, each of which has jurisdiction over a particular subject matter, such as Agriculture or Appropriations. The House has twenty standing committees; the Senate has sixteen. Standing committees meet at least once each month. Almost all standing committee meetings for transacting business must be open to the public unless the committee votes, publicly, to close the meeting. 

Open committee meetings may be covered by the media. In some cases, bills may be sent to select committees, which tend to have more narrow jurisdictions than standing committees. If a bill is important, the committee may set a date for public hearings announced by the committee's chairman.

Each standing and select committee is led by a chair (who belongs to the majority party) and a ranking member (who belongs to the minority party). Witnesses and experts can present their case for or against a bill.

Sometimes transcripts of these meetings are made public. Then, a bill may go to what's called a mark-up session where committee members debate the bill's merits and may offer amendments or revisions. 

Committees are permitted to hold hearings and collect evidence when considering bills. They may also amend the bill, but the full house holds the power to accept or reject committee amendments. After considering and debating a measure, the committee votes on whether it wishes to report the measure to the full house. Not reporting a bill or tabling it means it has been rejected. If amendments to a bill are extensive, then sometimes a new bill with all the amendments built in will be written, sometimes known as a clean bill with a new number.

Both houses provide for procedures under which the committee can be bypassed or overruled, but they are rarely used. If reported by the committee, the bill reaches the floor of the full house which considers it. This can be simple or complex.

Consideration of a bill requires, itself, a rule which is a simple resolution hammering out the particulars of debate–time limits, possibility of further amendments, and such. Each side has equal time and members can yield to other members who wish to speak. Sometimes opponents seek to recommit a bill which means to change part of it. Generally, discussion requires a quorum, usually half of the total number of representatives, before discussion can begin, although there are exceptions.

The house may debate and amend the bill; the precise procedures used by the House of Representatives and the Senate differ. A final vote on the bill follows.
Once a bill is approved by one house, it is sent to the other, which may pass, reject, or amend it.

For the bill to become law, both houses must agree to identical versions of the bill. If the second house amends the bill, then the differences between the two versions must be reconciled in a conference committee, an ad hoc committee that includes both senators and representatives.

One mechanism Congress uses to work within revenue constraints is called the reconciliation process which is a multiple step way to keep new budgets within the bounds of existing ones. In addition, both Houses use a budget enforcement mechanism informally known as pay-as-you-go or paygo which discourages members from considering acts which increase budget deficits.

In many cases, conference committees have introduced substantial changes to bills and added unrequested spending, significantly departing from both the House and Senate versions.

President Ronald Reagan once quipped, "If an orange and an apple went into conference consultations, it might come out a pear." If both houses agree to the version reported by the conference committee, the bill passes; otherwise, it fails.

​There are a variety of means for members to vote on bills, including systems using lights and bells and electronic voting. Most votes, including quorum votes, are done electronically, and allow members to vote "yea" or "nay" or "present". They light up when the vote is in process. Members insert a voting ID card and can change their votes during the last five minutes if they choose; in addition, paper ballots are used on some occasions (yea indicated by the color green, nay by red.)

To conduct a voice vote the chairman asks "As many as are in favor say Aye, as many as are opposed, say No". Rules permit live media coverage of voting, although prohibit use of these broadcasts for political purposes or political advertisements.

House rules require a three-fifths vote to pass a ruling that contains a specified federal income tax rate increase. One member cannot cast a vote for another member. It is possible for citizens to learn how congresspersons voted by consulting an online database.

After passage by both houses, a bill is considered to be enrolled and is sent to the president for approval. The president may sign the bill and make it law. The President may also choose to veto the bill, returning it to Congress with his objections. In such a case, the bill only becomes law if each house of Congress votes to override the veto with a two-thirds majority.

Finally, the president may choose to take no action, neither signing nor vetoing the bill. In such a case, the Constitution states that the bill automatically becomes law after ten days, excluding Sundays, unless Congress is adjourned during this period. Therefore, the president may veto legislation passed at the end of a congressional session simply by ignoring it; the maneuver is known as a pocket veto, and cannot be overridden by the adjourned Congress.

Every Act of Congress or joint resolution begins with an enacting formula or resolving formula stipulated by law. These are:
  • Act of Congress: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled."
  • Joint resolution: "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled."

Quorum and vote:
See also: Voting methods in deliberative assemblies

The Constitution specifies that a majority of members constitutes a quorum to do business in each house. The rules of each house provide that a quorum is assumed to be present unless a quorum call demonstrates the contrary. Representatives and senators rarely force the presence of a quorum by demanding quorum calls; thus, in most cases, debates continue even if a majority is not present.

Both houses use voice voting to decide most matters; members shout out "aye" or "no," and the presiding officer announces the result. The Constitution, however, requires a recorded vote on the demand of one-fifth of the members present. If the result of the voice vote is unclear, or if the matter is controversial, a recorded vote usually ensues.

The Senate uses roll-call votes; a clerk calls out the names of all the senators, each senator stating "aye" or "no" when his or her name is announced. The House reserves roll-call votes for the most formal matters, as a roll-call of all 435 representatives takes quite some time; normally, members vote by electronic device. In the case of a tie, the motion in question fails.

In the Senate, the Vice President may (if present) cast the tiebreaking vote.

See also:






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Procedures of the United States House of RepresentativesPictured below: History of the United States House of Representatives
The United States Constitution provides that each "House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings," therefore each Congress of the United States, upon convening, approves its own governing rules of procedure. This clause has been interpreted by the courts to mean that a new Congress is not bound by the rules of proceedings of the previous Congress.
Currently the procedures of the United States House of Representatives are governed by the Constitution, the House Rules, and Jefferson's Manual.

Rules of the House:
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Prior to the adoption of the rules by the United States House of Representatives, the House operates under general parliamentary rules and Jefferson's Manual but these are not binding on the current House until they are approved by the membership of the current Congress.

Historically, the current Congress will adopt the rules of the previous Congress and make any amendments they think are necessary to govern themselves.

The Rules of the House of Representatives are prepared by the Clerk of the House.
On December 6, 2016, in the final month of the 114th Congress, the House resolved that a revised version of the Rules would be printed for the 115th Congress.

House Floor:

Rules of Decorum:

While on the floor of the House of Representatives, Members are bound by a number of rules on their behavior. Clause 5 of Rule XVII of the House Rules forbids:
  • Exiting or crossing the hall while the Speaker is addressing the House.
  • Passing between the Chair and a Member under recognition.
  • Wearing a hat (This provision was modified in the 116th Congress to allow religious head coverings).
  • Using a mobile electronic device that impairs decorum.
  • Remaining by the Clerk's desk during roll calls.
  • Smoking

Clause 7 of Rule XVII forbids Members from "bring[ing] to the attention of the House an occupant in the galleries of the House" In practice, this prevents Members from talking about the visitors which are seated in the galleries above.

While the proscription on using electronic devices is more recent, some of the current House Rules originated in the early sessions of Congress. After independence, members of Congress would often wear their hats, as was the custom in the British Parliament, however this custom was abolished in the House of Representatives in 1837.

Daily business:

The Speaker calls the House to order, the Chaplain of the House then offers a prayer, and the Speaker and House approves the legislative journal from the previous legislative day.

After approval of the journal the members recite the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by the start of legislative business.

Order of priority of business:

The House generally adheres to the following order of priority as outlined in the House Rules, specifically Rule XIV during the 114th Congress, but variations exist to this order as a result of House Rules or parliamentary rules that take precedence. The House may suspend this order and conduct itself as it sees fit consistent with House Rules and with Parliamentary procedure.
  1. Prayer by the Chaplain.
  2. Reading and approval of the Journal.
  3. The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
  4. Correction of reference of public bills.
  5. Disposal of business on the Speaker's table.
  6. Unfinished business as provided in rules.
  7. Consideration of bills called up by committees.
  8. State of the Union
  9. Orders of the day.

Speaking on the Floor:

At the beginning of the legislative business day, after the prayer, approval of the previous day's Journal, and pledge of allegiance, the Speaker of the House may recognize members for one-minute speeches. The rules of the House do not specifically provide for one-minute speeches, rather they have evolved as a unanimous consent practice of the chamber, where members must ask for unanimous consent to address the chamber.

Under the power of House Rule XVII, clause 2, the Speaker decides when to entertain unanimous consent requests to address the House for one-minute, and how many speeches will be allowed. There may be unlimited time for speeches, or pressing legislative business may necessitate a shorter time period. If there are any limitations on time, the majority and minority leadership typically receive advance notice.

Members do not need to receive prior authorization to deliver a one-minute speech. To deliver a one-minute speech, members go to the front row of seats on their party’s side of the Floor and sit down.

The Speaker will recognize members in turn, alternating between the majority and minority sides. When the chair announces that one minute has expired, the Member can finish the sentence underway but must then stop speaking. If the member cannot finish their remarks in one minute, they may insert additional material, either the full speech or extraneous materials, such as constituent communications or newspaper articles, into the Congressional Record. The inserted material appears in a distinct typeface in the Congressional Record, typically italics.

One-minute speeches have many uses in Congress, including allowing members to explain a new bill or a floor amendment they will offer later in the day. Representatives also use one-minute speeches to deliver eulogies and tributes concerning individuals and organizations in their congressional district. One minutes also provide Members with an opportunity to express their views on bills, policy issues, and local, national, and international events. These speeches are one of the few unrestricted options members of Congress have to express a position.

Not all members of Congress use one-minute speeches equally. In previous studies of legislative behavior, results suggest institutionally disadvantaged members of Congress, members who may have limited position-taking opportunities through traditional channels, are more likely to deliver a one-minute speech.

These include junior members of Congress, members of the minority party in the House, ideologically extreme representatives, or non-committee chairs. These members of Congress have little opportunity to shape the legislative process, and therefore rely on alternative mechanisms, such as one-minute speeches to represent their constituents.

On February 7, 2018, Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) delivered the longest one-minute speech since at least 1909, speaking for longer than eight hours. Pelosi's speech took advantage of a rule that allows only top party leaders (the Speaker, the Majority Leader, and the Minority Leader) the right to speak as long as they want.

Introducing a bill:

Any member of the House can introduce a bill at any time, while the House is in session, by placing (or most likely having a page place) a signed copy of the bill in the "hopper" at the side of the Clerk's desk on the Rostrum.

Other members of the House may co-sponsor any bill to be introduced in the House by a member. These co-sponsors are not required to sign the bill and are considered under House Rules to be "original co-sponsors" and "additional co-sponsors" depending on whether they co-sponsored the bill at the time it was introduced or added their names to the bill after its introduction.

After the Clerk of the House receives the bill it is then assigned a legislative number, enrolled in the House Journal and printed in the Congressional Record and the Speaker of the House refers the bill to the Committee(s) with jurisdiction by sending the bill to the office of the chairman of the committee(s), and the Clerk of the Committee will add the bill to the Committee's calendar.

The Speaker designates one of these committees as a "primary committee" with primary jurisdiction and responsibility for the bill and all other committee(s) are considered "additional committees" and the Speaker may impose time limits on these committee(s) if he or she deems it appropriate and traditionally does so if the primary committee has reported out a version of the bill to the full House.

House floor action on a bill:

Upon being reported out of Committee or removed from Committee by the House, a bill will be added to the House Calendar and any rules setting out how much time is allowed for debate, or other matters may be passed by the House in the form of a resolution.

Generally, the supporters and opponents of a bill control debate time and may yield time to members who wish to speak upon the bill. In many instances this is the chairman and ranking member of the primary committee.

If amendments are permitted under the rules governing floor action on the bill they are debated and voted upon at the time of the amendment (although common practice usually permits the House to debate several amendments without immediately voting on them, then voting back-to-back at the end of the series of amendments, which can either be voice votes or recorded votes).

After the conclusion of time for debate and after all amendments have been disposed of, the matter is usually voted upon by the full House, unless the rules permit and a member moves to recommit (or commit) the bill back to committee.

The chair will only recognize a member who is opposed to the bill for a Motion to Recommit and gives preference to members of the minority party. A motion to recommit may take two forms:
  • with instructions to take some action and then report back the bill forthwith, which will result in the Committee chairman immediately re-reporting to the House the bill according to the instructions in the motion to recommit;
  • without instructions, which leaves the bill in committee for reconsideration.

Committees:
Main article: List of House Committees

It is in Committee(s) that bills get the most scrutiny and attention and that most of the work on a bill is done. Committees play an important role in the legislative process by providing members the opportunity to study, debate and amend the bill and the public with the opportunity to make comments on the bill.

There are three types of House Committees, these are:
  1. standing committees elected by members of the House,
  2. select committees appointed by the Speaker of the House, and
  3. joint committees whose members are chosen according to the statute or resolution that created that committee.

As the House Rules limit the amount of floor debate on any given bill the committees play an important function in determining the final content and format of the bill.

After the committee conducts any necessary research, and has debated and voted on any amendments that were offered in committee they may take one of three actions. These are reporting a measure to the full House with or without amendments, report the measure to the full House with a negative recommendation or fail to report the measure.

The House may under certain rules remove the bill or measure from committee (known as "discharging the bill from committee") if the committee fails to report the measure to the House Rules Committee or to the full House and a negative report to the full House does not terminate the bill. The phrase that a "bill has been killed in committee" is not completely accurate as the full House always has options under the rules to remove the bill from Committee and to take action.

Standing committees:

Standing committees are established at the time that the rules of the House are adopted or by amending the House Rules. The jurisdiction of each standing committee is specified in the House Rules.

Under the House Rules the chairman and members of standing committees are selected through a two-step procedure where the Democratic Caucus and the Republican Conference recommends members to serve on Committees, the majority party recommends a Chairman, and the Minority Party recommends a Ranking Member and finally the full House can approve the recommendation of the Party Caucuses.

It is important to note that the Rules of the Democratic Caucus and the Republican Conference determines the nomination procedure of its own members. Rules of party nominations may therefore differ but approval by the House of these nominations is conducted according to House Rules. Seniority on a Standing Committee is based on the order of the members on the election resolution as approved by the House.

The number of members who serve on a committee along with the party ratio of a committee is determined by the Majority and Minority Leaders of the House with the exception of the Committee on Ethics which is limited by the Rules to 5 majority members and 5 minority members.

Membership:

The number of members on a committee and the ratio of majority/minority members is determined by the Majority party with consultation with the minority. According to House Rules members of the House of Representatives may serve on two committees and four subcommittees. Seniority on a committee is not based on the longest-serving member of the House but on their order of appointment to that committee by their respective party caucus.

The Committee Chairman is usually the ranking majority member in order of seniority (order of appointment). If a member of the House ceases to be a member of his caucus then he ceases having membership on that committee. Independent members of the House may caucus with either the Republican Conference or the Democratic Caucus and thus be appointed to and serve on Committees. Current House Rules also stipulate that a member cannot serve as chairman of the same standing committee or subcommittee for more than three consecutive Congresses (six years).

Chairman and ranking member:

The House Rules provide that the chairman of a committee presides over its meetings, maintains decorum and ensures that the committee adheres to the House Rules governing committees and generally acts in an administrative role respective to such issues as determining salaries of committee staff, issuing congressional subpoenas for testimony and issuing committee reports.

The committee's minority may also issue a Minority Report at their discretion. Also, a committee chairman along with the ranking member generally control the time each receives on the House Floor respective to a bill that originated or was reported out of their committee. The ranking member is second to the chairman.

Committee staff:

According to House Rules each Standing Committee may have up to 30 persons appointed to serve as professional staff, 2/3 of which are selected by the majority committee members and 1/3 of which are selected by the minority members. This allows each party serving in the Committee to have professional staff available to assist them in performing their committee assignments and duties.

See also:







Standing Rules of the United States SenatePictured below: The United States Senate chamber
The Standing Rules of the Senate are the parliamentary procedures adopted by the United States Senate that govern its procedure. The Senate's power to establish rules derives from Article One, Section 5 of the United States Constitution: "Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings..."

There are currently forty-four rules, with the latest revision having been adopted on January 24, 2013. (The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006 lobbying reform bill introduced a 44th rule on earmarks). The stricter rules are often waived by unanimous consent.

The Constitution provides that a majority of the Senate constitutes a quorum to do business. Under the rules and customs of the Senate, a quorum is always assumed to be present unless a quorum call explicitly demonstrates otherwise.

Any senator may request a quorum call by "suggesting the absence of a quorum"; a clerk then calls the roll of the Senate and notes which members are present. In practice, senators almost always request quorum calls not to establish the presence of a quorum, but to temporarily delay proceedings without having to adjourn the session.

Such a delay may serve one of many purposes; often, it allows Senate leaders to negotiate compromises off the floor or to allow senators time to come to the Senate floor to make speeches without having to constantly be present in the chamber while waiting for the opportunity. Once the need for a delay has ended, any senator may request unanimous consent to rescind the quorum call.

During debates, senators may speak only if called upon by the presiding officer. The presiding officer is, however, required to recognize the first senator who rises to speak. Thus, the presiding officer has little control over the course of debate.

Customarily, the majority leader and minority leader are accorded priority during debates, even if another senator rises first. All speeches must be addressed to the presiding officer, using the words "Mr. President" or "Madam President." Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person. In most cases, senators refer to each other not by name, but by state, using forms such as "the senior senator from Virginia" or "the junior senator from California."

There are very few restrictions on the content of speeches; there is no requirement that speeches be germane to the matter before the Senate.

The Standing Rules of the United States Senate provide that no senator may make more than two speeches on a motion or bill on the same legislative day. (A legislative day begins when the Senate convenes and ends when it adjourns; hence, it does not necessarily coincide with the calendar day.)

The length of these speeches is not limited by the rules; thus, in most cases, senators may speak for as long as they please. Often, the Senate adopts unanimous consent agreements imposing time limits. In other cases (for example, for the budget process), limits are imposed by statute. In general, however, the right to unlimited debate is preserved.

The filibuster is an obstructionist tactic used to defeat bills and motions by prolonging debate indefinitely. A filibuster may entail, but does not actually require, long speeches, dilatory motions, and an extensive series of proposed amendments. The longest filibuster speech in the history of the Senate was delivered by Strom Thurmond, who spoke for over twenty-four hours in an unsuccessful attempt to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

The Senate may end a filibuster by invoking cloture. In most cases, cloture requires the support of three-fifths of the Senate; however, if the matter before the Senate involves changing the rules of the body, a two-thirds majority is required.

Cloture is invoked very rarely, particularly because bipartisan support is usually necessary to obtain the required supermajority. If the Senate does invoke cloture, debate does not end immediately; instead, further debate is limited to thirty additional hours unless increased by another three-fifths vote.

When debate concludes, the motion in question is put to a vote. In many cases, the Senate votes by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question, and Members respond either "Aye!" (in favor of the motion) or "No!" (against the motion).

The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote. Any senator, however, may challenge the presiding officer's assessment and request a recorded vote. The request may be granted only if it is seconded by one-fifth of the senators present. In practice, however, senators second requests for recorded votes as a matter of courtesy. When a recorded vote is held, the clerk calls the roll of the Senate in alphabetical order; each senator responds when their name is called.

Senators who miss the roll call may still cast a vote as long as the recorded vote remains open. The vote is closed at the discretion of the presiding officer but must remain open for a minimum of fifteen minutes. If the vote is tied, the Vice President, if present, is entitled to a casting vote. If the Vice President is not present, however, the motion is resolved in the negative.

On occasion, the Senate may go into what is called a secret or closed session. During a closed session, the chamber doors are closed and the galleries are completely cleared of anyone not sworn to secrecy, not instructed in the rules of the closed session, or not essential to the session.

Closed sessions are quite rare and are usually held only under certain circumstances in which the Senate is discussing sensitive subject matter, such as information critical to national security, private communications from the president, or discussions of Senate deliberations during impeachment trials. Any Senator has the right to call a closed session as long as the motion is seconded.

Budget bills are governed under a special rule process called "Reconciliation" that disallows filibusters. Reconciliation was devised in 1974 but came into use in the early 1980s.

​The Rules by number:

The Standing Rules of the Senate detail the rules of order of the United States Senate. The latest version was adopted on April 27, 2000 and comprises the following 43 rules.

The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006 introduced a 44th rule on earmarks.
  1. SR Rule I: Appointment of a Senator to the Chair
  2. SR Rule II: Presentation of Credentials and Questions of Privilege
  3. SR Rule III: Oaths
  4. SR Rule IV: Commencement of Daily Sessions
  5. SR Rule V: Suspension and Amendment of the Rules
  6. SR Rule VI: Quorum - Absent Senators May Be Sent For
  7. SR Rule VII: Morning Business
  8. SR Rule VIII: Order of Business
  9. SR Rule IX: Messages
  10. SR Rule X: Special Orders
  11. SR Rule XI: Papers - Withdrawal, Printing, Reading of, and Reference
  12. SR Rule XII: Voting Procedure
  13. SR Rule XIII: Reconsideration
  14. SR Rule XIV: Joint Resolutions, and Preambles Thereto
  15. SR Rule XV: Amendments and Resolutions
  16. SR Rule XVI: Appropriations and Amendments to General Appropriation Bills
  17. SR Rule XVII: Reference to Committees; Motions to Discharge; Reports of Committees; and Hearings Available
  18. SR Rule XVIII: Business Continued from Session to Session
  19. SR Rule XIX: Debate
  20. SR Rule XX: Questions for Order
  21. SR Rule XXI: Session with Closed Doors
  22. SR Rule XXII: Precedence of Motions
  23. SR Rule XXIII: Privilege of the Floor
  24. SR Rule XXIV: Appointments of Committee
  25. SR Rule XXV: Standing Committees
  26. SR Rule XXVI: Committee Procedure
  27. SR Rule XXVII: Committee Staff
  28. SR Rule XXVIII: Conference Committees; Reports; Open Meetings
  29. SR Rule XXIX: Executive Sessions
  30. SR Rule XXX: Executive Session - Proceedings on Treaties
  31. SR Rule XXXI: Executive Session - Proceedings on Nominations
  32. SR Rule XXXII: The President Furnished with Copies of Record Executive Sessions
  33. SR Rule XXXIII: Senate Chamber - Senate Wing of the Capitol
  34. SR Rule XXXIV: Public Financial Disclosure
  35. SR Rule XXXV: Gifts
  36. SR Rule XXXVI: Outside Earned Income
  37. SR Rule XXXVII: Conflict of Interest
  38. SR Rule XXXVIII: Prohibition of Unofficial Office Accounts
  39. SR Rule XXXIX: Foreign Travel
  40. SR Rule XL: Franking Privilege and Radio and Television Studios
  41. SR Rule XLI: Political Fund Activity; Definitions
  42. SR Rule XLII: Employment Practices
  43. SR Rule XLIII: Representation by Members
  44. SR Rule XLIV: Congressionally Directed Spending and Related Items

See also:






​
Partisan Politics
A partisan is a committed member of a political party or army. In multi-party systems, the term is used for politicians who strongly support their party's policies and are reluctant to compromise with their political opponents. A political partisan is not to be confused with a military partisan.

In the United States, the meaning of the term has changed dramatically over the last 60 years. Before the American National Election Study (described in Angus Campbell et al., in The American Voter) began in 1952, an individual's partisan tendencies were typically determined from their voting behavior.

​Since then, "partisan" has come to refer to an individual with a psychological identification with one or the other of the major parties. Candidates, depending on their political beliefs, may choose to join a party. As they build the framework for career advancement, parties are more often than not the preferred choice for candidates. Wherein there are many parties in a system, candidates often join them as opposed to standing as an Independent, if that is provided for.

In the U.S., politicians have generally been identified with a party. Many local elections in the U.S. (as for mayor) are "nonpartisan." A candidate may have a party affiliation but it is not listed on the ballot. Independents occasionally appear in major contests but rarely win. At the presidential level the best independent vote getters were Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, and John B. Anderson in 1980.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was nonpartisan until 1952, when he joined the Republican Party and was elected president. According to David A. Crockett, "Much of Eisenhower's nonpartisan image was genuine, for he found Truman's campaigning distasteful and inappropriate, and he disliked the partisan aspects of campaigning."

With little interest in routine partisanship, Eisenhower left much of the building and sustaining of the Republican Party to his vice president, Richard Nixon. With Eisenhower uninvolved in party building, Nixon became the de facto national GOP leader."

Eisenhower's largely nonpartisan stance allowed him to work smoothly with the Democratic leaders Speaker Sam Rayburn in the House, and Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in the Senate. Jean Smith says that: "Ike, LBJ, and "Mr. Sam" did not trust one another completely and they did not see eye to eye on every issue, but they understood one another and had no difficulty working together."

Eisenhower continued to meet regularly with the Republican leadership. But his weekly sessions with Rayburn and Johnson, usually in the evening, over drinks, were far more productive.

For Johnson and Rayburn, it was shrewd politics to cooperate with Ike. Eisenhower was wildly popular in the country. ... By supporting a Republican president against the Old Guard of his own party, the Democrats hoped to share Ike's popularity.

​Research:

Partisanship causes survey respondents to answer political surveys differently, even if the survey asks a question with an objective answer. People with strong partisan beliefs are 12% more likely to give an incorrect answer that benefits their preferred party than an incorrect answer that benefits another party.

This is due to the phenomenon of motivated reasoning, of which there are several types, including "cheerleading" and congenial inference. Motivated reasoning means that a partisan survey respondent may feel motivated to answer the survey in a way that they know is incorrect; when the respondent is uncertain of an answer, partisanship may also motivate them to guess or predict an answer that favorable to their party.

Studies have found that offering a cash incentive for correct answers reduces partisan bias in responses by about 50%, from 12–15% to about 6%.

See also:







Progressive vs. Liberal Politics in the United States Pictured below: Leftists base all of their beliefs on false premises
Progressivism in the United States is a political philosophy and reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th century. Middle class and reformist in nature, it arose as a response to the vast changes brought by modernization such as the growth of large corporations, pollution and rampant corruption in American politics.

Historian Alonzo Hamby describes American progressivism as a "political movement that addresses ideas, impulses, and issues stemming from modernization of American society. Emerging at the end of the nineteenth century, it established much of the tone of American politics throughout the first half of the century".

In the 21st century, progressives continue to embrace concepts such as environmentalism and social justice. While the modern progressive movement may be characterized as largely secular in nature, by comparison, the historical progressive movement was to a significant extent rooted in and energized by religion.

Progressive Era:
Main article: Progressive Era

Historians debate the exact contours, but they generally date the Progressive Era in response to the excesses of the Gilded Age from the 1890s to either World War I or the onset of the Great Depression.

Many of the core principles of the progressive movement focused on the need for efficiency in all areas of society. Purification to eliminate waste and corruption was a powerful element as well as the progressives' support of worker compensation, improved child labor laws, minimum wage legislation, a limited workweek, graduated income tax and allowed women the right to vote.

Arthur S. Link and Vincent P. De Santis argue that the majority of progressive wanted to purify politics. According to Jimmie Franklin, purification meant taking the vote away from blacks in the South.

According to historian William Leuchtenburg, "[t]he Progressives believed in the Hamiltonian concept of positive government, of a national government directing the destinies of the nation at home and abroad.

They had little but contempt for the strict construction of the Constitution by conservative judges, who would restrict the power of the national government to act against social evils and to extend the blessings of democracy to less favored lands. The real enemy was particularism, state rights, limited government".

Purifying the electorate:

Progressives repeatedly warned that illegal voting was corrupting the political system. They especially identified big-city bosses, working with saloon keepers and precinct workers, as the culprits who stuffed the ballot boxes. The solution to purifying the vote included prohibition (designed to close down the saloons), voter registration requirements (designed to end multiple voting), and literacy tests (designed to minimize the number of ignorant voters).

All of the Southern states used devices to disenfranchise black voters during the Progressive Era. Typically, the progressive elements in those states pushed for disenfranchisement, often fighting against the conservatism of the Black Belt whites.

A major reason given was that whites routinely purchased black votes to control elections, and it was easier to disenfranchise blacks than to go after powerful white men.

In the Northern states, progressives such as Robert M. La Follette and William Simon U'Ren argued that the average citizen should have more control over his government. The Oregon System of "Initiative, Referendum, and Recall" was exported to many states, including Idaho, Washington and Wisconsin.

Many progressives such as George M. Forbes, president of Rochester's Board of Education, hoped to make government in the United States more responsive to the direct voice of the American people, arguing:

[W]e are now intensely occupied in forging the tools of democracy, the direct primary, the initiative, the referendum, the recall, the short ballot, commission government. But in our enthusiasm we do not seem to be aware that these tools will be worthless unless they are used by those who are aflame with the sense of brotherhood. [...]

The idea [of the social centers movement is] to establish in each community an institution having a direct and vital relation to the welfare of the neighborhood, ward, or district, and also to the city as a whole.

​Philip J. Ethington seconds this high view of direct democracy, saying that "initiatives, referendums, and recalls, along with direct primaries and the direct election of US Senators, were the core achievements of 'direct democracy' by the Progressive generation during the first two decades of the twentieth century".

​Progressives fought for women's suffrage to purify the elections using supposedly purer female voters. Progressives in the South supported the elimination of supposedly corrupt black voters from the election booth.

Historian Michael Perman says that in both Texas and Georgia "disfranchisement was the weapon as well as the rallying cry in the fight for reform". In Virginia, "the drive for disfranchisement had been initiated by men who saw themselves as reformers, even progressives".

While the ultimate significance of the progressive movement on today's politics is still up for debate, Alonzo L. Hamby asks: "What were the central themes that emerged from the cacophony [of progressivism]? Democracy or elitism? Social justice or social control? Small entrepreneurship or concentrated capitalism?

And what was the impact of American foreign policy? Were the progressives isolationists or interventionists? Imperialists or advocates of national self-determination? And whatever they were, what was their motivation? Moralistic utopianism? Muddled relativistic pragmatism? Hegemonic capitalism?

Not surprisingly many battered scholars began to shout 'no mas!' In 1970, Peter Filene declared that the term 'progressivism' had become meaningless."

Municipal administration:

The progressives typically concentrated on city and state government, looking for waste and better ways to provide services as the cities grew rapidly. These changes led to a more structured system, power that had been centralized within the legislature would now be more locally focused.

The changes were made to the system to effectively make legal processes, market transactions, bureaucratic administration and democracy easier to manage, putting them under the classification of "Municipal Administration".

There was also a change in authority for this system as it was believed that the authority that was not properly organized had now given authority to professionals, experts and bureaucrats for these services. These changes led to a more solid type of municipal administration compared to the old system that was underdeveloped and poorly constructed.

The progressives mobilized concerned middle class voters as well as newspapers and magazines to identify problems and concentrate reform sentiment on specific problems.

Many Protestants focused on the saloon as the power base for corruption as well as violence and family disruption, so they tried to get rid of the entire saloon system through prohibition.

Others such as Jane Addams in Chicago promoted settlement houses. Early municipal reformers included Hazen S. Pingree (mayor of Detroit in the 1890s) and Tom L. Johnson in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1901, Johnson won election as mayor of Cleveland on a platform of just taxation, home rule for Ohio cities and a 3-cent streetcar fare. Columbia University President Seth Low was elected mayor of New York City in 1901 on a reform ticket.

Efficiency:

Many progressives such as Louis Brandeis hoped to make American governments better able to serve the people's needs by making governmental operations and services more efficient and rational.

Rather than making legal arguments against ten-hour workdays for women, he used "scientific principles" and data produced by social scientists documenting the high costs of long working hours for both individuals and society.

The progressives' quest for efficiency was sometimes at odds with the progressives' quest for democracy. Taking power out of the hands of elected officials and placing that power in the hands of professional administrators reduced the voice of the politicians and in turn reduced the voice of the people.

Centralized decision-making by trained experts and reduced power for local wards made government less corrupt but more distant and isolated from the people it served. Progressives who emphasized the need for efficiency typically argued that trained independent experts could make better decisions than the local politicians.

In his influential Drift and Mastery (1914) stressing the "scientific spirit" and "discipline of democracy", Walter Lippmann called for a strong central government guided by experts rather than public opinion.

One example of progressive reform was the rise of the city manager system in which paid, professional engineers ran the day-to-day affairs of city governments under guidelines established by elected city councils. Many cities created municipal "reference bureaus" which did expert surveys of government departments looking for waste and inefficiency.

After in-depth surveys, local and even state governments were reorganized to reduce the number of officials and to eliminate overlapping areas of authority between departments.

City governments were reorganized to reduce the power of local ward bosses and to increase the powers of the city council. Governments at every level began developing budgets to help them plan their expenditures rather than spending money haphazardly as needs arose and revenue became available. Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois showed a "passion for efficiency" as he streamlined state government.

Governmental corruption:

Corruption represented a source of waste and inefficiency in the government. William Simon U'Ren in Oregon, Robert M. La Follette in Wisconsin and others worked to clean up state and local governments by passing laws to weaken the power of machine politicians and political bosses.

In Wisconsin, La Follette pushed through an open primary system that stripped party bosses of the power to pick party candidates. The Oregon System included a "Corrupt Practices Act", a public referendum and a state-funded voter's pamphlet, among other reforms which were exported to other states in the Northwest and Midwest. Its high point was in 1912, after which they detoured into a disastrous third party status.

Education:

Early progressive thinkers such as John Dewey and Lester Ward placed a universal and comprehensive system of education at the top of the progressive agenda, reasoning that if a democracy were to be successful, its leaders, the general public, needed a good education.

Progressives worked hard to expand and improve public and private education at all levels. They believed that modernization of society necessitated the compulsory education of all children, even if the parents objected. Progressives turned to educational researchers to evaluate the reform agenda by measuring numerous aspects of education, later leading to standardized testing.

Many educational reforms and innovations generated during this period continued to influence debates and initiatives in American education for the remainder of the 20th century.

One of the most apparent legacies of the Progressive Era left to American education was the perennial drive to reform schools and curricula, often as the product of energetic grass-roots movements in the city.

Since progressivism was and continues to be "in the eyes of the beholder", progressive education encompasses very diverse and sometimes conflicting directions in educational policy. Such enduring legacies of the Progressive Era continue to interest historians.

Progressive Era reformers stressed "object teaching", meeting the needs of particular constituencies within the school district, equal educational opportunity for boys and girls and avoiding corporal punishment.

David Gamson examines the implementation of progressive reforms in three city school districts--Denver, Colorado, Seattle, Washington and Oakland, California—during 1900–1928. Historians of educational reform during the Progressive Era tend to highlight the fact that many progressive policies and reforms were very different and at times even contradictory.

At the school district level, contradictory reform policies were often especially apparent, though there is little evidence of confusion among progressive school leaders in Denver,

Seattle and Oakland. District leaders in these cities, including Frank B. Cooper in Seattle and Fred M. Hunter in Oakland, often employed a seemingly contradictory set of reforms. Local progressive educators consciously sought to operate independently of national progressive movements as they preferred reforms that were easy to implement and were encouraged to mix and blend diverse reforms that had been shown to work in other cities.

The reformers emphasized professionalization and bureaucratization. The old system whereby ward politicians selected school employees was dropped in the case of teachers and replaced by a merit system requiring a college-level education in a normal school (teacher's college).

​The rapid growth in size and complexity the large urban school systems facilitated stable employment for women teachers and provided senior teachers greater opportunities to mentor younger teachers. By 1900, most women in Providence, Rhode Island remained as teachers for at least 17.5 years, indicating teaching had become a significant and desirable career path for women.

Regulation of large corporations and monopolies:

​Many progressives hoped that by regulating large corporations they could liberate human energies from the restrictions imposed by industrial capitalism. Nonetheless, the progressive movement was split over which of the following solutions should be used to regulate corporations.

Trust busting:

Pro-labor progressives such as Samuel Gompers argued that industrial monopolies were unnatural economic institutions which suppressed the competition which was necessary for progress and improvement. United States antitrust law is the body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior (monopoly) and unfair business practices.

Presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft supported trust-busting. During their presidencies, the otherwise-conservative Taft brought down 90 trusts in four years while Roosevelt took down 44 in seven and a half years in office.

Regulation:

Progressives such as Benjamin Parke De Witt argued that in a modern economy, large corporations and even monopolies were both inevitable and desirable. With their massive resources and economies of scale, large corporations offered the United States advantages which smaller companies could not offer.

However, these large corporations might abuse their great power. The federal government should allow these companies to exist, but otherwise regulate them for the public interest. President Roosevelt generally supported this idea and was later to incorporate it as part of his "New Nationalism".

Social work:

Progressives set up training programs to ensure that welfare and charity work would be undertaken by trained professionals rather than warm-hearted amateurs.

Jane Addams of Chicago's Hull House typified the leadership of residential, community centers operated by social workers and volunteers and located in inner city slums. The purpose of the settlement houses was to raise the standard of living of urbanites by providing adult education and cultural enrichment programs.

Anti-prostitution:

During this era of massive reformation among all social aspects, elimination of prostitution was vital for the progressives, especially the women.

Enactment of child labor laws:
Main article: Child labor laws in the United States

​Child labor laws were designed to prevent the overuse of children in the newly emerging industries. The goal of these laws was to give working class children the opportunity to go to school and mature more institutionally, thereby liberating the potential of humanity and encouraging the advancement of humanity.

Factory owners generally did not want this progression because of lost workers. They used Charles Dickens as a symbol that the working conditions spark imagination. This initiative failed, with child labor laws being enacted anyway.

Support for the goals of organized labor:

Labor unions grew steadily until 1916, then expanded fast during the war. In 1919, a wave of major strikes alienated the middle class and the strikes were lost which alienated the workers.

In the 1920s, the unions were in the doldrums. In 1924, they supported Robert M. La Follette's Progressive Party, but he only carried his base in Wisconsin. The American Federation of Labor under Samuel Gompers after 1907 began supporting the Democrats, who promised more favorable judges as the Republicans appointed pro-business judges. 

Theodore Roosevelt and his third party also supported such goals as the eight-hour work day, improved safety and health conditions in factories, workers' compensation laws and minimum wage laws for women.

Prohibition:

Most progressives, especially in rural areas, adopted the cause of prohibition. They saw the saloon as political corruption incarnate and bewailed the damage done to women and children. They believed the consumption of alcohol limited mankind's potential for advancement.

Progressives achieved success first with state laws then with the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1919. The golden day did not dawn as enforcement was lax, especially in the cities where the law had very limited popular support and where notorious criminal gangs such as the Chicago gang of Al Capone made a crime spree based on illegal sales of liquor in speakeasies.

The "experiment" (as President Herbert Hoover called it) also cost the treasury large sums of taxes and the 18th amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1933.

Eugenics:

Some progressives sponsored eugenics as a solution to excessively large or under-performing families, hoping that birth control would enable parents to focus their resources on fewer, better children. Progressive leaders such as Herbert Croly and Walter Lippmann indicated their classical liberal concern over the danger posed to the individual by the practice of eugenics.

Conservation:

During the term of the progressive President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) and influenced by the ideas of philosopher-scientists such as George Perkins Marsh, William John McGee, John Muir, John Wesley Powell and Lester Frank Ward, the largest government-funded conservation-related projects in United States history were undertaken.

National parks and wildlife refuges:
Further information: Antiquities Act, National Park Service Organic Act, and National Wildlife Refuge

On March 14, 1903, President Roosevelt created the first National Bird Preserve, the beginning of the Wildlife Refuge system, on Pelican Island, Florida. In all, by 1909, the Roosevelt administration had created an unprecedented 42 million acres (170,000 km2) of United States National Forests, 53 National Wildlife Refuges and 18 areas of "special interest" such as the Grand Canyon.

Reclamation:

In addition, Roosevelt approved the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 which gave subsidies for irrigation in 13 (eventually 20) Western states. Another conservation-oriented bill was the Antiquities Act of 1906 that protected large areas of land by allowing the president to declare areas meriting protection to be national monuments.

The Inland Waterways Commission was appointed by Roosevelt on March 14, 1907 to study the river systems of the United States, including the development of water power, flood control and land reclamation.

National politics:

In the early 20th century, politicians of the Democratic and Republican parties, Lincoln–Roosevelt League Republicans (in California) and Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party all pursued environmental, political and economic reforms. Chief among these aims was the pursuit of trust busting, the breaking up very large monopolies and support for labor unions, public health programs, decreased corruption in politics and environmental conservation.

The progressive movement enlisted support from both major parties and from minor parties as well. One leader, the Democratic William Jennings Bryan, had won both the Democratic Party and the Populist Party nominations in 1896.

​At the time, the great majority of other major leaders had been opposed to populism. When Roosevelt left the Republican Party in 1912, he took with him many of the intellectual leaders of progressivism, but very few political leaders. The Republican Party then became notably more committed to business-oriented and efficiency-oriented progressivism, typified by Herbert Hoover and William Howard Taft.

​Culture:

The foundation of the progressive tendency was indirectly linked to the unique philosophy of pragmatism which was primarily developed by John Dewey and William James.

Equally significant to progressive-era reform were the crusading journalists known as muckrakers. These journalists publicized to middle class readers economic privilege, political corruption and social injustice. Their articles appeared in McClure's Magazine and other reform periodicals.

Some muckrakers focused on corporate abuses:. 
​Novelists criticized corporate injustices: 
Leading intellectuals also shaped the progressive mentality. In Dynamic Sociology (1883), Lester Frank Ward laid out the philosophical foundations of the progressive movement and attacked the laissez-faire policies advocated by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner.

In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Thorstein Veblen attacked the "conspicuous consumption" of the wealthy. Educator John Dewey emphasized a child-centered philosophy of pedagogy known as progressive education which affected schoolrooms for three generations.

In the 21st century:

Progressivism in the 21st century is significantly different from the historical progressivism of the 19th–20th centuries. According to Princeton economics professor Thomas C. Leonard, "[a]t a glance, there is not much here for 21st-century progressives to claim kinship with.

Today’s progressives emphasize racial equality and minority rights, decry U.S. imperialism, shun biological ideas in social science, and have little use for piety or proselytizing".

However, both historical progressivism and the modern movement shares the notion that the free markets lead to economic inequalities that must be ameliorated.

Mitigating income inequality:

Income inequality in the United States has been on the rise since 1970 as the wealthy continue to hold more and more wealth and income. From 2009 to 2013, 95% of income gains went to the top 1% of wage earners in the United States.

Progressives have recognized that lower union rates, weak policy, globalization and other drivers have caused the gap in income. The rise of income inequality has led Progressives to draft legislation including, but not limited to, reforming Wall Street, reforming the tax code, reforming campaign finance, closing loopholes and keeping domestic work.

Wall Street reform:

Progressives began to demand stronger Wall Street regulation after they perceived deregulation and relaxed enforcement as leading to the financial crisis of 2008.

Passing the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory act in 2010 provided increased oversight on financial institutions and the creation of new regulatory agencies, but many progressives argue its broad framework allows for financial institutions to continue to take advantage of consumers and the government.

Among others, Bernie Sanders has advocated to reimplement Glass-Steagall for its stricter regulation and to break up the banks because of financial institutions' market share being concentrated in fewer corporations than progressives would like.

Health care reform:

​In 2009, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) outlined five key healthcare principles they intended to pass into law. The CPC mandated a nationwide public option, affordable health insurance, insurance market regulations, an employer insurance provision mandate and comprehensive services for children.

In March 2010, Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which was intended to increase the affordability and efficiency of the United States healthcare system.

Although considered a success by progressives, many argued that it did not go far enough in achieving healthcare reform as exemplified with the Democrats' failure in achieving a national public option.

In recent decades, single-payer healthcare has become an important goal in healthcare reform for progressives. In the 2016 Democratic Party primaries, progressive and democratic socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders raised the issue of a single-payer healthcare system, citing his belief that millions of Americans are still paying too much for health insurance and arguing that millions more don't receive the care they need.

In November 2016, an effort was made to implement a single-payer healthcare system in the state of Colorado, known as ColoradoCare (Amendment 69). Senator Sanders held rallies in Colorado in support of Amendment 69 leading up to the vote. Despite high-profile support, Amendment 69 failed to pass, with just 21.23% of voting Colorado residents voting in favor and 78.77% against.

Minimum wage:

Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage peaked in 1968 at around $9.90 in 2020 dollars. Progressives believe that stagnating wages perpetuate income inequality and that raising the minimum wage is a necessary step to combat inequality. If the minimum wage grew at the rate of productivity growth in the United States, it would be $21.72 an hour, nearly three times as much as the current $7.25 an hour. 

Popular progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders and former Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison have endorsed a federally mandated wage increase to $15 an hour. The movement has already seen success with its implementation in California with the passing of bill to raise the minimum wage $1 every year until reaching $15 an hour in 2021. New York workers are lobbying for similar legislation as many continue to rally for a minimum wage increase as part of the Fight for $15 movement.

Environmental justice:
​
Modern progressives advocate for strong environmental protections and measures to reduce or eliminate pollution. One reason for this is the strong link between economic injustice and adverse environmental conditions as groups that are economically marginalized tend to be disproportionately affected by the harms of pollution and environmental degradation.

Definition:

With the rise in popularity of self-proclaimed progressives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang, the term progressive began to carry greater cultural currency, particularly in the 2016 Democratic primaries.

While answering a question from CNN moderator Anderson Cooper regarding her willingness to shift positions during an October 2015 debate, Hillary Clinton referred to herself as a "progressive who likes to get things done", drawing the ire of a number of Sanders supporters and other critics from her left.

Questions about the precise meaning of the term have persisted within the Democratic Party and without since the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election, with some candidates using it to indicate their affiliation with the left flank of the party. Progressive and progressivism are essentially contested concepts, with different groups and individuals defining the terms in different and sometimes contradictory ways towards different and sometimes contradictory ends.

Other progressive parties:

Following the first progressive movement of the early 20th century, two later short-lived parties have also identified as progressive.

Progressive Party, 1924:
Main article: Progressive Party (United States, 1924)

In 1924, Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket. La Follette won the support of labor unions, Germans and socialists by his crusade. He carried only Wisconsin and the party vanished outside Wisconsin. There, it remained a force until the 1940s.

Progressive Party, 1948:
Main article: Progressive Party (United States, 1948)

A third party was initiated in 1948 by former Vice President Henry A. Wallace as a vehicle for his campaign for president. He saw the two parties as reactionary and war-mongering, and attracted support from left-wing voters who opposed the Cold War policies that had become a national consensus.

Most liberals, New Dealers and especially the Congress of Industrial Organizations, denounced the party because in their view it was increasingly controlled by "Communists". It faded away after winning 2% of the vote in 1948.

See also: ___________________________________________________________________________

Modern liberalism in the United States:

Modern liberalism in the United States is the dominant version of liberalism in the United States. It combines ideas of civil liberty and equality with support for social justice and a mixed economy. According to Ian Adams, all American parties are "liberal and always have been. They reportedly espouse classical liberalism, that is a form of democratized Whig constitutionalism plus the free market. The point of difference comes with the influence of social liberalism".

Economically, modern liberalism opposes cuts to the social safety net and supports a role for government in reducing inequality, providing education, ensuring access to healthcare, regulating economic activity and protecting the natural environment.

This form of liberalism took shape in the 20th century United States as the franchise and other civil rights were extended to a larger class of citizens. Major examples include: 
In the first half of the 20th century, both major American parties had a conservative and a liberal wing. The conservative Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats formed the conservative coalition which dominated the Congress in the pre-Civil Rights era. As the Democrats under President Johnson began to support civil rights, the formerly Solid South, meaning solidly Democratic, became solidly Republican, except in districts with a large number of African-American voters.

Since the 1960s, the Democratic Party has been considered liberal and the Republican Party has been considered conservative. As a group, liberals are referred to as the left and conservatives as the right. Starting in the 21st century, there has also been a sharp division between liberals who tend to live in denser, more heterogeneous communities and conservatives who tend to live in less dense, more homogeneous communities.

Overview:

The modern liberal philosophy strongly endorses public spending on programs such as education, health care and welfare.

Important social issues during the first part of the 21st century include: 
Modern liberals oppose conservatives on most but not all issues. Although historically related to social liberalism and progressivism, the current relationship between liberal and progressive viewpoints is debated.
​
Modern liberalism is typically associated with the Democratic Party while modern conservatism is typically associated with the Republican Party.

In 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt defined a liberal party in the following terms:
The liberal party believes that, as new conditions and problems arise beyond the power of men and women to meet as individuals, it becomes the duty of Government itself to find new remedies with which to meet them. The liberal party insists that the Government has the definite duty to use all its power and resources to meet new social problems with new social controls—to ensure to the average person the right to his own economic and political life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy defined a liberal as follows: What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, "Liberal"? If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal."

But, if by a "Liberal," they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties—someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say that I'm a "Liberal."

Keynesian economic theory has played an important role in the economic philosophy of modern liberals. Modern liberals generally believe that national prosperity requires government management of the macroeconomy in order to keep unemployment low, inflation in check and growth high. They also value institutions that defend against economic inequality.

In The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman writes: "I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I'm proud of it". 

Modern liberals often point to the widespread prosperity enjoyed under a mixed economy in the years since World War II. They believe liberty exists when access to necessities like health care and economic opportunity are available to all and they champion the protection of the environment.

American versus European usage of liberalism:
Main articles: Liberalism and Liberalism worldwide

Today, liberalism is used differently in different countries. One of the greatest contrasts is between the usage in the United States and usage in Europe. According to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (writing in 1956), "[l]iberalism in the American usage has little in common with the word as used in the politics of any European country, save possibly Britain".

In Europe, liberalism usually means what is sometimes called classical liberalism, a commitment to limited government, laissez-faire economics and unalienable individual rights. This classical liberalism sometimes more closely corresponds to the American definition of libertarianism, although some distinguish between classical liberalism and libertarianism.

In the United States, the general term liberalism almost always refer to modern liberalism, a more social variant of classical liberalism. In Europe, this social liberalism is closer to European social democracy, although the original form is advocated by some liberal parties in Europe as well as with the Beveridge Group faction within the Liberal Democrats, the Liberals, the Danish Social Liberal Party, the Democratic Movement and the Italian Republican Party.

Demographics of American liberals:

A 2005 Pew Research Center study found that liberals were the most educated ideological demographic and were tied with the conservative sub-group of the enterprisers for the most affluent group. Of those who identified as liberal, 49% were college graduates and 41% had household incomes exceeding $75,000, compared to 27% and 28% as the national average, respectively.

Liberalism has become the dominant political ideology in academia, with 44–62% identifying as liberal, depending on the exact wording of the survey. This compares with 40–46% liberal identification in surveys from 1969 to 1984.

The social sciences and humanities were most liberal whereas business and engineering departments were the least liberal, although even in the business departments liberals outnumbered conservatives by two to one. This feeds the common question whether liberals are on average more educated than conservatives, their political counterparts.

Two Zogby surveys from 2008 and 2010 affirm that self-identified liberals tend to go to college more than self-identified conservatives. Polls have found that young Americans are considerably more liberal than the general population. As of 2009, 30% of the 18–29 cohort was liberal. In 2011, this had changed to 28%, with moderates picking up the two percent.

A 2015 Gallup poll found that socially liberal views have consistently been on the rise in the United States since 1999. As of 2015, there is a roughly equal number of socially liberal Americans and socially conservative Americans (31% each) and the socially liberal trend continues to rise. 

In early 2016, Gallup found that more Americans identified as ideologically conservative (37%) or moderate (35%) rather than liberal (24%), but that liberalism has slowly been gaining ground since 1992, standing at a 24-year high.

21st century issues:

In early 21st century political discourse in the United States, liberalism has come to include:
  • support for reproductive rights for women, including abortion, 
  • affirmative action for minority groups historically discriminated against, 
  • multilateralism and support for international institutions, 
  • support for individual rights over corporate interests, 
  • support for universal health care for Americans (with a single-payer option),
  • support for LGBTQ+ rights and marriage equality
  • and opposition to tax cuts for the rich.

History:
​
Historian and advocate of liberalism Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. had explored in depth the heritage of Jacksonian democracy in its influence on Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Robert V. Remini, the biographer of Andrew Jackson, also said: Jacksonian Democracy, then, stretches the concept of democracy about as far as it can go and still remain workable. [...] As such it has inspired much of the dynamic and dramatic events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in American history—Populism, Progressivism, the New and Fair Deals, and the programs of the New Frontier and Great Society to mention the most obvious.

In 1956, Schlesinger said that liberalism in the United States includes both a laissez-faire form and a government intervention form. He holds that liberalism in the United States is aimed toward achieving equality of opportunity for all, but it is the means of achieving this that changes depending on the circumstances. He says that the "process of redefining liberalism in terms of the social needs of the 20th century was conducted by Theodore Roosevelt and his New Nationalism, Woodrow Wilson and his New Freedom, and Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.

Out of these three reform periods there emerged the conception of a social welfare state, in which the national government had the express obligation to maintain high levels of employment in the economy, to supervise standards of life and labor, to regulate the methods of business competition, and to establish comprehensive patterns of social security".
Some make the distinction between American classical liberalism and the new liberalism, better known as social liberalism.

Progressive Era:
Main article: Progressive era

The progressive movement emerged in the 1890s and included intellectual reformers typified by sociologist Lester Frank Ward and economist Richard T. Ely. They transformed Victorian liberalism, retaining its commitment to civil liberties and individual rights while casting off its advocacy of laissez-faire economics.

Ward helped define what would become the modern welfare state after 1933. These often supported the growing working-class labor unions and sometimes even the socialists to their left.

The Social Gospel movement was a Protestant intellectual movement that helped shape liberalism especially from the 1890s to the 1920s. It applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools and the danger of war.

Lyndon B. Johnson's parents were active in the Social Gospel and had a lifetime commitment to it, for he sought to transform social problems into moral problems. This helps explain his longtime commitment to social justice as exemplified by the Great Society and his commitment to racial equality. The Social Gospel explicitly inspired his foreign-policy approach to a sort of Christian internationalism and nation building. In philosophy and education, John Dewey was highly influential.

In 1900–1920, liberals called themselves progressives. They rallied behind Republicans led by Theodore Roosevelt and Robert M. La Follette as well as Democrats led by William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson to fight corruption, waste and big trusts (monopolies).

They stressed ideals of social justice and the use of government to solve social and economic problems. Settlement workers such as Jane Addams were leaders of the liberal tradition. There was a tension between sympathy with labor unions and the goal to apply scientific expertise by disinterested experts. When liberals became anti-Communist in the 1940s, they purged leftists from the liberal movement.

Political writer Herbert Croly helped to define the new liberalism through The New Republic magazine and numerous influential books. Croly presented the case for a planned economy, increased spending on education and the creation of a society based on the "brotherhood of mankind". His highly influential 1909 book The Promise of American Life proposed to raise the general standard of living by means of economic planning. Croly opposed aggressive unionization. In The Techniques of Democracy (1915), he also argued against both dogmatic individualism and dogmatic socialism.

The historian Vernon Louis Parrington in 1928 won the Pulitzer Prize for Main Currents in American Thought. It was a highly influential intellectual history of America from the colonial era to the early 20th century. It was well written and passionate about the value of Jeffersonian democracy and helped identify and honor liberal heroes and their ideas and causes.

In 1930, Parrington argued: "For upwards of half a century creative political thinking in America was largely western agrarian, and from this source came those democratic ideas that were to provide the staple of a later liberalism". In 1945, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. argued in The Age of Jackson that liberalism also emerged from Jacksonian democracy and the labor radicalism of the Eastern cities, thereby linking it to the urban dimension of Roosevelt's New Deal.

Liberal Republicans:

With its emphasis on a strong federal government over claims of state's rights, widespread entrepreneurship and individual freedom against the property rights of slave owners, Abraham Lincoln's presidency laid much of the ground work for future liberal Republican governance.

The Republican Party's liberal element in the early 20th century was typified by Theodore Roosevelt in the 1907–1912 period, although Roosevelt was more conservative at other points. Other liberal Republicans included Senator Robert M. La Follette and his sons in Wisconsin (from about 1900 to 1946) and Western leaders such as Senator Hiram Johnson in California, Senator George W. Norris in Nebraska, Senator Bronson M. Cutting in New Mexico, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin in Montana and Senator William Borah in Idaho from about 1900 to about 1940.

They were generally liberal in domestic policy as they supported unions and much of the New Deal. However, they were intensely isolationist in foreign policy. This element died out by the 1940s. Starting in the 1930s, a number of mostly Northeastern Republicans took modern liberal positions regarding labor unions, spending and New Deal policies.They included:
While the media often called them Rockefeller Republicans, the liberal Republicans never formed an organized movement or caucus and lacked a recognized leader. They promoted economic growth and high state and federal spending while accepting high taxes and much liberal legislation, with the provision they could administer it more efficiently.

They opposed the Democratic big city machines while welcoming support from labor unions and big business alike. Religion was not high on their agenda, but they were strong believers in civil rights for African-Americans and women's rights and most liberals were pro-choice.

They were also strong environmentalists and supported higher education. In foreign policy, they were internationalists, throwing their support to the moderate Dwight D. Eisenhower over the conservative leader Robert A. Taft in 1952. They were often called "the Eastern Establishment" by conservatives such as Barry Goldwater.

The Goldwater conservatives fought this establishment, defeated Rockefeller in the 1964 primaries and eventually retired most of its members, although some such as Senator Charles Goodell and Mayor John Lindsay in New York became Democrats.

As President, Richard Nixon adopted many of the liberals' positions regarding the environment, welfare and the arts. After Congressman John B. Anderson of Illinois bolted the party in 1980 and ran as an independent against Reagan, the liberal Republicans element faded away.

Their old strongholds in the Northeast are now mostly held by Democrats.

New Deal:
Main article: New Deal

President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to office in 1933 amid the economic calamity of the Great Depression, offering the nation a New Deal intended to alleviate economic desperation and joblessness, provide greater opportunities and restore prosperity.

His presidency was the longest in American history, lasting from 1933 to 1945 and marked by an increased role for the federal government in addressing the nation's economic and social problems.

Work relief programs provided jobs, ambitious projects such as the Tennessee Valley Authority were created to promote economic development and a social security system was established. The Roosevelt administration was assisted in its endeavors by progressives in Congress, with the congressional midterm elections of 1934 returning a more radical House of Representatives that was prepared to support progressive, new liberal measures. As noted by J. Richard Piper: "As the "new" liberalism crystallized into its dominant form by 1935, both houses of Congress continued to provide large voting majorities for public policies that were generally dubbed "liberal". Conservatives constituted a distinct congressional minority from 1933 to 1937 and appeared threatened with oblivion for a time."

The Great Depression seemed over in 1936, but a relapse in 1937–1938 produced continued long-term unemployment. Full employment was reached with the total mobilization of the United States economic, social and military resources in World War II. At that point, the main relief programs such as the WPA and the CCC were ended.

Arthur Herman argues that Roosevelt restored prosperity after 1940 by cooperating closely with big business, although when asked "Do you think the attitude of the Roosevelt administration toward business is delaying business recovery?", the American people in 1939 responded "yes" by a margin of more than 2-to-1.

The New Deal programs to relieve the Great Depression are generally regarded as a mixed success in ending unemployment. At the time, many New Deal programs, especially the CCC, were popular. Liberals hailed them for improving the life of the common citizen and for providing jobs for the unemployed, legal protection for labor unionists, modern utilities for rural America, living wages for the working poor and price stability for the family farmer. Economic progress for minorities, however, was hindered by discrimination, an issue often avoided by Roosevelt's administration.

Relief, recovery and reform:
The New Deal consisted of three types of programs designed to produce relief, recovery and reform:
Race:

The New Deal was racially segregated as blacks and whites rarely worked alongside each other in New Deal programs. The largest relief program by far was the WPA which operated segregated units as did its youth affiliate the NYA. Blacks were hired by the WPA as supervisors in the North. Of 10,000 WPA supervisors in the South, only 11 were black. 

In the first few weeks of operation, CCC camps in the North were integrated. By July 1935, all the camps in the United States were segregated and blacks were strictly limited in the supervisory roles they were assigned. Kinker and Smith argue that "even the most prominent racial liberals in the New Deal did not dare to criticize Jim Crow". 

Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes was one of the Roosevelt administration's most prominent supporters of blacks and was former president of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP.

When Senator Josiah Bailey, Democrat of North Carolina, accused him in 1937 of trying to break down segregation laws, Ickes wrote him to deny it: I think it is up to the states to work out their social problems if possible, and while I have always been interested in seeing that the Negro has a square deal, I have never dissipated my strength against the particular stone wall of segregation. I believe that wall will crumble when the Negro has brought himself to a high educational and economic status. [...] Moreover, while there are no segregation laws in the North, there is segregation in fact and we might as well recognize this.

The New Deal's record came under attack by New Left historians in the 1960s for its pusillanimity in not attacking capitalism more vigorously, nor helping blacks achieve equality. The critics emphasize the absence of a philosophy of reform to explain the failure of New Dealers to attack fundamental social problems. They demonstrate the New Deal's commitment to save capitalism and its refusal to strip away private property. They detect a remoteness from the people and indifference to participatory democracy and call instead for more emphasis on conflict and exploitation.

Foreign policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt:

In international affairs, Roosevelt's presidency until 1938 reflected the isolationism that dominated practically all of American politics at the time. After 1938, he moved toward interventionism as the world hurtled toward war. Liberals split on foreign policy as many followed Roosevelt while others such as John L. Lewis of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, historian Charles A. Beard and the Kennedy Family opposed him.

However, Roosevelt added new conservative supporters such as Republicans Henry Stimson (who became his Secretary of War in 1940) and Wendell Willkie (who worked closely with Roosevelt after losing to him in the 1940s election).

Anticipating the post-war period, Roosevelt strongly supported proposals to create a United Nations organization as a means of encouraging mutual cooperation to solve problems on the international stage. His commitment to internationalist ideals was in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson, except that Roosevelt learned from Wilson's mistakes regarding the League of Nations. For instance, Roosevelt included Republicans in shaping foreign policy and insisted the United States have a veto at the United Nations.

Liberalism during the Cold War:

American liberalism of the Cold War era was the immediate heir to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the somewhat more distant heir to the progressives of the early 20th century. Rossinow (2008) argues that after 1945 the left-liberal alliance that operated during the New Deal years split apart for good over the issue of Communism.

Anti-Communist liberals led by Walter Reuther and Hubert Humphrey expelled the far-left from labor unions and the New Deal coalition and committed the Democratic Party to a strong Cold War policy typified by NATO and the containment of Communism.

Liberals became committed to a quantitative goal of economic growth that accepted large near-monopolies such as General Motors and AT&T while rejecting the structural transformation dreamed of by earlier left-liberals. The far-left had its last hurrah in Henry A. Wallace's 1948 third-party presidential campaign. Wallace supported further New Deal reforms and opposed the Cold War, but his campaign was taken over by the far-left and Wallace retired from politics in disgust.

Most prominent and constant among the positions of Cold War liberalism were the following:
  • Support for a domestic economy built on a balance of power between labor (in the form of organized unions) and management (with a tendency to be more interested in large corporations than in small business).
  • A foreign policy focused on containing the Soviet Union and its allies.
  • The continuation and expansion of New Deal social welfare programs (in the broad sense of welfare, including programs such as Social Security).
  • An embrace of Keynesian economics. By way of compromise with political groupings to their right, this often became in practice military Keynesianism.

In some ways, this resembled what in other countries was referred to as social democracy.

However, American liberals never widely endorsed nationalization of industry like European social democrats, instead favoring regulation for public benefit.

In the 1950s and 1960s, both major American political parties included liberal and conservative factions. The Democratic Party included the Northern and Western liberals on one hand and the generally conservative Southern whites on the other. Difficult to classify were the Northern big city Democratic political machines. The urban machines had supported New Deal economic policies, but they faded with the coming of prosperity and the assimilation of ethnic groups.

Nearly all collapsed by the 1960s in the face of racial violence in the cities The Republican Party included the moderate-to-liberal Wall Street and the moderate-to-conservative Main Street. The more liberal wing, strongest in the Northeast, was far more supportive of New Deal programs, labor unions and an internationalist foreign policy. Support for anti-Communism sometimes came at the expense of civil liberties.

For example, ADA co-founder and archetypal Cold War liberal Hubert Humphrey unsuccessfully sponsored in 1950 a Senate bill to establish detention centers where those declared subversive by the President could be held without trial. Nonetheless, liberals opposed McCarthyism and were central to McCarthy's downfall.

In domestic policy during the Fifth Party System (1932–1966), liberals seldom had full control of government, but conservatives never had full control in that period either. According to Jonathan Bernstein, neither liberals nor Democrats controlled the House of Representatives very often from 1939 through 1957, although a 1958 landslide gave liberals real majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in twenty years.

However, Rules Committee reforms and others were carried out following this landslide as liberals saw that House procedures "still prevented them from using that majority". The conservative coalition was also important (if not dominant) from 1967 through 1974, although Congress had a liberal Democratic majority from 1985 to 1994. As also noted by Bernstein, "there have only been a handful of years (Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term, 1961-1966, Jimmy Carter's presidency, and the first two years of Clinton's and Barack Obama's presidencies) when there were clear, working liberal majorities in the House, the Senate and the White House".

Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal:

Until he became president, liberals generally did not see Harry S. Truman as one of their own, viewing him as a Democratic Party hack. However, liberal politicians and liberal organizations such as the unions and Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) supported Truman's liberal Fair Deal proposals to continue and expand the New Deal. 

Alonzo Hamby argues that the Fair Deal reflected the vital center approach to liberalism which rejected totalitarianism, was suspicious of excessive concentrations of government power and honored the New Deal as an effort to achieve a progressive capitalist system.

Solidly based upon the New Deal tradition in its advocacy of wide-ranging social legislation, the Fair Deal differed enough to claim a separate identity. The depression did not return after the war and the Fair Deal faced prosperity and an optimistic future. The Fair Dealers thought in terms of abundance rather than depression scarcity.

Economist Leon Keyserling argued that the liberal task was to spread the benefits of abundance throughout society by stimulating economic growth. Agriculture Secretary Charles F. Brannan wanted to unleash the benefits of agricultural abundance and to encourage the development of an urban-rural Democratic coalition. However, the "Brannan Plan" was defeated his unrealistic confidence in the possibility uniting urban labor and farm owners who distrusted rural insurgency.

The conservative coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats in Congress effectively blocked the Fair Deal and nearly all liberal legislation from the late 1930s to 1960. The Korean War made military spending the nation's priority.

In the 1960s, Stanford University historian Barton Bernstein repudiated Truman for failing to carry forward the New Deal agenda and for excessive anti-Communism at home.

1950s:

Combating conservatism was not high on the liberal agenda, for the liberal ideology was so intellectually dominant by 1950 that the literary critic Lionel Trilling could note that "liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition [...]. [T]here are no conservative or reactionary ideas in circulation".

Most historians see liberalism in the doldrums in the 1950s, with the old spark of New Deal dreams overshadowed by the glitzy complacency and conservatism of the Eisenhower years. Adlai Stevenson II lost in two landslides and presented few new liberal proposals apart from a suggestion for a worldwide ban on nuclear tests.

As Barry Karl noted, Stevenson "has suffered more at hands of the admirers he failed than he ever did from the enemies who defeated him". Many liberals bemoan the willingness of Democratic leaders Lyndon B. Johnson and Sam Rayburn to collaborate in Congress with Eisenhower and the commitment of the AFL–CIO unions and most liberal spokesmen such as Senators Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas to anti-Communism at home and abroad.

They decry the weak attention most liberals paid to the nascent civil rights movement.

Liberal coalition:

Politically, starting in the late 1940s there was a powerful labor–liberal coalition with strong grassroots support, energetic well-funded organizations and a cadre of supporters in Congress. On labor side was the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) which merged into the AFL–CIO in 1955, the United Auto Workers (UAW), union lobbyists and the Committee on Political Education's (COPE) which organized turnout campaigns and publicity at elections. 

Walter Reuther of the UAW was the leader of liberalism in the labor movement and his autoworkers generously funded the cause.

The main liberal organizations included:
Key liberal leaders in the Senate included: 
Leaders in the House included Representatives:
Although for years they had largely been frustrated by the conservative coalition, the liberal coalition suddenly came to power in 1963 and were ready with proposals that became central to the Great Society.

Intellectuals:

Intellectuals and writers were an important component of the coalition at this point. Many writers, especially historians, became prominent spokesmen for liberalism and were frequently called upon for public lectures and for popular essays on political topics by magazines such as The New Republic, Saturday Review, The Atlantic Monthly and Harpers. 

Also active in the arena of ideas were:
Representative was the historian Henry Steele Commager, who felt a duty to teach his fellow citizens how liberalism was the foundation of American values. He believed that an educated public that understands American history would support liberal programs, especially internationalism and the New Deal.

Commager was representative of a whole generation of like-minded historians who were widely read by the general public, including Allan Nevins, Daniel Boorstin, Richard Hofstadter and C. Vann Woodward. 

Perhaps the most prominent of all was Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., whose books on Andrew Jackson and on Roosevelt and the Kennedy brothers as well as his many essays and his work with liberal organizations and in the White House itself under Kennedy emphasized the ideological history of American liberalism, especially as made concrete by a long tradition of powerful liberal Presidents.

Commager's biographer Neil Jumonville has argued that this style of influential public history has been lost in the 21st century because political correctness has rejected Commager's open marketplace of tough ideas. Jumonville says history now comprises abstruse deconstruction by experts, with statistics instead of stories and is now comprehensible only to the initiated while ethnocentrism rules in place of common identity.

Other experts have traced the relative decline of intellectuals to their concern race, ethnicity and gender and scholarly antiquarianism.

Great Society: 1964–1968:
Main article: Great Society

The climax of liberalism came in the mid-1960s with the success of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969) in securing congressional passage of his Great Society programs, including civil rights, the end of segregation, Medicare, extension of welfare, federal aid to education at all levels, subsidies for the arts and humanities, environmental activism and a series of programs designed to wipe out poverty.

According to historian Joseph Crespino: It has become a staple of twentieth-century historiography that Cold War concerns were at the root of a number of progressive political accomplishments in the postwar period: a high progressive marginal tax rate that helped fund the arms race and contributed to broad income equality; bipartisan support for far-reaching civil rights legislation that transformed politics and society in the American South, which had long given the lie to America’s egalitarian ethos; bipartisan support for overturning an explicitly racist immigration system that had been in place since the 1920s; and free health care for the elderly and the poor, a partial fulfillment of one of the unaccomplished goals of the New Deal era. The list could go on.

As recent historians have explained: Gradually, liberal intellectuals crafted a new vision for achieving economic and social justice. The liberalism of the early 1960s contained no hint of radicalism, little disposition to revive new deal era crusades against concentrated economic power, and no intention to fan class passions or redistribute wealth or restructure existing institutions.

Internationally it was strongly anti-Communist. It aimed to defend the free world, to encourage economic growth at home, and to ensure that the resulting plenty was fairly distributed. Their agenda-much influenced by Keynesian economic theory-envisioned massive public expenditure that would speed economic growth, thus providing the public resources to fund larger welfare, housing, health, and educational programs.

Johnson was rewarded with an electoral landslide in 1964 against conservative Barry Goldwater which broke the decades-long control of Congress by the conservative coalition.

However, the Republicans bounced back in 1966 and as the Democratic Party splintered five ways Republicans elected Richard Nixon in 1968. Faced with a generally liberal Democratic Congress during his presidency, Nixon used his power over executive agencies to obstruct the authorization of programs that he was opposed to. As noted by one observer, Nixon "claimed the authority to 'impound,' or withhold, money Congress appropriated to support them"

Nevertheless, Nixon largely continued the New Deal and Great Society programs he inherited. Conservative reaction would come with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.[

Liberals and civil rights:
See also: Civil rights movement

Cold War liberalism emerged at a time when most African-Americans, especially in the South, were politically and economically disenfranchised. Beginning with To Secure These Rights, an official report issued by the Truman White House in 1947, self-proclaimed liberals increasingly embraced the civil rights movement.

In 1948, President Truman desegregated the armed forces and the Democrats inserted a strong civil rights plank or provision in the Democratic Party platform. Black activists, most prominently Martin Luther King Jr., escalated the bearer agitation throughout the South, especially in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1963 Birmingham campaign, where brutal police tactics outraged national television audiences.

The civil rights movement climaxed in the March on Washington in August 1963, where King gave his dramatic "I Have a Dream" speech, culminating in the events of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. The activism put civil rights at the very top of the liberal political agenda and facilitated passage of the decisive Civil Rights Act of 1964 which permanently ended segregation in the United States and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which guaranteed blacks the right to vote, with strong enforcement provisions throughout the South handled by the federal Department of Justice.

During the mid-1960s, relations between white liberals and the civil rights movement became increasingly strained as civil rights leaders accused liberal politicians of temporizing and procrastinating. Although President Kennedy sent federal troops to compel the University of Mississippi to admit African-American James Meredith in 1962 and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. toned down the 1963 March on Washington at Kennedy's behest, the failure to seat the delegates of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention indicated a growing rift.

President Johnson could not understand why the rather impressive civil rights laws passed under his leadership had failed to immunize Northern and Western cities from rioting. At the same time, the civil rights movement itself was becoming fractured.

By 1966, a Black Power movement had emerged. Black Power advocates accused white liberals of trying to control the civil rights agenda. Proponents of Black Power wanted African-Americans to follow an ethnic model for obtaining power, not unlike that of Democratic political machines in large cities. This put them on a collision course with urban machine politicians.

On its most extreme edges, the Black Power movement contained racial separatists who wanted to give up on integration altogether—a program that could not be endorsed by American liberals of any race. The mere existence of such individuals (who always got more media attention than their actual numbers might have warranted) contributed to white backlash against liberals and civil rights activists.

Liberals were latecomers to the movement for equal rights for women. Generally, they agreed with Eleanor Roosevelt that women needed special protections, especially regarding hours of work, night work and physically heavy work. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) had first been proposed in the 1920s by Alice Paul and appealed primarily to middle-class career women.

At the Democratic National Convention in 1960, a proposal to endorse the ERA was rejected after it met explicit opposition from liberal groups including labor unions, AFL–CIO, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), American Federation of Teachers, American Nurses Association, the Women's Division of the Methodist Church and the National Councils of Jewish, Catholic, and Negro Women.

Neoconservatives:

Some liberals moved to the right and became neoconservatives in the 1970s. Many were animated by foreign policy, taking a strong anti-Soviet and pro-Israel position as typified by Commentary, a Jewish magazine. Many had been supporters of Senator Henry M. Jackson, who was noted for his strong positions in favor of labor and against Communism.

Many neoconservatives joined the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and attacked liberalism vocally in both the popular media and scholarly publications.

Under attack from the New Left:
See also: New Left

Liberalism came under attack from both the New Left in the early 1960s and the right in the late 1960s. Kazin (1998) says: "The liberals who anxiously turned back the assault of the postwar Right were confronted in the 1960s by a very different adversary: a radical movement led, in the main, by their own children, the white "New Left". This new element, says Kazin, worked to "topple the corrupted liberal order". 

As Maurice Isserman notes, the New Left "came to use the word 'liberal' as a political epithet". Slack (2013) argues that the New Left was more broadly speaking the political component of a break with liberalism that took place across several academic fields, namely philosophy, psychology and sociology.

In philosophy, existentialism and neo-Marxism rejected the instrumentalism of John Dewey; in psychology, Wilhelm Reich, Paul Goodman, Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown rejected Sigmund Freud's teaching of repression and sublimation; and in sociology, C. Wright Mills rejected the pragmatism of Dewey for the teachings of Max Weber.

​The attack was not confined to the United States as the New Left was a worldwide movement with strength in parts of Western Europe as well as Japan. For example, massive demonstrations in France denounced American imperialism and its helpers in Western European governments.
​
The main activity of the New Left became opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War as conducted by liberal President Lyndon B. Johnson. The anti-war movement escalated the rhetorical heat as violence broke out on both sides. The climax came in sustained protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Liberals fought back, with Zbigniew Brzezinski, chief foreign policy advisor of the 1968 Humphrey campaign, saying the New Left "threatened American liberalism" in a manner reminiscent of McCarthyism.

While the New Left considered Humphrey a war criminal, Nixon attacked him as the New Left's enabler—a man with "a personal attitude of indulgence and permissiveness toward the lawless". Beinart concludes that "with the country divided against itself, contempt for Hubert Humphrey was the one thing on which left and right could agree".

After 1968, the New Left lost strength and the more serious attacks on liberalism came from the right. Nevertheless, the liberal ideology lost its attractiveness. Liberal commentator E. J. Dionne contends: "If liberal ideology began to crumble intellectually in the 1960s it did so in part because the New Left represented a highly articulate and able wrecking crew".

Liberals and the Vietnam War:
See also: Vietnam War

While the civil rights movement isolated liberals from their erstwhile allies, the Vietnam War threw a wedge into the liberal ranks, dividing pro-war hawks such as Senator Henry M. Jackson from doves such as 1972 presidential candidate Senator George McGovern. As the war became the leading political issue of the day, agreement on domestic matters was not enough to hold the liberal consensus together.

In the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy was liberal in domestic policy, but conservative on foreign policy, calling for a more aggressive stance against Communism than his opponent Richard Nixon.

Opposition to the war first emerged from the New Left and from black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. By 1967, there was growing opposition from within liberal ranks, led in 1968 by Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. After Democratic President Lyndon Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not run for re-election, Kennedy and McCarthy fought each other for the nomination, with Kennedy besting McCarthy in a series of Democratic primaries.

The assassination of Kennedy removed him from the race and Vice President Hubert Humphrey emerged from the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention with the presidential nomination of a deeply divided party. Meanwhile, Alabama Governor George Wallace announced his third-party run and pulled in many working-class whites in the rural South and big-city North, most of whom had been staunch Democrats. Liberals led by the labor unions focused their attacks on Wallace while Nixon led a unified Republican Party to victory.

Richard Nixon:

The chaos of 1968, a bitterly divided Democratic Party and bad blood between the New Left and the liberals gave Nixon the presidency. Nixon rhetorically attacked liberals, but in practice enacted many liberal policies and represented the more liberal wing of the Republican Party.

Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency by executive order, expanded the national endowments for the arts and the humanities, began affirmative action policies, opened diplomatic relations with Communist China, starting the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks to reduce ballistic missile availability and turned the war over to South Vietnam.

He withdrew all American combat troops by 1972, signed a peace treaty in 1973 and ended the draft. Regardless of his policies, liberals hated Nixon and rejoiced when the Watergate scandal forced his resignation in 1974.

While the differences between Nixon and the liberals are obvious—the liberal wing of his own party favored politicians such as Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton and Nixon overtly placed an emphasis on law and order over civil liberties, with Nixon's Enemies List being composed largely of liberals—in some ways the continuity of many of Nixon's policies with those of the Kennedy–Johnson years is more remarkable than the differences.

Pointing at this continuity, New Left leader Noam Chomsky (himself on Nixon's enemies list) has called Nixon "in many respects the last liberal president".

The political dominance of the liberal consensus even into the Nixon years can best be seen in policies such as the successful establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency or his failed proposal to replace the welfare system with a guaranteed annual income by way of a negative income tax. Affirmative action in its most quota-oriented form was a Nixon administration policy.

The Nixon War on Drugs allocated two-thirds of its funds for treatment, a far higher ratio than was to be the case under any subsequent President, Republican or Democrat.

Additionally, Nixon's normalization of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and his policy of détente with the Soviet Union were probably more popular with liberals than with his conservative base.

An opposing view offered by Cass R. Sunstein in The Second Bill of Rights (Basic Books, 2004, ISBN 0-465-08332-3) argues that through his Supreme Court appointments Nixon effectively ended a decades-long expansion of economic rights along the lines of those put forward in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly.

Labor unions:
Main article: Labor unions in the United States

Labor unions were central components of liberalism, operating through the New Deal coalition. The unions gave strong support to the Vietnam War, thereby breaking with the blacks and with the intellectual and student wings of liberalism.

From time to time, dissident groups such as the Progressive Alliance, the Citizen-Labor Energy Coalition and the National Labor Committee broke from the dominant AFL–CIO which they saw as too conservative.

In 1995, the liberals managed to take control of the AFL–CIO under the leadership of John Sweeney of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Union membership in the private sector has fallen from 33% to 7%, with a resulting decline in political weight. In 2005, the SEIU, now led by Andy Stern, broke away from the AFL–CIO to form its own coalition, the Change to Win Federation, to support liberalism, including Barack Obama's policies, especially health care reform. Stern retired in 2010.

Regardless of the loss of numbers, unions have a long tradition and deep experience in organizing and continue at the state and national level to mobilize forces for liberal policies, especially regarding votes for liberal politicians, a graduated income tax, government spending on social programs, and support for unions. They also support the conservative position of protectionism.

Offsetting the decline in the private sector is a growth of unionization in the public sector. The membership of unions in the public sector such as teachers, police and city workers continues to rise, now covering 42% of local government workers. The financial crisis that hit American states during the recession of 2008–2011 focused increasing attention on pension systems for government employees, with conservatives trying to reduce the pensions.

Environmentalism:
Main article: Environmental movement in the United States

A new unexpected political discourse emerged in the 1970s centered on the environment. The debates did not fall neatly into a left–right dimension, for everyone proclaimed their support for the environment.

Environmentalism appealed to the well-educated middle class, but it aroused fears among lumbermen, farmers, ranchers, blue collar workers, automobile companies and oil companies whose economic interests were threatened by new regulations.

As a result, conservatives tended to oppose environmentalism while liberals endorsed new measures to protect the environment. Liberals supported the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club and were sometimes successful in blocking efforts by lumber companies and oil drillers to expand operations.

Environmental legislation limited the use of DDT, reduced acid rain and protected numerous animal and plant species. Within the environmental movement, there was a small radical element that favored direct action rather than legislation. By the 21st century, debates over taking major action to reverse global warming by and dealing with carbon emissions were high on the agenda. Unlike Europe, where green parties play a growing role in politics, the environmental movement in the United States has given little support to third parties.

End of the liberal consensus:

During the Nixon years and through the 1970s, the liberal consensus began to come apart and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan as president marked the election of the first non-Keynesian administration and the first application of supply-side economics.

The alliance with white Southern Democrats had been lost in the Civil Rights era. While the steady enfranchisement of African-Americans expanded the electorate to include many new voters sympathetic to liberal views, it was not quite enough to make up for the loss of some Southern Democrats.

A tide of conservatism rose in response to perceived failures of liberal policies. Organized labor, long a bulwark of the liberal consensus, was past the peak of its power in the United States and many unions had remained in favor of the Vietnam War even as liberal politicians increasingly turned against it.

In 1980, the leading liberal was Senator Ted Kennedy, who challenged incumbent President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Party presidential nomination because Carter's failures had disenchanted liberals. Kennedy was decisively defeated, and in turn Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan.

Historians often use 1979–1980 to date a philosophical realignment within the American electorate away from Democratic liberalism and toward Reagan Era conservatism. However, some liberals hold a minority view that there was no real shift and that Kennedy's defeat was merely by historical accident caused by his poor campaign, international crises and Carter's use of the incumbency.
​
Abrams (2006) argues that the eclipse of liberalism was caused by a grass-roots populist revolt, often with a fundamentalist and anti-modern theme, abetted by corporations eager to weaken labor unions and the regulatory regime of the New Deal.

The success of liberalism in the first place, he argues, came from efforts of a liberal elite that had entrenched itself in key social, political and especially judicial positions. These elites, Abrams contends, imposed their brand of liberalism from within some of the least democratic and most insulated institutions, especially the universities, foundations, independent regulatory agencies and the Supreme Court. With only a weak popular base, liberalism was vulnerable to a populist counter-revolution by the nation's democratic or majoritarian forces.

Bill Clinton administration and the "Third Way": The term Third Way represents various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of center-right economic and left-leaning social policies. 

Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various center-left progressive movements in response to the ramifications of the collapse of international belief in the economic viability of the state economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism and the corresponding rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right.

It supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this.

​It emphasizes commitment to balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labor supply, investment in human development, protection of social capital and protection of the environment.

​In the United States, Third Way adherents embrace fiscal conservatism to a greater extent than traditional social liberals and advocate some replacement of welfare with workfare and sometimes have a stronger preference for market solutions to traditional problems (as in pollution markets) while rejecting pure laissez-faire economics and other libertarian positions.

The Third Way style of governing was firmly adopted and partly redefined during the presidency of Bill Clinton. With respect to Presidents, the term Third Way was introduced by political scientist Stephen Skowronek, who wrote The Politics Presidents Make (1993, 1997; ISBN 0-674-68937-2).

Third Way Presidents "undermine the opposition by borrowing policies from it in an effort to seize the middle and with it to achieve political dominance. Think of Nixon's economic policies, which were a continuation of Johnson's "Great Society"; Clinton's welfare reform and support of capital punishment; and Obama's pragmatic centrism, reflected in his embrace, albeit very recent, of entitlements reform".

After Tony Blair came to power in the United Kingdom, Clinton, Blair and other leading Third Way adherents organized conferences in 1997 to promote the Third Way philosophy at Chequers in England.

In 2004, several veteran Democrats founded a new think tank in Washington, D.C. called Third Way which bills itself as a "strategy center for progressives". Along with the Third Way think tank, the Democratic Leadership Council are also adherents of Third Way politics.

The Third Way has been heavily criticized by many social democrats as well as anarchists, communists, socialists and democratic socialists in particular as a betrayal of left-wing values.

The Democratic Leadership Council shut down in 2011. Commenting on the Democratic Leadership Council's waning influence, Politico characterized it as "the iconic centrist organization of the Clinton years" that "had long been fading from its mid-'90s political relevance, tarred by the left as a symbol of 'triangulation' at a moment when there's little appetite for intra-party warfare on the center-right".

Specific definitions of Third Way policies may differ between Europe and the United States.

Return of protest politics:

Republican and staunch conservative George W. Bush won the 2000 president election in a tightly contested race that included multiple recounts in the state of Florida. The outcome was tied up in courts for a month until reaching the Supreme Court. 

In the controversial ruling Bush v. Gore case on December 9, the Supreme Court reversed a Florida Supreme Court decision ordering a third recount, essentially ending the dispute and resulting in Bush winning the presidency by electoral vote, although he lost the popular vote to Democrat and incumbent Vice President Al Gore.

Bush's policies were deeply unpopular amongst American liberals, particularly his launching of the Iraq War which led to the return of massive protest politics in the form of opposition to the War in Iraq. Bush's approval rating went below the 50% mark in AP-Ipsos polling in December 2004.

Thereafter, his approval ratings and approval of his handling of domestic and foreign policy issues steadily dropped. Bush received heavy criticism for:
Polls conducted in 2006 showed an average of 37% approval ratings for Bush which contributed to what Bush called the thumping of the Republican Party in the 2006 midterm elections.

When the financial system verged on total collapse during the 2008 financial crisis, Bush pushed through large-scale rescue packages for banks and auto companies that some conservatives in Congress did not support and led some conservative commentators to criticize Bush for enacting legislation they saw as not conservative and more reminiscent of New Deal liberal ideology.

In part due to backlash against the Bush administration, Barack Obama, seen by some as a liberal and progressive, was elected to the presidency in 2008, the first African-American to hold the office. With a clear Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress, Obama managed to pass a $814 billion stimulus spending program, new regulations on investment firms and a law to expand health insurance coverage.

Led by the Tea Party movement, the Republicans won back control of one of the two Houses of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections.

In reaction to ongoing financial crisis that began in 2008, protest politics continued into the Obama administration, most notably in the form of Occupy Wall Street. The main issues are social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector.

The Occupy Wall Street slogan "We are the 99%" addresses the growing income inequality and wealth distribution in the United States between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population.

Although some of these were cited by liberal activists and Democrats, this information did not fully become a center of national attention until it was used as one of the ideas behind the movement itself.

A survey by Fordham University Department of Political Science found the protester's political affiliations to be overwhelmingly left-leaning, with 25% Democrat, 2% Republican, 11% Socialist, 11% Green Party, 12% Other and 39% independent.

While the survey also found that 80% of the protestors self-identified as slightly to extremely liberal, Occupy Wall Street and the broader Occupy movement has been variously classified as a "liberation from liberalism" and even as having principles that "arise from scholarship on anarchy".

During a news conference on October 6, 2011, President Obama said: "I think it expresses the frustrations the American people feel, that we had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country [...] and yet you're still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place". 

Some of the protests were seen as an attempt to address the Obama administration's double standard in dealing with Wall Street.

Obama was re-elected President in November 2012, defeating Republican nominee Mitt Romney and sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2013. During his second term,

Obama promoted domestic policies related to gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and called for full equality for LGBT Americans while his administration filed briefs which urged the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 and California's Proposition 8 as unconstitutional.

The shooting of Michael Brown and death of Eric Garner led to widespread protests (particularly in Ferguson, where Brown was shot) against perceived police militarization more generally and alleged police brutality against African-Americans more specifically.

Criticism:
See also: Democrat Party (epithet)

Since the 1970s, there has been a concerted effort from both the left and right to color the word liberal with negative connotations. As those efforts succeeded more and more, progressives and their opponents took advantage of the negative meaning to great effect. In the 1988 presidential campaign, Republican George H. W. Bush joked about his opponent's refusal to own up to the "L-word label". When Michael Dukakis finally did declare himself a liberal, the Boston Globe headlined the story "Dukakis Uses L-Word".

Conservative activists since the 1970s have employed liberal as an epithet, giving it an ominous or sinister connotation while invoking phrases like "free enterprise", "individual rights", "patriotic" and "the American way" to describe opponents of liberalism.

Historian John Lukacs noted in 2004 that then-President George W. Bush, confident that many Americans regarded liberal as a pejorative term, used it to label his political opponents during campaign speeches while his opponents subsequently avoided identifying themselves as liberal.

During the presidency of Gerald Ford, First Lady Betty Ford became known for her candid and outspoken liberal views in regard to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), pro-choice on abortion, feminism, equal pay, decriminalization of certain drugs, gun control and civil rights.

She was a vocal supporter and leader in the women's movement and Ford was also noted for bringing breast cancer awareness to national attention following her 1974 mastectomy. Her outspoken liberal views led to ridicule and opposition from the conservative wing of the Republican Party and by conservative activists who referred to Ford as "No Lady" and thought her actions were unbecoming of a First Lady in an increasingly conservative Republican Party.

Ronald Reagan's ridicule of liberalism is credited with transforming the word liberal into a derogatory epithet that any politician seeking national office would avoid. His speechwriters repeatedly contrasted "liberals" and "real Americans". For example, Reagan's then-Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt said: "I never use the words Republicans and Democrats.

It's liberals and Americans". Reagan warned the United States of modern secularists who condoned abortion, excused teenage sexuality, opposed school prayer and attenuated traditional American values.

His conviction that there existed a single proper personal behavior, religious worldview, economic system and proper attitude toward nations and peoples not supporting American interests worldwide is credited by comparative literature scholar Betty Jean Craige with polarizing the United States.

Reagan persuaded a large portion of the public to dismiss any sincere analyses of his administration's policies as politically motivated criticisms put forth by what he labeled a liberal media.

When George H. W. Bush employed the word liberal as a derogatory epithet during his 1988 presidential campaign, he described himself as a patriot and described his liberal opponents as unpatriotic. Bush referred to liberalism as "the L-word" and sought to demonize opposing presidential candidate Michael Dukakis by labeling Dukakis "the liberal governor" and by pigeonholing him as part of what Bush called "the L-crowd".

Bush recognized that motivating voters to fear Dukakis as a risky, non-mainstream candidate generated political support for his own campaign. Bush's campaign also used issues of prayer to arouse suspicions that Dukakis was less devout in his religious convictions. Bush's running mate, vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle, said to Christians at the 1988 Republican National Convention: "It's always good to be with people who are real Americans". Bill Clinton avoided association with liberal as a political label during his 1992 presidential campaign against Bush by moving closer to the political center.

Reactions to shift:

Liberal Republicans have voiced disappointment over conservative attacks on liberalism. One example is former governor of Minnesota and founder of the Liberal Republican Club Elmer L. Andersen, who commented that it is "unfortunate today that 'liberal' is used as a derogatory term".

After the 1980s, fewer activists and politicians were willing to characterize themselves as liberals. Historian Kevin Boyle explains: "There was a time when liberalism was, in Arthur Schlesinger's words 'a fighting faith'. [...] Over the last three decades, though, liberalism has become an object of ridicule, condemned for its misplaced idealism, vilified for its tendency to equivocate and compromise, and mocked for its embrace of political correctness. Now even the most ardent reformers run from the label, fearing the damage it will inflict".

Republican political consultant Arthur J. Finkelstein was recognized by Democratic political consultants for having employed a formula of branding someone as a liberal and engaging in name-calling by using the word liberal in negative television commercials as frequently as possible such as in a 1996 ad against Representative Jack Reed: "That's liberal. That's Jack Reed. That's wrong. Call liberal Jack Reed and tell him his record on welfare is just too liberal for you".

Democratic candidates and political liberals have sometimes shied away from the word liberal, in some cases identifying instead with terms such as progressive or moderate.

George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney accused their opponents of liberal elitism, softness and pro-terrorism. Conservative political commentators such as Rush Limbaugh consistently used the word "liberal" as a pejorative label.

When liberals shifted to the word "progressive" to describe their beliefs, conservative radio host Glenn Beck used "progressive" as an abusive label. Historian Godfrey Hodgson notes the following: "The word liberal itself has fallen into disrepute. Nothing is too bad for conservative bloggers and columnists—let alone radio hosts—to say about liberals.

Democrats themselves run a mile from the 'L word' for fear of being seen as dangerously outside the mainstream. Conservative politicians and publicists, by dint of associating liberals with all manner of absurdity so that many sensible people hesitated to risk being tagged with the label of liberalism, succeeded in persuading the country that it was more conservative than it actually was".

Labels vs. beliefs:

In 2008 liberal historian Eric Alterman claimed that barely 20% of Americans are willing to accept the word liberal as a political label, but that supermajorities of Americans actually favor liberal positions time and again.

Alterman points out that resistance to the label liberal is not surprising due to billions of dollars poured into the denigration of the term. A 2004 poll conducted by the National Election Study found that only 35% of respondents questioned identifying as liberal compared to 55% identifying as conservative.

A 2004 Pew poll found 19% of respondents identifying as liberal and 39% identifying as conservative, with the balance identifying as moderate.

A 2006 poll found that 19% identified as liberal and 36% conservative. In 2005, self-identifying moderates polled by Louis Harris & Associates were found to share essentially the same political beliefs as self-identifying liberals but rejected the word liberal because of the vilification heaped on the word itself by conservatives. Alterman acknowledges political scientist Drew Westen's observation that for most Americans the word liberal now carries meanings such as "elite", "tax and spend" and "out of touch".

Philosophy:

Free speech:
Main article: Freedom of speech in the United States

American liberals describe themselves as open to change and receptive to new ideas. For example, liberals typically accept ideas that some others reject, such as evolution and catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.

Liberals tend to oppose the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010 that a corporation's First Amendment right to free speech encompasses freedom to make unlimited independent expenditures for any political party, politician or lobbyist as they see fit.

President Obama called it "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans".

Opposition to state socialism:
See also: History of the socialist movement in the United States

In general, liberalism opposes socialism when it is understood to mean an alternative to capitalism based on state ownership of the means of production. American liberals usually doubt that bases for political opposition and freedom can survive when power is vested in the state as it was under state-socialist regimes.

In line with the "general pragmatic, empirical basis" of liberalism, American liberal philosophy embraces the idea that if substantial abundance and equality of opportunity can be achieved through a system of mixed ownership, then there is no need for a rigid and oppressive bureaucracy.

Since the 1950s, some liberal public intellectuals have moved further toward the allegation that free markets can provide better solutions than top-down economic planning when appropriately regulated.

Economist Paul Krugman argued that in hitherto-state-dominated functions such as nation-scale energy distribution and telecommunications marketizations can improve efficiency dramatically. He also defended a monetary policy--inflation targeting—saying that it "most nearly approaches the usual goal of modern stabilization policy, which is to provide adequate demand in a clean, unobtrusive way that does not distort the allocation of resources".

These distortions are of a kind that war-time and postwar Keynesian economists had accepted as an inevitable byproduct of fiscal policies that selectively reduced certain consumer taxes and directed spending toward government-managed stimulus projects, even where these economists theorized at a contentious distance from some of Keynes's own, more hands-off, positions which tended to emphasize stimulating of business investment.

Thomas Friedman is a liberal journalist who generally defends free trade as more likely to improve the lot of both rich and poor countries.

Role of the state:

There is a fundamental split among liberals as to the role of the state. Historian H. W. Brands notes that "the growth of the state is, by perhaps the most common definition, the essence of modern American liberalism". According to Paul Starr, "[l]iberal constitutions impose constraints on the power of any single public official or branch of government as well as the state as a whole".

Morality:

According to cognitive linguist George Lakoff, liberal philosophy is based on five basic categories of morality. The first, the promotion of fairness, is generally described as an emphasis on empathy as a desirable trait.

With this social contract based on the Golden Rule comes the rationale for many liberal positions. The second category is assistance to those who cannot assist themselves. A nurturing, philanthropic spirit is one that is considered good in liberal philosophy. This leads to the third category, namely the desire to protect those who cannot defend themselves. The fourth category is the importance of fulfilling one's life, allowing a person to experience all that they can. The fifth and final category is the importance of caring for oneself since only thus can one act to help others.

Historiography:

Liberalism increasingly shaped American intellectual life in the 1930s and 1940s, thanks in large part to two major two-volume studies that were widely read by academics, advanced students, intellectuals and the general public, namely Charles A. Beard and Mary Beard's The Rise of American Civilization (2 vol.; 1927) and Vernon L. Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought (2 vol.; 1927).

The Beards exposed the material forces that shaped American history while Parrington focused on the material forces that shaped American literature. According to the Beards, virtually all political history involved the bitter conflict between the agrarians, farmers and workers led by the Jeffersonians and the capitalists led by the Hamiltonians.

The Civil War marked a great triumph of the capitalists and comprised the Second American Revolution. Younger historians welcome the realistic approach that emphasized hardcore economic interest as a powerful force and downplayed the role of ideas. Parrington spoke to the crises at hand.

According to historian Ralph Gabriel: Main Currents attempted to trace the history of liberalism in the American scene for citizens who were caught in a desperate predicament. It was an age in which American liberalism set the United States, through the New Deal, on a Democratic middle-of-the-road course between the contemporary extremisms of Europe, that of Communism on one hand, and of Fascism on the other. [...] The style of Main Currents was powered by Parrington's dedication to the cause of humane liberalism, by his ultimate humanistic, democratic faith.

He saw the democratic dreams of the romantic first half of the 19th century as the climax of an epic story toward which early Americans moved and from which later Americans fell away.

Liberal readers immediately realized where they stood in the battle between Jeffersonian democracy and Hamiltonian privilege. Neither the Beards nor Parrington paid any attention to slavery, race relations, or minorities. For example, the Beards "dismissed the agitations of the abolitionists as a small direct consequence because of their lack of appeal to the public".
​
Princeton historian Eric F. Goldman helped define American liberalism for postwar generations of university students. The first edition of his most influential work appeared in 1952 with the publication of Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform, covering reform efforts from the Grant years to the 1950s.

For decades, it was a staple of the undergraduate curriculum in history, highly regarded for its style and its exposition of modern American liberalism.

According to Priscilla Roberts: Lively, well-written, and highly readable, it provided an overview of eight decades of reformers, complete with arresting vignettes of numerous individuals, and stressed the continuities among successful American reform movements. Writing at the height of the Cold War, he also argued that the fundamental liberal tradition of the United States was moderate, centrist, and incrementalist, and decidedly non-socialist and non-totalitarian.

While broadly sympathetic to the cause of American reform, Goldman was far from uncritical toward his subjects, faulting progressives of World War I for their lukewarm reception of the League of Nations, American reformers of the 1920s for their emphasis on freedom of lifestyles rather than economic reform, and those of the 1930s for overly tolerant attitude toward Soviet Russia.

His views of past American reformers encapsulated the conventional, liberal, centrist orthodoxy of the early 1950s, from its support for anti-communism and international activism abroad and New Deal-style big government at home, to its condemnation of McCarthyism.

For the general public, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was the most widely read historian, social critic and public intellectual. Schlesinger's work explored the history of Jacksonian era and especially 20th-century American liberalism.

His major books focused on leaders such as Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.

He was a White House aide to Kennedy and his A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize.

In 1968, Schlesinger wrote speeches for Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and the biography Robert Kennedy and His Times. He later popularized the term imperial presidency, warning against excessive power in the White House as typified by Richard Nixon. Late in his career, he came to oppose multiculturalism.

Proponents/Politicians Intellectuals: Jurists and the law:
Writers, activists and commentators: Religious leaders: Blogs: Magazines and publications: Think tanks: See also:







Radical Right vs. Conservative Politics in the United States, including a List of American Conservatives Pictured below: The Brain of a Conservative Republican
Conservatism in the United States:

​Conservatism in the United States is a political and social philosophy characterized by respect for the following:
As with all major American political parties, liberty is a core value. American conservatives generally consider individual liberty—within the bounds of American values—as the fundamental trait of democracy; this perspective contrasts with that of modern liberals, who generally place a greater value on equality and social justice and emphasize the need for state intervention to achieve these goals. 

American political conservatives believe in limiting government in size and scope, and in a balance between national government and states' rights. Apart from some right-libertarians, they tend to favor strong action in areas they believe to be within government's legitimate jurisdiction, particularly national defense and law enforcement. 

Social conservatives, many of them religious, often oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, and civil unions, and would define marriage as only between a man and a woman. They often favor Christian prayer in public schools and government funding for private Christian schools.

Like most American political ideologies, conservatism originates from republicanism, which rejected aristocratic and monarchical government and upheld the principles of the United States Declaration of Independence ("... that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness") and the United States Constitution (which established a federal republic under the rule of law).

Conservative philosophy is also derived in part from the classical liberal tradition of the 18th and 19th centuries, which advocated for laissez-faire economics (i.e. economic freedom and deregulation).

While historians such as Patrick Allitt and political theorists such as Russell Kirk assert that conservative principles have played a major role in American politics and culture since 1776, they also argue that an organized conservative movement with beliefs that differ from those of other American political parties did not emerge in the United States until the 1950s. 

​The recent movement conservatism is today based in the Republican Party, which has adopted conservative policies since the 1950s; the Southern Democrats were also important early figures in the movement's history. Conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats together formed the Congressional conservative coalition in 1937, which played a major legislative role for much of the 20th century.

​Overview:

The history of American conservatism has been marked by tensions and competing ideologies. Fiscal conservatives and libertarians favor small government, laissez-faire economy, low income and corporate taxes, limited regulation, and free enterprise. 

Social conservatives see traditional social values as threatened by secularism; they tend to support prayer in public schools, oppose abortion, and object to both same-sex marriage and civil unions for same-sex couples.

Neoconservatives want to expand what they see as American ideals throughout the world. Paleoconservatives advocate restrictions on immigration, non-interventionist foreign policy, and opposition to multiculturalism.

Most conservative factions nationwide, except some libertarians, support a unilateral foreign policy, and a strong military. Most, especially libertarians, support gun ownership rights, citing the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The conservative movement of the 1950s attempted to bring together these divergent strands, stressing the need for unity to prevent the spread of "godless communism."

In the first 1955 issue of National Review, William F. Buckley Jr. explained the standards of his magazine and helped make explicit the beliefs of American conservatives: Among our convictions: It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens' lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side.

The profound crisis of our era is, in essence, the conflict between the Social Engineers, who seek to adjust mankind to scientific utopias, and the disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral order. We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience. On this point we are, without reservations, on the conservative side.

According to Peter Viereck, American conservatism is distinctive because it was not tied to a monarchy, landed aristocracy, established church, or military elite. Instead American conservatives were firmly rooted in American republicanism, which European conservatives opposed. They are committed, says Seymour Martin Lipset, to the belief in America's "superiority against the cold reactionary monarchical and more rigidly status-bound system of European society."

Ideology and political philosophy:

In terms of governmental economic policies, American conservatives have been heavily influenced by the classical liberal or libertarian tradition as expressed by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and a major source of influence has been the Chicago school of economics. They have been strongly opposed to Keynesian economics.

Traditional (Burkean) conservatives tend to be anti-ideological, and some would even say anti-philosophical, promoting, as Russell Kirk explained, a steady flow of "prescription and prejudice". Kirk's use of the word "prejudice" here is not intended to carry its contemporary pejorative connotation: a conservative himself, he believed that the inherited wisdom of the ages may be a better guide than apparently rational individual judgment.

There are two overlapping subgroups of social conservatives—the traditional and the religious. Traditional conservatives strongly support traditional codes of conduct, especially those they feel are threatened by social change and modernization. For example, traditional conservatives may oppose the use of female soldiers in combat. Religious conservatives focus on conducting society as prescribed by a religious authority or code.

In the United States, this translates into hard-line stances on moral issues, such as opposition to abortion and homosexuality. Religious conservatives often assert that "America is a Christian nation" and call for laws that enforce Christian morality.

Fiscal conservatives support limited government, low tax, low spending, and a balanced budget. They argue that low taxes produce more jobs and wealth for everyone, and, as President Grover Cleveland said, "unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation". A recent movement against the inheritance tax labels such a tax as a death tax.

Fiscal conservatives often argue that competition in the free market is more effective than the regulation of industry. Some make exceptions in the case of trusts or monopolies. Others, such as some libertarians and followers of Ludwig von Mises, believe all government intervention in the economy is wasteful, corrupt, and immoral. More moderate fiscal conservatives argue that "free market economics" is the most efficient way to promote economic growth.

Many modern American fiscal conservatives accept some social spending programs not specifically delineated in the Constitution. However, some American fiscal conservatives view wider social liberalism as an impetus for increased spending on these programs. As such, fiscal conservatism today exists somewhere between classical liberalism and contemporary consequentialist political philosophies, and is often influenced by coinciding levels of social conservatism.

Through much of the 20th century, a primary force uniting the varied strands of conservatism, and uniting conservatives with liberals and socialists, was opposition to communism, which was seen not only as an enemy of the traditional order, but also the enemy of Western freedom and democracy. Thus it was the British Labour government—which embraced socialism—that pushed the Truman administration in 1945–1947 to take a strong stand against Soviet Communism.

Social conservatism and traditionalism:
Main articles: 
​Social conservatism in the United States is the defense of traditional social norms and Judeo-Christian values. 

Social conservatives tend to strongly identify with American nationalism and patriotism. They often denounce anti-war protesters and support the police and the military. They hold that military institutions embody core values such as honor, duty, courage, loyalty, and a willingness on the part of the individual to make sacrifices for the good of the country.

Social conservatives are strongest in the South and in recent years played a major role in the political coalitions of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Fiscal conservatism and economic liberalism:
Main articles: Economic liberalism and Fiscal conservatism

​Fiscal conservatism is the economic and political policy that advocates restraint of progressive taxation and expenditure. Fiscal conservatives since the 19th century have argued that debt is a device to corrupt politics; they argue that big spending ruins the morals of the people, and that a national debt creates a dangerous class of speculators.

A political strategy employed by conservatives to achieve a smaller government is known as starve the beast. Activist Grover Norquist is a well-known proponent of the strategy and has famously said, "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

The argument in favor of balanced budgets is often coupled with a belief that government welfare programs should be narrowly tailored and that tax rates should be low, which implies relatively small government institutions.

This belief in small government combines with fiscal conservatism to produce a broader economic liberalism that wishes to minimize government intervention in the economy or implement laissez-faire policies. This economic liberalism borrows from two schools of thought: the classical liberals' pragmatism and the libertarians' notion of "rights." The classical liberal maintains that free markets work best, while the libertarian contends that free markets are the only ethical markets.

Historian Kathleen G. Donohue argues that classical liberalism in the United States during the 19th century had distinctive characteristics as opposed to Britain: "[A]t the center of classical liberal theory [in Europe] was the idea of laissez-faire. To the vast majority of American classical liberals, however, laissez-faire did not mean no government intervention at all. On the contrary, they were more than willing to see government provide tariffs, railroad subsidies, and internal improvements, all of which benefited producers. What they condemned was intervention in behalf of consumers".

The economic philosophy of American conservatives tends to be more liberal allowing for more economic freedom. Economic liberalism can go well beyond fiscal conservatism's concern for fiscal prudence, to a belief or principle that it is not prudent for governments to intervene in markets. It is also sometimes extended to a broader small government philosophy. Economic liberalism is associated with free-market or laissez-faire economics.

Insofar as it is ideological, economic liberalism owes its creation to the classical liberal tradition in the vein of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ludwig von Mises.

Classical liberals and libertarians support free markets on moral, ideological grounds: principles of individual liberty morally dictate support for free markets. Supporters of the moral grounds for free markets include Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. The liberal tradition is suspicious of government authority and prefers individual choice, and hence tends to see free market capitalism as the preferable means of achieving economic ends.

Modern conservatives, on the other hand, derive support for free markets from practical grounds. They argue that free markets are the most productive markets. Thus the modern conservative supports free markets not out of necessity, but out of expedience. The support is not moral or ideological, but driven on the Burkean notion of prescription: what works best is what is right.

​A belief in the importance of the civil society is another reason why conservatives support a smaller role for the government in the economy. As noted by Alexis de Tocqueville, there is a belief that a bigger role of the government in the economy will make people feel less responsible for the society. These responsibilities would then need to be taken over by the government, requiring higher taxes. In his book Democracy in America, Tocqueville described this as "soft oppression".
​
​While classical liberals and modern conservatives reached free markets through different means historically, in recent years the lines have blurred. Rarely will a conservative politician claim that free markets are "simply more productive" or "simply the right thing to do" but a combination of both. This blurring is very much a product of the merging of the classical liberal and modern conservative positions under the "umbrella" of the conservative movement.

The archetypal free-market conservative administrations of the late 20th century—the Margaret Thatcher government in Britain and the Ronald Reagan administration in the U.S.—both held unfettered operation of the market to be the cornerstone of contemporary modern conservatism. To that end, Thatcher privatized industries and public housing, and Reagan cut the maximum capital gains tax from 28% to 20%, though in his second term he agreed to raise it back up to 28%.

Reagan also cut individual income-tax rates, lowering the maximum rate from 70% to 28%. He increased defense spending, but liberal Democrats blocked his efforts to cut domestic spending. Reagan did not control the rapid increase in federal government spending or reduce the deficit, but his record looks better when expressed as a percent of the gross domestic product.

Federal revenues as a percent of the GDP fell from 19.6% in 1981 when Reagan took office to 18.3% in 1989 when he left. Federal spending fell slightly from 22.2% of the GDP to 21.2%. This contrasts with statistics from 2004, when government spending was rising more rapidly than it had in decades.

Types:
See also: Factions in the Republican Party (United States)

In the United States today, the word "conservative" is often used very differently from the way it is used in Europe and Asia. Following the American Revolution, Americans rejected the core ideals of European conservatism; those ideals were based on the landed aristocracy, established churches, and powerful armies.

Conservatism in the United States is not a single school of thought. Barry Goldwater in the 1960s spoke for a "free enterprise" conservatism. Jerry Falwell in the 1980s preached traditional moral and religious social values. It was Ronald Reagan's challenge to form these groups into an electable coalition.

In the 21st century United States, types of conservatism include:
  • Christian conservatism, whose proponents are primarily interested in family values. Typical positions include the view that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, that abortion is wrong, that there should be prayer in state schools, that intelligent design or creationism should be taught in schools alongside evolution, and that marriage should be defined as between one man and one woman and not between two members of the same sex. Many attack the profanity and sexuality in the media and movies. This faction strongly supported Reagan in the 1980 election. Nevertheless, they intensely oppose the Reagan's 1981 nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court because she supported a woman's right to abortion. She was confirmed anyway.
  • Constitutional conservatism, a form of conservatism bound within the limits provided within the United States Constitution, defending the structures of constitutionalism, and preserving the principles of the United States Constitution. Chief among those principles is the defense of liberty. This form of conservatism coalesced in the Republican Party in the early 20th century, in opposition to progressivism within the party; it can also be seen being influential to the 21st century Constitutional conservatism has also been associated with judicial originalism.
  • Fiscal conservatism, a form of conservatism that focuses on low taxes and restrained government spending.
  • Libertarian conservatism, a fusion with libertarianism. This type emphasizes a strict interpretation of the Constitution, particularly with regard to federal power. Libertarian conservatism is constituted by a broad, sometimes conflicted, coalition including pro-business social moderates, those favoring more rigid enforcement of states' rights, individual liberty activists, and many of those who place their socially liberal ideology ahead of their fiscal beliefs. This mode of thinking tends to espouse laissez-faire economics and a critical view of the federal government. Libertarian conservatives' emphasis on personal freedom often leads them to have social positions contrary to those of social conservatives, especially on such issues as marijuana, abortion and homosexuality. Ron Paul and his son Rand Paul have been influential proponents in the Republican presidential contests.
  • Movement conservatism, an inside term for conservatives and the New Right in the United States.
  • Neoconservatism, a modern form of conservatism that supports a more assertive, interventionist foreign policy, aimed at promoting democracy abroad. It is tolerant of an activist government at home, but is focused mostly on international affairs. Neoconservatism was first described by a group of disaffected liberals, and thus Irving Kristol, usually credited as its intellectual progenitor, defined a neoconservative as "a liberal who was mugged by reality." Although originally regarded as an approach to domestic policy (the founding instrument of the movement, Kristol's The Public Interest periodical, did not even cover foreign affairs), through the influence of figures like Dick Cheney, Robert Kagan, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman and (Irving's son) Bill Kristol, it has become most famous for its association with the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration in the Middle East that used aggressive military action to ostensibly promote democracy and protect American interests.
  • Paleoconservatism, in part a rebirth of the Old Right arising in the 1980s in reaction to neoconservatism. It stresses tradition, especially Christian tradition and the importance to society of the traditional family. Some such as Samuel P. Huntington argue that multiracial, multi-ethnic, and egalitarian states are inherently unstable.
  • Paleoconservatives are generally isolationist, and suspicious of foreign influence. The magazines Chronicles and The American Conservative are generally considered to be paleoconservative in nature.
  • Social conservatism, a form of conservatism that focuses on the preservation of traditional moral values.
  • Traditionalist conservatism, a form of conservatism in opposition to rapid change in political and social institutions. This kind of conservatism is anti-ideological insofar as it emphasizes means (slow change) over ends (any particular form of government). To the traditionalist, whether one arrives at a right- or left-wing government is less important than whether change is effected through rule of law rather than through revolution and utopian schemes.
  • National conservatism, a modern variant of conservatism common in Europe and Asia that concentrates on upholding national and cultural identity
  • Advocated by supporters of President Donald Trump that breaks with the "conservative consensus, forged by Cold War politics" of "markets and moralism". It seeks to preserve national interests, emphasizes nationalist ones, strict law-and-order policies and social conservatism (family as a home and a center of identity), opposes immigration and abandons laissez-faire, free-market economic policy to describe the movements in the United States supporting Donald Trump and in England supporting Brexit. A 2019 political conference featuring "public figures, journalists, scholars, and students" dubbed this variety of conservatism "National Conservatism". Critics allege its adherents are merely attempting to wrest "a coherent ideology out of the chaos of the Trumpist moment".

Recent Policies:

Bible reading and prayer:

In 1962, the Supreme Court Engel v. Vitale decision banned state-written prayers in public schools. White evangelicals mostly supported that decision. However, they saw the 1963 Abington School District v. Schempp decision to ban school-sponsored Bible reading and school-organized praying of the Lord's Prayer from those schools as an affront. The Supreme Court ruled that prayer organized by the school was not voluntary since students were coerced or publicly embarrassed if they did not follow along.

Nevertheless, the conservatives continued to call for voluntary school prayer, which is already protected under law, and repeatedly attacked the Supreme Court on this issue and on other issues, especially abortion. The evangelicals had long been avid supporters of the public schools. Now they had to reconsider their place in both schools and society as a whole. They concluded with surprising unanimity that those school decisions had done more than forced evangelical belief out of America's public schools; the decisions had pushed evangelicals themselves out of America's mainstream culture.

Alienated, they moved into the religious right and by 1980 were avid supporters of Ronald Reagan.

Reagan Era:

President Ronald Reagan set the conservative standard in the 1980s. In the 2010s, the Republican leaders typically claim fealty to it. For example, most of the Republican candidates in 2012 "claimed to be standard bearers of Reagan's ideological legacy".

Reagan solidified conservative Republican strength with tax cuts, a greatly increased military budget, continued deregulation, a policy of rollback of Communism (rather than just containing it), and appeals to family values and conservative morality. The 1980s and beyond became known as the Reagan Era.

Typically, conservative politicians and spokesmen in the 21st century proclaim their devotion to Reagan's ideals and policies on most social, economic, and foreign policy issues.

Climate change:

Modern conservative beliefs often include global warming denial and opposition towards government action to combat it, which conservatives contend would do severe economic damage and ultimately more harm than good even if one accepts the premise that human activity is contributing to climate change.

Law and order:

They support a strong policy of law and order to control crime, including long jail terms for repeat offenders. Most conservatives support the death penalty for particularly egregious crimes. The "law and order" issue was a major factor weakening liberalism in the 1960s. From 2001–2008, Republican President George W. Bush stressed cutting taxes and minimizing regulation of industry and banking, while increasing regulation of education.

Conservatives generally advocate the use of American military power to fight terrorists and promote democracy in the Middle East.

Role of government:

Conservative discourse generally promotes the view that government action is not the solution to problems such as poverty and inequality. In this view, government programs that seek to provide services and opportunities for the poor actually encourage dependence and reduce self-reliance.

Most conservatives oppose affirmative action policies, that is, policies in employment, education, and other areas that give special advantages to people who belong to groups that have been historically discriminated against. Conservatives believe that the government should not give special benefits to people on the basis of group identity and oppose it as "reverse discrimination".

Conservatives typically hold that the government should play a smaller role in regulating business and managing the economy. They typically oppose high tax rates and programs to redistribute income to assist the poor.

Such efforts, they argue, do not properly reward people who have earned their money through hard work. However, conservatives usually place a strong emphasis on the role of private voluntary charitable organizations (especially faith-based charities) in helping the poor.

On the other hand, some conservatives tend to oppose free-market trade policies and support protectionism instead. They want government intervention to support the economy and protect American jobs. They oppose free trade on the ground that it benefits other countries (especially China) at the expense of American workers. However, in spite of their support for protectionism, they tend to support other free-market principles like low taxes, small government and balanced budgets.​

Social issues:

On social issues, many religious conservatives oppose changes in traditional moral standards regarding sexuality and gender roles. They oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, civil unions, and anti-discrimination laws against homosexuals.

The libertarian faction tends to ignore these issues, instead focusing on fiscal and monetary policy. Business-oriented conservatives oppose the social conservatives if state laws limiting gay rights threaten to hurt business. The National Review reported in 2016 that, "as evangelical forces have become less unified...the influence of Right-leaning business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce has only grown."

In the culture war of recent decades, multiculturalism has been a flashpoint, especially regarding the humanities curriculum. Historian Peter N. Stearns finds a polarization since the 1960s between conservatives who believe that the humanities express eternal truths that should be taught, and those who think that the humanities curriculum should be tailored to demonstrate diversity.

Generally conservatism opposes the "identity politics" associated with multiculturalism, and supports individualism. In campus battles, progressives demand "Cultural diversity" while conservatives denounce efforts to impose "political correctness" and stifle free speech.

Conservatives typically favor a "melting pot" model of assimilation into common English-speaking American culture, as opposed to a "salad bowl" approach that lends legitimacy to many different cultures. In the 21st century, conservatives have warned on the dangers of tolerating radical Islamic elements, of the sort that they say are engaging in large-scale terrorism in Europe.

Electoral politics:

According to a 2014 Gallup Poll, 38% of American voters identify as "conservative" or "very conservative," 34% as "moderate," 24% as "liberal" or "very liberal". These percentages were fairly constant from 1990–2009, when conservatism spiked in popularity briefly before reverting to the original trend while liberal views on social issues reached a new high.

Although, the study does show some distinction between the concentration of moderates and conservatives or liberals between the Republican and Democratic parties. Among Democrats, 44% are self-identified liberals, 19% as conservatives, and 36% as moderates. For Republicans 70% self-identified as conservative, 24% as moderate, and 5% as liberal.

Conservatism appears to be growing stronger at the state level. The trend is most pronounced among the "least well-off, least educated, most blue collar, most economically hard-hit states." according to Atlantic writer Richard Florida.

In the United States, the Republican Party has been the party of conservatism since the 1890s, although there was a strong Eastern liberal wing. Since 1964, the conservatives largely took control. Meanwhile, the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, based in the South and strongly opposed to Civil Rights, grew weaker. The most dramatic realignment took place within the White South, which moved from 3–1 Democratic to 3–1 Republican between 1960 and 2000.

In addition, some American libertarians, in the Libertarian Party and even some in the Republican Party, see themselves as conservative, even though they advocate significant economic and social changes—for instance, further dismantling the welfare system or liberalizing drug policy. They see these as conservative policies because they conform to the spirit of individual liberty that they consider to be a traditional American value.

However, many libertarian think-tanks such as the Cato Institute, and libertarian intellectuals such as David Boaz describe libertarianism as being "socially liberal and fiscally conservative."

Geography:
​
​The South, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountain states, and Alaska are generally conservative strongholds. The Northeast, Great Lakes Region, West Coast and Hawaii are the main liberal strongholds.

In the 21st century, rural areas of the United States (blue-collar, evangelical, older than other areas of the U.S., and predominantly white) are generally conservative bastions. Voters in the urban cores of large metropolitan areas tend to be more liberal and Democratic. Thus, there is a division between urban, suburban, exurban, and rural areas within each state.

Other topics:

Russell Kirk's principles of conservatism:

Russell Kirk developed six "canons" of conservatism, which Gerald J. Russello described as follows:
  1. A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law.
  2. An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence.
  3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize natural distinctions.
  4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked.
  5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription.
  6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.

Kirk said that Christianity and Western civilization are "unimaginable apart from one another" and that "all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief."

In later works, Kirk expanded this list into his "Ten Principles of Conservatism" which are as follows:
  1. First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order.
  2. Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity.
  3. Third, conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription.
  4. Fourth, conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence.
  5. Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.
  6. Sixth, conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability.
  7. Seventh, conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked.
  8. Eighth, conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.
  9. Ninth, the conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.
  10. Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.

Courts:

One stream of conservatism exemplified by William Howard Taft extols independent judges as experts in fairness and the final arbiters of the Constitution. In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt broke with most of his lawyer friends and called for popular votes that could overturn unwelcome decisions by state courts.

Taft denounced his old friend and rallied conservatives to defeat him for the 1912 GOP nomination. Taft and the conservative Republicans controlled the Supreme Court until the late 1930s.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a liberal Democrat, did not attack the Supreme Court directly in 1937, but ignited a firestorm of protest by a proposal to add seven new justices. Conservative Democrats immediately broke with FDR, defeated his proposal, and built up the conservative coalition.

While the liberals did take over the Court through replacements, they lost control of Congress. That is, the Court no longer overthrew liberal laws passed by Congress, but there were very few such laws that passed in 1937–60.

Conservatives' views of the courts are based on their beliefs: maintaining the present state of affairs, conventional and rule-oriented, and disapproval of government power. A recent variant of conservatism condemns "judicial activism"; that is, judges using their decisions to control policy, along the lines of the Warren Court in the 1960s.

It came under conservative attack for decisions regarding redistricting, desegregation, and the rights of those accused of crimes. This position goes back to Jefferson's vehement attacks on federal judges and to Abraham Lincoln's attacks on the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

Originalism:
Main article: Originalism

A more recent variant that emerged in the 1980s is originalism, the assertion that the United States Constitution should be interpreted to the maximum extent possible in the light of what it meant when it was adopted. Originalism should not be confused with a similar conservative ideology, strict constructionism, which deals with the interpretation of the Constitution as written, but not necessarily within the context of the time when it was adopted.

In modern times, the term originalism has been used by Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, former federal judge Robert Bork and some other conservative jurists to explain their beliefs.

Federalism:

According to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor writing for the majority in Gregory v. Ashcroft 501 U.S. 452 (1991), there are significant advantages to federalism and the recognition of state rights:

The federalist structure of joint sovereigns preserves to the people numerous advantages. It assures a decentralized government that will be more sensitive to the diverse needs of a heterogeneous society; it increases opportunity for citizen involvement in democratic processes; it allows for more innovation and experimentation in government; and it makes government more responsive by putting the States in competition for a mobile citizenry.

From the left, law professor Herman Schwartz argues that Rehnquist's reliance on federalism and state's rights have been a "Fig Leaf for conservatives":

Recent conservative Supreme Court majority, led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, has imposed limitations on federal power to curtail the rights of women, religious groups, the elderly, racial minorities, and other disadvantaged groups. [...] The conservatives have shrunk the scope of the commerce clause, developed implied limitations on federal authority, and narrowly construed the Civil War amendments.

Opposition to environmentalism:

In the past, conservatives have supported conservation efforts, from the protection of the Yosemite Valley, to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. 

However, more recently, conservatives have opposed environmentalism; with environmentalists often ridiculed as "tree huggers". Republican Party leaders such as Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann advocate the abolition of the EPA, calling it "the job-killing organization of America."

Conservative think tanks since the 1990s have opposed the concept of man-made global warming; challenged scientific evidence; publicized what they perceived as beneficial aspects of global warming, and asserted that proposed remedies would do more harm than good.

The concept of anthropogenic global warming continues to be an ongoing debate among conservatives in the United States, but most conservatives reject the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by humans.

A 2015 poll showed that 73% of Republicans believed humans were uninvolved in causing global warming.

American conservatives have generally supported deregulation of pollution and reduced restrictions on carbon emissions. Similarly, they have advocated increased oil drilling with less regulatory interference, including oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In the 2008 election, the phrase, "Drill baby drill" was used to express the Republican position on the subject.

President Donald Trump rolled back over 100 Obama-administration rules regarding the environment. President Trump also announced that the U.S. would stop making payments to the United Nations program "Green Climate Fund".

Semantics, language and media:

Socialism:

The term "socialist" has been used as a "rhetorical weapon" against the left by conservatives. David Hinshaw writes that William Allen White, editor of a small-town newspaper in Kansas from 1895, used "socialistic" as "his big gun to blast radical opposition." White set "Americanism" as the alternative, warning, "The election will sustain Americanism or it will plant Socialism."

White became famous when Mark Hanna, campaign manager for Republican candidate William McKinley distributed upwards of a million or more copies of one White editorial to rally opposition to William Jennings Bryan, the nominee of both the Democratic and Populist parties.

By the 1950s, the conservative press had discovered that the word 'socialism' "proved to be a successful derogatory epithet rather than a descriptive label for a meaningful political alternative." 

At the 1952 Republican national convention, former President Herbert Hoover repeated his warnings about two decades of New Deal policies, denouncing, says Gary Best, "The usurpation of power by the federal government, the loss of freedom in America, the poisoning of the American economy with fascism, socialism, and Keynesianism, the enormous growth of the federal bureaucracy."

Barry Goldwater in 1960 called for Republican unity against John F. Kennedy and the "blueprint for socialism presented by the Democrats." Goldwater in 1964 attacked central planners like fellow Republican Nelson Rockefeller, implying he was a socialist in a millionaire's garb: "The Democratic party believes in what I call socialism: and if that upsets anybody's stomach, let me remind you that central planning of our economy is socialism.

Ronald Reagan often quoted Norman Thomas, the perennial Socialist nominee for president in the New Deal era, as saying, "The American people would never knowingly vote for Socialism, but that under the name of liberalism, they would adopt every fragment of the socialist program." In 2010, Newt Gingrich defined "socialism in the broad sense" as "a government-dominated, bureaucratically-controlled, politician-dictated way of life."

Modern media:

Conservatives gained a major new communications medium with the resurgence of talk radio in the late 1980s. William G. Mayer, reports that "conservatives dominate talk radio to an overwhelming, remarkable degree." This dominance enabled them to spread their message much more effectively to the general public, which had previously been confined to the major Big Three television networks.

Political scientists Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj conclude that, "conservatives like talk radio because they believe it tells them the truth. Liberals appear to be much more satisfied with the mainstream media and are more likely to believe that it is accurate."

Rush Limbaugh proved there was a huge nationwide audience for specific and heated discussions of current events from a conservative viewpoint. Other major hosts who describe themselves as conservative include: 
The Salem Radio Network syndicates a group of religiously oriented Republican activists, including Roman Catholic Hugh Hewitt, and Jewish conservatives Dennis Prager and Michael Medved.

One popular Jewish conservative, Laura Schlessinger, offers parental and personal advice, but is outspoken on social and political issues. In 2011, the largest weekly audiences for talk radio were 15 million for Limbaugh and 14 million for Hannity, with about nine million each for Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Mark Levin. The audiences overlap, depending on how many each listener dials into every week.

Fox News features conservative hosts. One such host is Sean Hannity, who also has a talk radio program.

One former host is Matt Drudge; prior, and after his time on Fox News, Drudge has operated Drudge Report a news aggregation website and is a self-professed conservative. It is more conservative than other news sources in the United States, such as National Public Radio and CNN. 

Canadian-American political commentator David Frum has been a critic of this development, and has argued that the influence of conservative talk radio and Fox News has harmed American conservatism, turning it from "a political philosophy into a market segment" for extremism and conflict making "for bad politics but great TV."

Academia:

Admission to academia:

Liberal and leftist viewpoints have dominated higher education faculties since the 1970s, according to many studies, whereas conservatives are better represented in policy-oriented think tanks. Data from a survey conducted in 2004 indicated that 72% of full-time faculty identify as liberal, while 9–18% self-identify as conservative. Conservative self-identification is higher in two-year colleges than other categories of higher education but has been declining overall. 

Those in natural sciences, engineering, and business were less liberal than those in the social sciences and humanities. A 2005 study found that liberal views had increased compared to the older studies. 15% in the survey described themselves as center-right.

While the humanities and the social sciences are still the most left leaning, 67% of those in other fields combined described themselves as center-left on the spectrum. In business and engineering, liberals outnumber conservatives by a 2:1 ratio. The study also found that more women, practicing Christians, and Republicans taught at lower ranked schools than would be expected from objectively measured professional accomplishments.

A study by psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammars, of the Netherlands' Tilburg University, published in September 2012 in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, found that, in social and personality psychology, about a third of those surveyed say that they would to a small extent favor a liberal point of view over a conservative point of view. 

A 2007 poll found that 58% of Americans thought that college professors' political bias was a "serious problem". This varied depending on the political views of those asked. 91% of "very conservative" adults agreed compared with only 3% of liberals. That same year a documentary, Indoctrinate U, was released which focuses on the perceived bias within academia.

On the other hand, liberal critic Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times that this phenomenon is more due to personal choice than some kind of discrimination or conspiracy, noting that, for example, vocations such as military officers are much more likely to be filled by conservatives rather than liberals.

​Additionally, two studies published in the journal of the American Political Science Association have suggested that the political orientations of college students' professors have little influence or "indoctrination" in terms of students' political belief.

Relativism versus universal truths:

Postmodernism is an approach common in the humanities at universities that greatly troubles conservative intellectuals. The issue is relativism versus absolute truths.

Ellen Grigsby says, "Postmodern perspectives contend that any ideology putting forward absolute statements as timeless truths should be viewed with profound skepticism."

Kellner says, "Postmodern discourse frequently argues that all discourses and values are socially constructed and laden with interests and biases. Against postmodern and liberal relativism, cultural conservatives have argued for values of universal truth and absolute standards of right and wrong."

Neoconservative historian Gertrude Himmelfarb has energetically rejected postmodern academic approaches: [Postmodernism in history] is a denial of the objectivity of the historian, of the factuality or reality of the past, and thus of the possibility of arriving at any truths about the past. For all disciplines it induces a radical skepticism, relativism, and subjectivism that denies not this or that truth about any subject but the very idea of truth—that denies even the ideal of truth, truth is something to aspire to even if it can never be fully attained.

Jay Stevenson wrote the following representative summary of postmodern literary studies of the sort that antagonize conservatives: [In the postmodern period,] traditional literature has been found to have been written by "dead white males" to serve the ideological aims of a conservative and repressive Anglo hegemony. [...]

In an array of reactions against the race, gender, and class biases found to be woven into the tradition of Anglo lit, multicultural writers and political literary theorists have sought to expose, resist, and redress injustices and prejudices. These prejudices are often covert—disguised in literature and other discourses as positive ideals and objective truths—but they slant our sense of reality in favor of power and privilege.

Conservative intellectuals have championed a "high conservative modernism" that insists that universal truths exist, and have opposed approaches that deny the existence of universal truths. Many argued that natural law was the repository of timeless truths. 

​Allan Bloom, in his highly influential The Closing of the American Mind (1987) argues that moral degradation results from ignorance of the great classics that shaped Western culture. His book was widely cited by conservative intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths and timeless values which were being ignored by cultural relativists.

Historiography:

In recent years, historians have agreed that they need to rethink the role of conservatism in recent American history. An important new approach rejects the older consensus that liberalism was the dominant ethos.

Labor historians Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore argue the New Deal was a short-term response to depression and did not mark a permanent commitment to a welfare state, claiming that America has always been too individualistic and too hostile to labor unions to ever embrace liberalism for any extended period of time. This new interpretation argues that conservatism has largely dominated American politics since the 1920s, with the brief exceptions of the New Deal era (1933–1938) and the Great Society (1964–1966).

However, historian Julian Zelizer argues that "The coherence of conservatism has been exaggerated. The movement was as fragile as the New Deal coalition that it replaced. [...] Policy change has thus proved to be much more difficult than conservatives hoped for. 

Zelizer does find four areas where conservatives did make major changes, namely retrenchment of domestic programs, lowering taxes, deregulation, and opposition to labor unions. He concludes, "The fact is that liberalism survived the rise of conservatism."

American exceptionalism:
Main article: American exceptionalism

American conservatives typically promote American exceptionalism, the idea that the United States is inherently different from other nations and has a duty to take the lead in spreading democracy and free markets to the world. Reagan especially articulated this role (and many liberals also agree with it). 

They see American values emerging from the American Revolution, thereby becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called "the first new nation" and developing a uniquely American ideology, "Americanism", based on the following: 
Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and other American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the U.S. is like the biblical "City upon a Hill"—a phrase evoked by Puritan settlers in Massachusetts as early as 1630—and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.

Scholars have argued that British and European conservatism has little or no relevance to American traditions. According to political scientist Louis Hartz, because the United States skipped the feudal stage of history, the American community was united by liberal principles, and the conflict between the "Whig" and "Democratic" parties were conflicts within a liberal framework.

In this view, what is called "conservatism" in America is not European conservatism (with its royalty, landowning aristocracy, elite officer corps, and established churches) but rather 19th century classical liberalism with an emphasis on economic freedom and entrepreneurship.

This is in contrast to the view that Burkean conservatism has a set of universal principles which can be applied to all societies. In The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk argued that the American Revolution was "a conservative reaction, in the English political tradition, against royal innovation".

Liberal historian Richard Hofstader criticized modern American conservatives as "pseudo-conservatives" because their negative reaction to the policies of Harry Truman showed "dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions" and because they had "little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism".

Thinkers and leaders
See also: List of American conservatives

​Scholarly views on the genetics and psychology of politics:

In Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences three respected scholars provide an in-depth psychological explanation of how a person's genetic makeup predisposes them to be liberal or conservative.

The book provides telling examples of how people as erudite and thoughtful as William F. Buckley Jr., Gore Vidal, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson descend to insults, lawsuits, duels, and slander when they are unable to defend their positions by rational argument!

Clinton Rossiter's Giants:

Clinton Rossiter, a leading expert on American political history, published his history of Conservatism in America (1956) and also a summary article on "The Giants of American Conservatism" in American Heritage. His goal was to identify the "great men who did conservative deeds, thought conservative thoughts, practiced conservative virtues, and stood for conservative principles".

To Rossiter, conservatism was defined by the rule of the upper class. He wrote, "The Right of these freewheeling decades was a genuine Right: it was led by the rich and well-placed; it was skeptical of popular government; it was opposed to all parties, unions, leagues, or other movements that sought to invade its positions of power and profit; it was politically, socially, and culturally anti-radical."

Rossiter's "giants of American conservatism" include: 
He added that Washington and Lincoln transcend the usual categories, but that conservatives "may argue with some conviction that Washington and Lincoln can also be added to his list".

Rossiter went to note the importance of other conservative leaders over the past two centuries. Among the fathers of the Constitution, which he calls "a triumph of conservative statesmanship", Rossiter said conservatives may "take special pride" in James Madison, James Wilson, Roger Sherman, John Dickinson, Gouverneur Morris and the Pinckneys of South Carolina.

​For the early 19th century, Rossiter said the libertarians and constitutionalists who deserve the conservative spotlight for their fight against Jacksonian democracy include Joseph Story and Josiah Quincy in Massachusetts; Chancellor James Kent​ in New York; James Madison, James Monroe, and John Randolph of Roanoke in Virginia.

In the decades around 1900, Rossiter finds that Grover Cleveland, Elihu Root, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt "were most successful in shaping the old truths of conservatism to the new facts of industrialism and democracy".

In what Rossiter called the "Great Train Robbery of Intellectual History", the laissez-faire conservatives appropriated the themes of classical liberalism—especially liberty, opportunity, progress, and individualism, and packaged them into an ideology that supported the property rights of big corporations.

Writing in 1955, Rossiter suggests that Robert A. Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, and Dwight D. Eisenhower may someday be added to the list.

​Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about American Conservatism: ___________________________________________________________________________ 

​Radical Right (United States)

In United States politics, the radical right is a political preference that leans towards extreme conservatism, various ethnic Supremacism ideologies and other right-wing beliefs in hierarchical structure.

The term was first used by social scientists in the 1950s regarding small groups such as the John Birch Society in the United States and since then it has been applied to similar groups worldwide.

The term "radical" was applied to the groups because they sought to make fundamental (hence "radical") changes within institutions and remove from political life persons and institutions that threatened their values or economic interests. They were called "right-wing" primarily because of their opposition to: ​
​Terminology:

There is disagreement over how right-wing movements should be described, and no consensus exists regarding what the proper terminology should be, although the terminology developed in the 1950s, using the words "radical" or "extremist" is the most commonly used one.

Other scholars simply prefer to call them "The Right" or "conservatives", which is what they call themselves. The terminology is used to describe a broad range of movements.

The term "radical right" was coined by Seymour Martin Lipset and included in a book titled The New American Right, which was published in 1955. The contributors to that book identified a conservative "responsible Right" as represented by the Republican administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower and a radical right that wished to change political and social life.

Further to the right of the radical right, they identified an "ultraright". Most ultraright groups operate outside political life, call for drastic change and in extreme cases they use violence against the state. These groups were seen as having developed from the radical right, both by adopting an ideology and containing members drawn from them.

In The Radical Right a contrast is made between the main section of the radical right that developed in the 1950s and was able to obtain influence during the Reagan administration and the related ultraright that had turned to violent acts including the Oklahoma bombing.

Ultraright groups, as The Radical Right definition states, are normally called "far-right", although they may also be called "radical right".

According to Clive Webb, "Radical right is commonly, but not completely, used to describe anticommunist organizations such as the Christian Crusade and the John Birch Society... [T]he term far right... is the label most broadly used by scholars... to describe militant white supremacists."

Theoretical perspectives:

The study of the radical right began in the 1950s as social scientists attempted to explain McCarthyism, which was seen as a lapse from the American political tradition. A framework for description was developed primarily in Richard Hofstadter's "The pseudo-conservative revolt" and Seymour Martin Lipset's "The sources of the radical right".

These essays, along with others by Daniel Bell, Talcott Parsons, Peter Viereck and Herbert Hyman, were included in The New American Right (1955). In 1963, following the rise of the John Birch Society, the authors were asked to re-examine their earlier essays and the revised essays were published in the book The Radical Right. Lipset, along with Earl Raab, traced the history of the radical right in The politics of unreason (1970).

The central arguments of The Radical Right provoked criticism. Some on the Right thought that McCarthyism could be explained as a rational reaction to communism. Others thought McCarthyism should be explained as part of the Republican Party's political strategy.

Critics on the Left denied that McCarthyism could be interpreted as a mass movement and rejected the comparison with 19th-century populism. Others saw status politics, dispossession and other explanations as too vague.

Paranoid style politics:

Two different approaches were taken by these social scientists. Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote an analysis in his influential 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics".

Hofstadter sought to identify the characteristics of the groups. Hofstadter defined politically paranoid individuals as feeling persecuted, fearing conspiracy and acting over-aggressive yet socialized. Hofstadter and other scholars in the 1950s argued that the major left-wing movement of the 1890s, the Populists, showed what Hofstadter said was "paranoid delusions of conspiracy by the Money Power".

Historians have also applied the paranoid category to other political movements, such as the conservative Constitutional Union Party of 1860. Hofstadter's approach was later applied to the rise of new right-wing groups, including the Christian right and the Patriot movement.

Trump victory:

The political success of Donald Trump has prompted American historian Rick Perlstein to argue that historians have underestimated the influence and power on the modern American political right of populist, nativist, collectivist authoritarian, and conspiracy-minded right-wing movements, such as the Black Legion, Charles Coughlin, the Christian Front, and "birther" speculation, and overestimated the more libertarian influence of William F. Buckley's limited government, free trade, free market intellectual conservatism, and the pro-immigration and optimistic outlook of Ronald Reagan.

Social structure:

Sociologists Lipset and Raab were focused on who joined these movements and how they evolved. They saw the development of radical right-wing groups as occurring in three stages.

In the first stage certain groups came under strain because of a loss or threatened loss of power and/or status. In the second stage they theorize about what has led to this threat. In the third stage they identify people and groups whom they consider to be responsible.

A successful radical right-wing group would be able to combine the anxieties of both elites and masses. European immigration for example threatened the elites because immigrants brought socialism and radicalism, while for the masses the threat came from their Catholicism.

The main elements are low democratic restraint, having more of a stake in the past than the present and laissez-faire economics. The emphasis is on preserving social rather than economic status. The main population attracted are lower-educated, lower-income and lower-occupational strata. They were seen as having a lower commitment to democracy, instead having loyalty to groups, institutions and systems.

However, some scholars reject Lipset and Raab's analysis. James Aho, for example, says that the way individuals join right-wing groups is no different from how they join other types of groups. They are influenced by recruiters and join because they believe the goals promoted by the group are of value to them and find personal value in belonging to the group.

Several scholars, including Sara Diamond and Chip Berlet, reject the theory that membership in the radical right is driven by emotionality and irrationality and see them as similar to other political movements.

John George and Laird Wilcox see the psychological claims in Lipset and Raab's approach as "dehumanizing" of members of the radical right. They claim that the same description of members of the radical right is also true of many people within the political mainstream.

Hofstader found a common thread in the radical right, from fear of the Illuminati in the late 18th century, to anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic movements in the 19th to McCarthyism and the John Birch Society in the 20th. They were conspiracist, Manichean, absolutist and paranoid. They saw history as a conspiracy by a demonic force that was on the verge of total control, requiring their urgent efforts to stop it. Therefore, they rejected pluralistic politics, with its compromise and consensus-building.

Hofstadter thought that these characteristics were always present in a large minority of the population. Frequent waves of status displacement would continually bring it to the surface.

D. J. Mulloy however noted that the term "extremist" is often applied to groups outside the political mainstream and the term is dropped once these groups obtain respectability, using the Palestinian Liberation Organization as an example. The mainstream frequently ignores the commonality between itself and so-called extremist organizations. Also, the radical right appeals to views that are held by the mainstream: antielitism, individualism and egalitarianism. Their views on religion, race, Americanism and guns are held by a significant proportion of other white Americans.

Conspiracism:

Throughout history, conspiracism has been a major feature of the Radical Right and subject to numerous books and articles, the most famous of which is Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics".

Imaginary threats have variously been identified as originating from Catholics, non-whites, women, homosexuals, secular humanists, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, American Communists, Freemasons, bankers and the U.S. government. 

Alexander Zaitchik, writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), credited cable news hosts, including Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs, the John Birch Society and WorldNetDaily with popularizing conspiracy theories. In the Fall 2010 issue of the SPLC's Intelligence Report, he identified the following as the top 10 conspiracy theories of the Radical Right:
  1. Chemtrails
  2. Martial Law
  3. Federal Emergency Management Agency Concentration Camps
  4. Foreign troops on US soil
  5. Door-to-door gun confiscations
  6. 9/11 as government plan
  7. Population control
  8. High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP)
  9. Federal Reserve
  10. North American Union

Common to most of these theories is an overarching belief in the existence of New World Order intent on instituting a one-world, communist government.

Climate change being viewed as a hoax is also sometimes associated with the radical right.

Since 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory has been widely promulgated among fringe groups on the far right.

Right-wing populism:
Main article: Right-wing populism

From the 1990s onward, parties that have been described as radical right became established in the legislatures of various democracies including: 
However, there is little consensus about the reasons for this. Some of these parties had historic roots, such as the National Alliance, formed as the Italian Social Movement in 1946, the French National Front, founded in 1972, and the Freedom Party of Austria, an existing party that moved sharply right after 1986.

Typically new right-wing parties, such as the French Poujadists, the U.S. Reform Party and the Dutch Pim Fortuyn List enjoyed short-lived prominence. The main support for these parties comes from both the self-employed and skilled and unskilled labor, with support coming predominantly from males.

However, scholars are divided on whether these parties are radical right, since they differ from the groups described in earlier studies of the radical right. They are more often described as populist. Studies of the radical right in the United States and right-wing populism in Europe have tended to be conducted independently, with very few comparisons made.

European analyses have tended to use comparisons with fascism, while studies of the American radical right have stressed American exceptionalism. The U.S. studies have paid attention to the consequences of slavery, the profusion of religious denominations and a history of immigration, and saw fascism as uniquely European.

Although the term "radical right" was American in origin, the term has been consciously adopted by some European social scientists. Conversely the term "right-wing extremism", which is European in origin, has been adopted by some American social scientists.

Since the European right-wing groups in existence immediately following the war had roots in fascism they were normally called "neo-fascist". However, as new right-wing groups emerged with no connection to historical fascism, the use of the term "right-wing extremism" came to be more widely used.

Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg argued that the radical right in the U.S. and right-wing populism in Europe were the same phenomenon that existed throughout the Western world.

They identified the core attributes as contained in extremism, behaviour and beliefs. As extremists, they see no moral ambiguity and demonize the enemy, sometimes connecting them to conspiracy theories such as the New World Order. Most politicians are seen as traitors or cowards.

Given this worldview, there is a tendency to use methods outside democratic norms, although this is not always the case. The main core belief is inequality, which often takes the form of opposition to immigration or racism. They do not see this new Right as having any connection with the historic Right, which had been concerned with protecting the status quo.

They also see the cooperation of the American and European forms, and their mutual influence on each other, as evidence of their existence as a single phenomenon.
Daniel Bell argues that the ideology of the radical right is "its readiness to jettison constitutional processes and to suspend liberties, to condone Communist methods in the fighting of Communism".

Historian Richard Hofstader agrees that communist-style methods are often emulated: "The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through 'front' groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy". He also quotes Barry Goldwater: "I would suggest that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not".

History:

Conspiracy fears:

The American patriots who spearheaded the American Revolution in the 1770s were motivated primarily by an ideology that historians call Republicanism. It stressed the dangers of aristocracy, as represented by the British government, corruption, and the need for every citizen to display civic virtue. When public affairs took a bad turn, Republicans were inclined to identify a conspiracy of evil forces as the cause.

Against this background of fear of conspiracies against American liberties the first Radical Right-style responses came in the 1790s. Some Federalists warned of an organized conspiracy involving Thomas Jefferson and his followers, and recent arrivals from Europe, alleging that they were agents of the French revolutionary agenda of violent radicalism, social equalitarianism and anti-Christian infidelity.

The Federalists in 1798 acted by passing the Alien and Sedition Acts, designed to protect the country against both foreign and domestic radicals. Fear of immigration led to a riot in New York City in 1806 between nativists and Irishmen, which led to increased calls by Federalists to nativism.

Anti-Masonic Party:
Main article: Anti-Masonic Party

In America, public outrage against privilege and aristocracy in the United States was expressed in the Northeast by anti-Masonry, a belief that Freemasonry comprised powerful evil secret elites who rejected republican values and were blocking the movement toward egalitarianism and reform.

The anti-Masons, with a strong evangelical base, organized into a political party, the Anti-Masonic Party that pledged to rid Masons from public office. It was most active in 1828–1836. The Freemason movement was badly damaged and never fully recovered; the Anti-Mason movement merged into the coalition that became the new Whig Party.

The anti-Masonry movement was not "radical"; it fully participated in democracy, and was animated by the belief that the Masons were the ones subverting democracy in America. While earlier accounts of the antimasons portrayed their supporters as mainly poor people, more recent scholarship has shown that they were largely middle-class.

Nativism:
Main article: Nativism (politics)

The arrival of large numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1830s and 1840s led to a reaction among Americans, who were alarmed by the levels of crime and welfare dependency among the new arrivals, and the use of violence to control the polls on election day. Nativists began to revere symbols of Americanism: the Puritans, Minute Men, Founding Fathers and people who they considered true Christians.

The immigrants were seen as part of a conspiracy to undermine America. Nativists in New York formed the American Republican Party. It merged into the Know Nothings in the 1850s. The main support for the Know Nothings was urban and working class. The party split over slavery and the northern wing merged into the Republican Party in the late 1850s.

White paramilitary organizations in the Southern United States:

Starting in the 1870s and continuing through the late 19th century, numerous white supremacist paramilitary groups operated in the South, with the goal of organizing against and intimidating supporters of the Republican Party. Examples of such groups included the Red Shirts and the White League.

American Protective Association:

The American Protective Association (APA) formed in the Middle West in 1887 by Irish Protestants to fight the power of the Catholic Church in politics. It was a secret organization whose members campaigned for Protestant candidates in local elections and opposed hiring Catholics for government jobs.

Claiming to have secret documents obtained from nuns and priests who had escaped from the Catholic Church, it claimed that the Pope had absolved Catholics from loyalty to the United States and asked them to kill heretics. It claimed that the Catholic Church ordered Catholics to emigrate to major U.S. cities where they could assume control and claimed that the civil service was dominated by Catholics who remitted part of their pay to Rome.

The movement was rejected by mainstream Republicans and faded away in the mid-1890s.

An offshoot of the APA, the Protestant Protective Association (PPA) was set up in the Canadian province of Ontario in 1891. It drew support from Orangemen in the 1890s, before going into decline. Its leaders opposed Catholic influence and supported the Imperial Federation. A PPA was also set up in Australia.

Lily-white movement:
Main article: Lily-white movement

The lily-white movement was an all-white faction of the Republican Party in the Southern United States which opposed civil rights and African-American involvement in the party, and was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Second Ku Klux Klan:

The Second Ku Klux Klan, which was formed in 1915, combined Protestant fundamentalism and moralism with right-wing extremism. Its major support came from the urban south, the midwest and the Pacific Coast. While the Klan initially drew upper middle class support, its bigotry and violence alienated these members and it came to be dominated by less educated and poorer members.

The Klan claimed that there was a secret Catholic army within the United States loyal to the Pope, that one million Knights of Columbus were arming themselves, and that Irish-American policemen would shoot Protestants as heretics. They claimed that the Catholics were planning to take Washington and put the Vatican in power, and that all presidential assassinations had been carried out by Catholics.

The prominent Klan leader, D. C. Stephenson claimed that international Jewish bankers were behind the First World War and planned to destroy economic opportunities for Christians.

Other Klansmen claimed that the Russian Revolution and Communism were controlled by Jews. The Klan frequently reprinted parts of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and New York City was condemned as an evil city controlled by Jews and Catholics.

The objects of Klan fear however tended to vary by locale and included Catholics, Jews, African Americans, Wobblies, Orientals, labour unions and liquor. The Klan were also anti-elitist and attacked "the intellectuals", seeing themselves as egalitarian defenders of the common man.

British subjects who became naturalized Americans were encouraged to join the "Riders of the Red Robe" and the Klan was successful in establishing branches in several Canadian provinces, although they disappeared after 1930.

Great Depression:

During the Great Depression there were a large number of small nativist groups, whose ideologies and bases of support were similar to those of earlier nativist groups. However, proto-fascist movements such as Huey Long's Share Our Wealth​ and Father Coughlin's National Union for Social Justice emerged, which differed from other right-wing groups by attacking big business, calling for economic reform and rejecting nativism. However, Coughlin's group later developed a racist ideology.

The Black Legion, which had a peak membership of 40,000 was formed by former Klansmen and operated in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. Unlike the Klan, its members dressed in black and its organizational hierarchy was based on the military, not on fraternal organizations. Its members swore an oath to keep "the secrets of the order to support God, the United States Constitution, and the Black Legion in its holy war against Catholics, Jews, Communists, Negroes, and aliens".

The organization went into decline after more than fifty members were convicted of various crimes in support of the organization. The typical member was from a small farm in the South, lacked a high school graduation diploma, was married with children and worked in unskilled labor.

Gerald B. Winrod, a fundamentalist Christian minister who founded the Defenders of the Christian Faith revived the Illuminati conspiracy theory that have originally been introduced into the United States in 1798. He claimed that both the French and Russian Revolutions were directed by a them and saw the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an accurate expose of a Jewish conspiracy.

He saw the Jews, the Catholics, the communists and the bankers as working together to destroy American Protestantism. Although Winrod's appeal was mainly limited to rural, poor, uneducated fundamentalist Christians, his magazine The Defender reached a peak circulation of 100,000 in the late 1930s.

William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts movement was overtly modelled on European fascism and introduced a populist statist plan for economic organization. The United States would be reorganized as a corporation, with individuals paid according to their contributions, although African Americans, aboriginals and aliens would be treated as wards of the state and therefore hold a lower status.

The organization blamed the Jews for the depression, communism, and the spread of immorality, but it openly accepted Catholics as members. Its membership was largely uneducated, poor and elderly, with a high proportion of neurotics, and it also had a large female membership. Its main base of support was in small communities in the Midwest and on the West Coast, and it had almost no presence in the Southern States.

Father Coughlin was a Catholic priest who had begun broadcasting on religious matters in 1926. However, when his program went national in 1930, he began to comment on political issues, promoting a strongly anti-Communist stance, while being highly critical of American capitalists.

He urged the government to protect workers, denounced Prohibition and held the "international bankers" responsible for the depression. By 1932 he had millions of regular listeners. The following year he set up the "National Union for Social Justice". Although an early supporter of the U. S. president, Franklin Roosevelt, he broke with him in 1935 when Roosevelt proposed that the United States join the World Court.

Coughlin then denounced the New Deal, which he claimed had accomplished little but instead had strengthened the position of the bankers. His organization became increasingly supportive of European fascism.

In 1936 Coughlin began to endorse candidates for political office and supported the presidential campaign of William Lemke, who campaigned on the Union Party ticket. Lemke was also supported by Gerald L. K. Smith, head of the Share Our Wealth movement and Dr. Francis Townsend, head of the Townsend Old Age movement. At the time Coughlin claimed that his organization had 5 million members, while Smith claimed that his organization had 3 million members. In the election however Lemke received fewer than 900,000 votes.

Following this setback, Coughlin became more overtly fascist, attacking trade unionists and politicians for being pro-Communist, calling for a corporate state and setting up "Social Justice Councils", which excluded non-Christians from their membership.

Coughlin's magazine, Social Justice, named Benito Mussolini as man of the year in 1938 and defended Hitler's "persecution" of Jews, whom he linked with Communism. Major radio stations then refused to air his broadcasts and the Post Office banned Social Justice from the mails in 1942. Threatened by a sedition trial against Father Coughlin, the Catholic Church ordered him to cease his political activities and Coughlin retired from political life.

Huey Long who had been elected governor of Louisiana in 1928 and was a U.S. senator from 1932 until his death in 1935, built a national organization, Share Our Wealth, which had a populist appeal. He combined both left and right-wing elements.

As governor, Long removed the poll tax and directed state spending to the improvement of schools and rural roads. He attacked "the corporations and urbanites, the 'better elements' and the professional politicians." At the time of his death, his organization had, according to its files, over 27,000 clubs with a total membership of almost 8 million.

According to Lipset and Raab, Long was considered to be right-wing because of his authoritarian style, building a large National Guard and police force, intimidating opponents and the press, and bringing the electoral process and prosecution service under his direct control.

Long never introduced minimum wage or child labor laws, unemployment insurance or old age pensions, although other states did so at the time. He actively courted support from big business, and reduced taxes on corporations. He differed from other right-wingers by making no appeal to conspiracy theories, nativism, or morality. He worked closely with Catholics and Jews and never appealed to race issues. However, he chose Gerald L. K. Smith, who was associated with the fascist Silver Shirts to organize his Share our Wealth movement. But the movement died out following Long's death.

Dixiecrats:
Main article: Dixiecrat

In 1948, the Dixiecrats, a breakaway segregationist faction of the Democratic Party, contested the 1948 presidential election with then-Governor of South Carolina Strom Thurmond as their candidate, winning 4 states.

McCarthyism:
Main article: McCarthyism

Although the United States emerged from the Second World War as the world's strongest country both economically and militarily, communism had also been strengthened. Communism had spread in Eastern Europe and southeast Asia, and there were numerous Communist insurgencies.

At the same time, Communist espionage had been found in the U.S. Responding to the fears the new enemy presented, Joe McCarthy, a Republican U.S. senator from Wisconsin, claimed in 1950 that there were 205 Communist spies in the State Department. 

The main target of McCarthyism however was ideological non-conformism, and individuals were targeted for their beliefs. Black lists were established in many industries restricting the employment of suspected nonconformists, and libraries were pressured to remove books and periodicals that were considered suspect.

McCarthy investigated Voice of America and although no communists were found, 30 employees were fired as a result. The strongest support for McCarthyism came from German and Irish Catholics who had been isolationist in both world wars and had an anti-British bias and opposed socialism on religious grounds. 

Much of the hostility was directed against the Eastern elites. Following the GOP landslide in 1952, McCarthy continued his investigations into the new Republican administration until the Republican party turned against him.

John Birch Society:

The John Birch Society, which was created in 1958, combined economic liberalism with anti-communism. The founder, Robert Welch, Jr., believed that the greatest enemy of man was government, and the more extensive the government, the greater the enemy. To him, government was inherently corrupt and a threat to peace. He advocated private institutions, local government and rigid individualism.

Welch wondered why U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had helped destroy Joe McCarthy, made peace with the communists in Korea, refused to support anti-communist movements abroad and had extended the welfare state. His conclusion was that Eisenhower was either a communist or a dupe of the communists and that the United States government was already 60% to 80% under communist control.

Welch saw the communist conspiracy as controlled by the Illuminati, which he thought had directed the French and Russian Revolutions and was behind the current civil rights movement. They were also responsible for welfare programs, central banking, progressive income taxation and the direct election of U.S. senators. Welch identified William Morgan, William Wirt and Joe McCarthy as people who had been killed for their attempts to expose the Illuminati.

Morgan's murder presumably by Masons had led to the earlier Anti-Masonic movement, Wirt had denounced the New Deal and McCarthy had claimed to have discovered a Communist conspiracy.

American Independent Party:

The 1967 presidential campaign of George Wallace created a new party called the American Independent Party (AIP) which in later years came under the control of Radical Right elements. In 1969, the party had split into two groups, the anti-communist American Party under the leadership of T. Coleman Andrews and another group under the AIP founder Bill Shearer.

Both groups opposed federal intervention into schools, favored police suppression of domestic disorder and victory in the Vietnam War. The two groups united under the American Party banner in order to support the 1972 presidential campaign of George Wallace, but after he withdrew they nominated U.S. Representative John G. Schmitz.

In Louisiana, Ned Touchstone, a Wallace supporter, edited a conservative newsletter, The Councilor, through which means he attacked liberals in both major parties. The Councilor was the publication of the White Citizens' Council.

In 1967, Touchstone ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat against Louisiana Education Superintendent Bill Dodd, who carried the support of party moderates, liberals, and African Americans.

Constitutional militia and patriot movements:
Main articles: 
Although small militias had existed throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the groups became more popular during the early 1990s, after a series of standoffs between armed citizens and federal government agents, such as the 1992 Ruby Ridge siege and 1993 Waco Siege.

These groups expressed concern for what they perceived as government tyranny within the United States and generally held libertarian and constitutionalist political views, with a strong focus on the Second Amendment gun rights and tax protest. They also embraced many of the same conspiracy theories as predecessor groups on the radical right, particularly the New World Order theory.

Currently active examples of such groups are the 3 Percenters and the Oath Keepers. A minority of militia groups, such as Posse Comitatus and the Aryan Nations, were white nationalists and saw militia and patriot movements as a form of white resistance against what they perceived to be a liberal and multiculturalist government.

More recently, militia and patriot organizations were involved in the 2014 Bundy standoff and the 2016 Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Paleoconservatism:

Paul Gottfried first coined the term paleoconservatism in the 1980s. These conservatives stressed (post-Cold War) non-interventionist foreign policy, strict immigration law, anti-consumerism and traditional values and opposed the neoconservatives, who had more liberal views on these issues.

The paleoconservatives used the surge in right-wing populism during the early 1990s to propel the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan in 1992, 1996 and 2000. They diminished in number after the September 11 attacks, where they found themselves at odds with the vast majority of American conservatives on how to respond to the threat of terrorism.

The Constitution Party and the Reform Party of the United States of America received support from the paleoconservatives.

Counterjihad:

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Counterjihad movement, supported by groups such as Stop Islamization of America and individuals such as Frank Gaffney and Pamela Geller, began to gain traction among the American right.

They were widely dubbed Islamophobic for their vocal condemnation of the Islamic faith and their belief that there was a significant threat posed by Muslims living in America.

They believed the United States was under threat from "Islamic supremacism", accusing the Council on American-Islamic Relations and even prominent conservatives like Suhail A. Khan and Grover Norquist of supporting radical Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Minuteman Project:

Jim Gilchrist, a conservative Republican, founded the Minuteman Project in April 2005. The Minutemen, inspired by the earlier Patriot movement and the original revolutionary Minutemen, advocated greater restrictions on illegal immigration and engaged in volunteer activities in the Southwestern United States against those perceived to be illegal immigrants.

The group drew much criticism from those who held more liberal views on the immigration issues, with President George W. Bush condemning them as "vigilantes". The Minuteman Project was similar to the earlier Ranch Rescue organization, which performed much the same role.

Alt-right:
Main article: Alt-right

The alt-right emerged during the 2016 election cycle in support of the Donald Trump presidential campaign. It draws influence from: 
Alt-right differs from previous radical right movements due to its heavy internet presence on sites such as 4chan.

See also: ___________________________________________________________________________

​List of American conservatives

American conservatism is a broad system of political beliefs in the United States that is characterized by respect for: 
The recent movement is based in the Republican Party, though some Democrats were also important figures early in the movement's history.

The following list is made up of prominent American conservative people from the public and private sectors. The list also includes political parties, organizations and media outlets which have made a notable impact on conservatism in the United States. Entries on the list must have achieved notability after 1932, the beginning of the Fifth Party System:









Political Corruption in the United States ​Pictured: Trump’s 2,000 conflicts of interest (and counting)
Corruption in the United States is the act of government officials abusing their political powers for private gain, typically through bribery or other methods.

In 2018, Transparency International ranked the United States as the 22nd least corrupt country, falling from 18th since 2016. The United States ranked between France (21) and the United Arab Emirates (23).

In 2019, Transparency International stated that the United States is "experiencing threats to its system of checks and balances", along with an "erosion of ethical norms at the highest levels of power."

US topics related to corruption; Convictions of government officials: Scandals and crimes: See also: ___________________________________________________________________________

Continued from the Pictured photo above about President Donald J. Trump:
(Published by CREW* August 15, 2019)

* CREW =  Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Unprecedented conflicts of interest:

During his run for president, Donald Trump promised that he would “drain the swamp” in Washington by rooting out corruption and wrenching power from lobbyists and special interests. In the two and a half years since he assumed the office of President of the United States, he has done exactly the opposite: placing former lobbyists in positions of power while giving foreign governments and special interests the opportunity to purchase access to his administration by patronizing his businesses.

Instead of limiting Washington corruption, President Trump has pushed it into uncharted territory, innovating forms of corruption.

Prior to President Trump, every modern president divested their business interests before entering office. For decades, this norm of presidential conduct has served as an important signal for both Republican and Democratic administrations to show that, as the nation’s most powerful and prominent public servant, the president would not put personal financial interests before the interests of the country.

Divestiture also served as an assurance to the public that the president would not open himself up to undue influence from special interests and foreign governments that might use his businesses as a way to curry favor with him and his administration. 

President Trump rejected these principles, and as a result, he has created an environment where the actions of his administration, and those trying to influence it, can benefit the globe-spanning real-estate and branding empire that he still profits from.

The conflicts of interest that President Trump created by retaining his business interests are at some level immeasurable. There is no comprehensive financial filing requirement, for example, that the public or Congress can use to effectively identify these contacts and the administration has refused any good-faith efforts to provide the public with useful information, whether White House visitor logs or the president’s tax returns. 

But that hasn’t kept CREW from relentlessly tracking what information is available through public sources and compiling it in a database of President Trump’s conflicts of interest. Since he took office two and a half years ago, CREW has used news reports, social media postings, FOIA responses, a newsletter devoted to monitoring his D.C. hotel, and other information to catalogue every identifiable interaction between the Trump Organization and the government and between the Trump Organization and those trying to influence the Trump administration.

Each of those results in a conflict of interest, between the public interest and Donald Trump’s personal financial interest. 

Trump conflicts of interest by the numbers:

CREW has now tallied 2,310 conflicts resulting from President Trump’s decision to retain his business interests. Here are some of the most startling numbers from the data: 
  • The president has visited his properties 362 times at taxpayer expense during his administration, sometimes visiting more than one of them in a single day. In 2019 alone, he has visited his properties 81 times, helping to further establish them as centers of political power. The number of days where President Trump has spent time at a Trump-branded property account for almost a third of the days he’s been president. 
  • One-hundred eleven officials from 65 foreign governments, including 57 foreign countries, have made 137 visits to a Trump property, raising the question of how much foreign money has been spent at Trump’s properties.
  • Additionally, CREW has recorded 630 visits to Trump properties from at least 250 Trump administration officials. This includes high-level White House staff, members of Trump’s cabinet, and individual agency employees. So far this year, CREW has recorded 198 visits by White House officials. Ivanka Trump—who has an ownership interest in the Trump hotel in D.C.—and her husband Jared Kushner, both senior White House advisors, are the most frequent executive branch officials to visit Trump properties, other than the president himself. Jared has made 28 known visits, while Ivanka has made 23. 
  • Members of Congress have flocked to President Trump’s properties, despite their constitutional oversight responsibility to provide a check on the executive branch as it relates to President Trump’s conflicts of interest. Throughout his two and a half years as president, 90 members of Congress have made 188 visits to a Trump property.
  • Forty-seven state officials, including 20 Republican governors, have made 64 visits to Trump properties, sometimes resulting in state taxpayer funds being spent there. 
  • President Trump has used the presidency to provide free publicity for his properties, which he still profits from as president. Over the course of his presidency, Trump has tweeted about or mentioned one of his properties on 159 occasions, and White House officials have followed suit: Members of Trump’s White House have mentioned a Trump property 65 times, sometimes in the course of their official duties.
  • Political groups have hosted 63 events at Trump properties since President Trump took office, selling wealthy donors access to the administration while also enriching the president. Seventeen of these have been for Trump-linked groups, and another six have been hosted by groups linked to Vice President Mike Pence. Trump Victory, the joint fundraising arm of Trump’s 2020 election committee and the RNC, has hosted six events at Trump properties just this year, four of which were attended by the President himself. In all, the RNC and other Republican Party groups have had 28 events at Trump properties. 
  • Twenty Trump administration officials have attended 38 political events at a Trump property, giving wealthy donors who fund spending at the president’s businesses access to top officials to discuss their pet issues while they enrich President Trump personally.
  • Political groups have spent $5.9 million at Trump properties since President Trump took office. So far this year, political groups have spent $1.1 million at Trump properties. In more than a decade prior to his run for president, Trump’s businesses never received more than $100,000 from political groups in a single year.
  • The Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. is the top beneficiary of this political spending. In just over two and a half years, the hotel has raked in $2.4 million in traceable political spending.
  • Foreign governments and foreign government-linked organizations have hosted 12 events at Trump properties since the president took office. These events have been attended by at least 19 administration officials.

Visits to Trump Properties:

Since President Trump's  inauguration in 2017, Trump has made 362 visits to his properties, sometimes going to more than one in a single day. In all, he’s spent all or part of almost one-third of the days he’s been president at one of his properties. Mar-a-Lago tops the list, with 99 visits—followed by Trump Bedminster (84), Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach (64), and Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia (60). 


President Trump’s visits to his properties often appear to be intended to draw attention to his businesses, rather than a simple personal preference for where to stay or play golf. Not only does he enjoy mingling with paying customers—sometimes polling them on policy issues or questions about his White House staff—but he has also repeatedly used his businesses for official meetings and campaign events, bringing people to his properties and blurring the lines between his political career and his personal financial interests. 

From meeting with executive branch officials and hosting foreign dignitaries to holding press conferences, the president’s activities at his properties are often official in nature. This affinity for carrying out executive business at his properties transforms his private clubs, resorts and hotels into centers of power, akin to the White House.

For example, in June, President Trump made his first visit as president to Trump National Doral in Miami to celebrate the launch of his 2020 reelection campaign—where, in addition to bringing publicity to the resort, Trump raised millions for his political committees.

Last March, Caribbean senior government officials from the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Saint Lucia paid a “working visit” to Mar-a-Lago to discuss China’s “predatory economic practices” and the crisis in Venezuela.

In February, President Trump tweeted that he would host China’s top leader Xi Jinping for a summit at Mar-a-Lago to discuss trade between the United States and China. When President Trump announced the resignation of Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon in March, he had reporters meet him at Mar-a-Lago for a news conference that resulted in publicity for the resort. 

On three occasions, the president has altered his international travel itinerary to make taxpayer-funded detours to his hotels and golf courses. While on an official trip to Europe in June, President Trump insisted on flying hundreds of miles out of the way after a visit to the U.K. to stay at his Doonbeg golf course in western Ireland, even though he had to fly to France on Thursday morning for a D-Day celebration. 

President Trump stayed at Doonbeg on both Wednesday and Thursday night, which he insisted was for “convenience,” despite the fact that it required that he and his staff fly from Ireland to France and back in a day. 

In 2017, President Trump made a pit stop at the Trump International Hotel in Waikiki, Hawaii on a trip to Asia in 2017. The following summer, he took a break from state visits in Europe to stay at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland. 

During his run for president, Trump frequently criticized President Obama for playing too much golf and assured voters that when he was elected, he was “not going to have time” to play golf.

Yet, not only has President Trump spent much of his presidency golfing, his golf trips have been almost exclusively to properties he profits from—219 trips in all, most frequently to the Trump National Golf Clubs in Bedminster, N.J., West Palm Beach, Florida, and Potomac Falls, Virginia.

White House officials:

Over the course of the Trump administration, 250 executive branch officials have made 630 visits to Trump properties. Ivanka Trump, who herself has an ownership interest in the Trump D.C. hotel, and her husband Jared Kushner, both White House employees, have made the most visits of any executive branch officials, according to CREW’s tracking—23 and 28, respectively.

In June, Kushner followed the president to Trump National Doral for a 2020 campaign launch event. Jared and Ivanka also spent Christmas together at Mar-a-Lago and returned to the property just over a month later on the weekend of the Super Bowl.

Trump administration officials are especially loyal patrons of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. In total, CREW has recorded 193 officials who have visited this single property. These visits give other hotel patrons—who include lobbyists, corporate executives and foreign officials—an exclusive perk: The chance to mingle with the President and other high-level administration officials. The President’s D.C. hotel offers paying customers access to powerful officials as well as patronage that puts money directly in the President’s pocket.

These are valuable commodities that no other luxury hotel in D.C. can offer its clients.
Many of these visits take place en masse, with Trump administration officials flocking to the hotel for an event or party, giving hotel patrons valuable access to many officials at once.

Both former White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and former Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Treasury Tony Sayegh held going away parties at President Trump’s D.C. hotel this year. Sanders’ party brought 35 administration officials to the hotel, including Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, and Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, among others. ​

Members of Congress:

Presented with the unprecedented conflicts of interest posed by President Trump’s refusal to divest his business interests, Republican members of Congress have refused to hold him accountable. Rather, they seem to have embraced the arrangement by attending and hosting events and making appearances there, giving Trump’s clientele the chance to mingle with powerful people.

At least 90 individual members of Congress have visited Trump properties 188 times. Senator Lindsey Graham’s twelve visits to Trump properties make him the most frequent visitor. Most recently, Graham visited the Trump National Golf Club in the D.C. suburbs, where he golfed with Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), David Perdue, (R-GA), and the president himself. Graham is followed by Rand Paul (10), Kevin McCarthy (10), Mark Meadows (8), and Lee Zeldin (6) for most frequent visits. 

If one member of Congress is spotted at the Trump Hotel, there is a strong chance that others are nearby. As with administration officials, members of Congress frequently attend events together or dine with one another at the president’s hotel.

For example, earlier this summer, Rand Paul was honored at a gala at the hotel, also featuring Representatives Dan Crenshaw of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

Last summer, Representatives Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) attended judge Jeanine Pirro’s book signing at the hotel.

In late 2018, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) dined together at BLT Prime, overlooking the hotel lobby. 

Republican members’ silence on the matter of Trump’s conflicts of interest is particularly striking given that the Trump business they tend to be spotted at the most, the Trump Hotel, just up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol, is leased to the Trump Organization by the United States government, meaning that the legal and ethics questions raised by the arrangement fall squarely within the oversight responsibilities of Congress. 

Foreign officials and corporate executives:

Since President Trump took office, officials from 65 foreign governments, including 57 foreign countries, have visited a Trump property. Altogether, foreign officials account for 137 visits in total, 97 of which have been made to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. 

Many of these visits have come from large events hosted by foreign governments, some of which switched venues to hold annual events at Trump properties after he became president.

The embassy of Kuwait had, for example, typically held its annual national day celebration at the Four Seasons prior to President Trump’s election. The last three years, however, it’s held the event at the Trump hotel in D.C. In 2018, the Romanian consulate in Chicago moved its own national day celebration to the Trump hotel in Chicago after hosting it at the Chicago Cultural Center five years in a row. 

While events like these are likely to be incredibly costly—and thus raise the likelihood of the president financially benefiting from payments made by foreign entities—neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump administration has released the financial details beyond an annual payment to the Treasury the Trump Organization claims represents profits from foreign government funds. 

Turkish officials have made 14 visits to Trump properties, more than any other country. This can partially be credited to two annual conferences on U.S. relations with Turkey that have been held at President Trump’s D.C. hotel. This year, two advisors to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ministers of trade, defense, and treasury all attended the event. 

Other events have drawn officials from countries that span continents or regions. In February, the Embassy of Kuwait in D.C. held a Kuwaiti independence day celebration at the Trump Hotel, with officials from all over the Middle East and North Africa in attendance. The 13 foreign officials in attendance included representatives from Kuwait, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya.

Other officials have patronized Trump businesses around the time they met with President Trump. The Romanian President and Nigerian Vice President both visited the Trump hotel while in D.C. for meetings at the White House, and the Romanian Prime Minister is known to have stayed there. 
​
Corporate executives with business interests before the Trump administration have also made conspicuously frequent trips to stay at his properties.

For example, the day after T-Mobile announced a major merger with Sprint, which needed approval from two agencies in the Trump administration, nine executives from the company checked into President Trump’s D.C. hotel. They made at least 52 reservations at the hotel in the months that followed and paid an additional $195,000 for “meeting space, catering, business center services, audio/visual equipment rental [and] lodging” according to the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, in June, a Sprint executive posted a picture on Instagram with President Trump at his private D.C. golf club saying, “Pretty cool when you play golf and then get a minute to chat with POTUS!”

Political events and spending at Trump properties:

While Trump’s presidency has had a mixed effect on the Trump Organization’s bottom line, it has unequivocally resulted in an explosion in business from political groups. These groups—aligned with President Trump and Vice President Pence, the campaigns of Republican members of Congress, and corporate PACs—have become some of the Trump Organization’s most frequent and highest spending customers. 

Since President Trump was inaugurated, political groups have hosted 63 political events at properties he owns and profits from, according to CREW’s tracking. These include 17 hosted by the president’s own political operation, which includes his campaign, joint fundraising committees that raise money for his campaign, and a super PAC called America First Action that his campaign gave its blessing to, saying that it “is run by allies of the President and is a trusted supporter of President Trump’s policies and agendas.” An additional six are linked to Vice President Pence. 

President Trump’s own use of his properties as fundraising venues has sent a message to those in his party that he values the promotion and personal income that result from fundraising events. Similarly, the Republican Party’s decision to hold events at these properties may offer insight into why Trump’s allies in Congress have so far refused to conduct meaningful oversight of these unprecedented conflicts of interest.

The RNC and other Republican Party groups have hosted 28 events at Trump properties, and political committees linked to five Republican members of Congress—who have a constitutional duty to conduct oversight over the president, including his potential conflicts of interest and the lease his D.C. hotel holds with the U.S. government—have hosted an event at a Trump property. Political committees linked to 101 Republican members of Congress have spent money at one. 

Prior to President Trump’s run for president, his properties were not a major destination for political events. Yet, in the years since, these events and other visits by political groups have exploded, resulting in a windfall for the Trump Organization. President Trump’s businesses have raked in almost $6 million since his inauguration.

So far this year, they have been paid $1.1 million by political groups. Before President Trump ran for president, his businesses were never paid more than $100,000 by political groups in any single year, going back at least as far as 2002.

Since President Trump was inaugurated, political groups have spent more than $2.4 million at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., more than at any other property. A CREW report earlier this year found that spending by political groups at the hotel in 2018 accounted for more than three percent of the hotel’s revenue that year, to say nothing of the money wealthy donors spend at the hotel while attending these events. 

Having events at Trump properties also seems to afford the political groups who host them access to the president and other Republican officials. President Trump himself has attended 21 political events held at this properties, while Vice President Pence has attended another 11. Altogether, 20 Trump administration officials, including President Trump himself, have attended 38 political events at a Trump property, sometimes with multiple officials at one event, giving wealthy donors who fund spending at the president’s businesses access to top officials to discuss their pet issues while they enrich President Trump personally.

Trump Victory, which raises money for both the Trump campaign and the RNC, has hosted six events at Trump properties just this year. President Trump has attended four of them. According to the committee’s campaign finance reports, it has paid the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort and Washington, D.C. hotel more than $450,000 this year. It has yet to report payments to Trump’s Doral or Bedminster resorts this year, where it’s also held events that likely resulted in more large payments. 

Blurring the line between the White House and the Trump Organization:

Shortly before Donald Trump took office in January 2017, he pledged, in lieu of divesting his assets, to separate his White House from the Trump Organization, and to ban interactions between the two. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, Trump and his administration continue to promote Trump’s businesses in their official capacities. The Trump Organization has regularly referenced the presidency, and Trump has given his paying customers access to, and jobs in, his administration. 

The President has already mentioned his properties 55 times this year, and 159 times since becoming president, often straying from the topic at hand to interject references to particular hotels or golf courses into speeches. Other White House officials have followed suit. Former press secretary Sean Spicer mentioned or referred to Trump businesses 14 times, deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley promoted them 12 times, and former press secretary Sarah Sanders promoted them six times. 

Besides mentioning his businesses, President Trump and officials in his White House often give them lavish praise, sometimes speaking in their official capacities. While addressing the National Association of Realtors meeting in May, President Trump referenced Mar-a-Lago, calling it “a beautiful house.”

In July, he called his Bedminster resort “a beautiful place” while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. Last November, then-spokesperson for the First Lady Stephanie Grisham, who is now White House Press Secretary, referred to the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, IL, as “an iconic building in the skyline of Chicago.” Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley regularly posts photos from Trump properties to social media, often showing glamorous locales or lush golf courses.

While at Trump Tower in New York City earlier this summer, Gidley posted, “The now iconic golden escalator at the ever iconic Trump Tower. New York, NY. cc: @realdonaldtrump #whereitallstarted”. Gidley has also fawned over Trump resorts in Bedminster, N.J., and Doonbeg, Ireland. 

Top Trump administration officials outside of the White House have also joined the chorus of praise for President Trump’s businesses. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross called the Trump hotel in D.C. “wonderful” while introducing Ivanka Trump at an official Commerce event in June. And in private remarks to a special interest group at the hotel, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt praised the hotel as “such a nice venue,” while serving as the department’s Deputy Secretary. 

It often seems as if all of Trump’s thinking traces back to his businesses. He frequently reaches for a reference to one at unexpected times. While addressing Korean business leaders in Seoul earlier this year, for example, President Trump expressed his appreciation for his hosts by pointing out that “nine of the top ten finishers” at the U.S. Women’s Open, held at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf course in 2017, were Korean.

When asked by a reporter if he still supported the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union, President Trump falsely claimed that he was standing outside of his Turnberry golf course in Scotland the day before the Brexit vote. 

President Trump’s properties have also referenced their famous owner, and his government position. A brochure for Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., which has been discontinued, advertised possible visits from the president: “If he is on-site for your big day, he will likely stop in & congratulate the happy couple,” a promise on which President Trump has made good twice this summer alone.

Trump Tower Mumbai sent out promotional materials pointing out its affiliation with the “U.S.-based real estate tycoon, celebrity & POTUS Donald Trump.” Mar-a-Lago reportedly sold shirts with a “45” detail on the sleeve, referencing Trump’s presidency. In August 2018, Trump Bedminster retweeted a Fox & Friends video of then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that mentions President Trump. This spring, Trump’s Doonbeg resort tweeted about the president’s visit to the property, including a video of him at the resort. It later deleted the tweets.

President Trump’s friendliness towards his patrons and business connections raises questions about the line between his presidency and the Trump Organization. President Trump has nominated eight current or former members of his clubs to posts in his administration.

In addition, Kelly Knight Craft, President Trump’s recently-confirmed nominee to be U.N. representative, and her husband have been “repeat, high-paying customers” of the Trump Hotel D.C. The two were placed on a “VIP Arrivals” list by Trump Hotel staff and identified as “gold-level members of the Trump Card rewards program.” 

Others close to the Trump Organization have been offered access to the White House more informally. Last summer, for example, Buzzfeed reported that some members of Trump’s Florida clubs appear to have been invited to tour Air Force One. Last fall, VP of interior design at the Trump Organization, Giavona Pirolo, received an “impromptu tour” of the White House while visiting Washington and staying at Trump’s D.C. hotel. 

In 2017, President Trump facilitated a private White House tour for 23 professional golfers who were competing in the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, which was held at the Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia.

That same year, Phil Ruffin, co-owner of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, visited President Trump in Washington, D.C., on what Mr. Ruffin said was “purely a social call.” He stayed at the White House. 

President Trump has also gone so far as to offer jobs in the government to his club members and employees. In 2017, First Lady Melania Trump announced that Timothy Harleth, the former director of rooms at the D.C. hotel, was hired for the position of chief usher at the White House.

In 2018, Axios reported that President Trump was privately pushing for his personal pilot, John Dunkin, to be hired as chief of the Federal Aviation Administration. He ultimately decided on another pick, after the position remained open for more than a year and a series of crashes highlighted a lack of leadership at the agency. 

President Trump has also empowered members of his private Palm Beach club within the government. A 2018 report from ProPublica showed that three Mar-a-Lago members, none of whom had any government or military experience, were allowed to steer veterans policies in President Trump’s Department of Veterans Affairs for months. 

It’s therefore no surprise that a prospective nominee to the Federal Reserve Board repeatedly patronized the Trump hotel in DC as Trump weighed her nomination. Judy Shelton conducted multiple interviews from the hotel, and even booked a suite there, as reports that she was under consideration swirled. Trump announced his intention to nominate her last month. 

Early in Trump’s presidency, the president’s two sons promised not to have any entanglement with their father’s administration. Despite that pledge, Don Jr. in particular seems to have been involved in it. He reportedly “played a key role” in picking former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, then sought to install a personal friend as a liaison to the agency.

According to an anonymous official, National Security Council staff were directed by the West Wing to take a meeting with a Texas hedge fund manager because he was connected to Don Jr. Last year, President Trump told the Daily Caller that he had endorsed Foster Friess in the Wyoming Republcian gubernatorial primary at Don Jr.’s behest: “I was asked to do that, by my son Don, and I did it.” 

International travel and businesses:

Examples of President Trump’s international businesses mixing with the presidency are especially problematic because they may implicate U.S. foreign policy. Though some of these properties are not owned by President Trump, they still result in income for the president through branding agreements.

There is a danger that foreign governments would seek to ingratiate themselves by doing business with President Trump’s properties, giving them handouts, or considering those close to his business partners for official positions. 

Indeed, these are all things that have happened. A construction company which both the South Korean and Saudi Arabian governments have interests in is building a development in Indonesia that includes a Trump-branded resort, and, in Dubai, a Chinese-government owned firm was hired to work on a development that will include a Trump-branded golf course.

In Panama, the federal government intervened on an infrastructure project that would help a Trump-branded development there after the company contracted for the work went bankrupt, and foreign governments have approved dozens of trademarks for President Trump. 

The president of Indonesia is reportedly considering the daughter of one of President Trump’s business partners for a cabinet-level position, and several of his other foreign business partners have close ties to foreign governments. Donald Trump Jr. visited Indonesia this month to meet with the Trump Organization’s business partners and attend a private event to promote the sale of units in the two Trump-brand luxury resorts currently being built there.

​By attending foreign government events at Trump properties, the Trump administration has seemed to condone the patronage the president is receiving from them. Foreign governments and foreign government-linked groups have hosted 12 events at Trump properties since the president took office. These events have been attended by at least 19 administration officials.

Earlier this year, the Kuwaiti embassy hosted its National Day at the Trump hotel in Washington, the third year in a row that it’s done so. The president’s repeat customers were rewarded for their loyalty with access to top-level administration officials: Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, and Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway all attended the event.

Eliminating any doubt that the president has any objection to the appearance issues when foreign officials visit his businesses, President Trump has suggested that next year’s G7 meeting, which will be hosted by the United States, be held at Trump National Doral or another one of his properties. Since then, Doral has become a finalist in the search for a location. 

Prior to entering office, President Trump pledged that the Trump Organization would engage in “no new foreign deals” while he served as president. Yet, a “Corporate Update” presentation created by one of President Trump’s international business partners earlier this year raises questions about whether the Trump Organization is adhering to this promise.

It included a slide that said an “Aggressive global expansion” of the “Trump International Portfolio” was “underway,” and that, in addition to the Trump Organization’s “Presence in six countries” there were “Numerous projects in the pipeline.” 

While that slide may not be accurate as to the Trump Organization’s current activity, in January, Trump Organization Executive Vice President Eric Trump told an Argentinian news site that the Trump Organization gets offers for new foreign developments every day and confirmed the Trump Organization plans to consider new international developments when Trump is out of office. 

President Trump has visited two of his foreign resorts in Scotland and Ireland as president. His two-night stay at Trump International Golf Links in Ireland earlier this year in particular seemed to double as a business trip. For one, it took him well out of the way of his diplomatic trip. As he arrived at his resort, the president insisted on Marine One flying over the course so he could survey it, according to the resort’s managing director.

While in Ireland, Trump discussed his property with an Irish official who represents the county where Doonbeg is located. They “talked about the important role that the resort in Doonbeg plays in local economy,” according to the official. Perhaps most suggestive of the nature of the visit, however, is that it resulted in an enormous boost to the business: Bookings at the golf resort reportedly went up by 30 percent right after the visit. 

Conclusion:

CREW’s monitoring has identified well over 2,000 conflicts of interest arising from the President’s failure to adhere to the ethics standards of his predecessors in divesting from their private building holdings while in office.

That’s an unacceptably high number, but it’s also likely the tip of the iceberg; there are certainly more conflicts than those we are able to identify. President Trump’s conflicts of interest validate entirely CREW’s and others’ concerns about President Trump retaining his financial interests while in office. Not only is the president continuing to profit from his vast business interests while in office, he appears to be using the presidency to try to enrich himself. 

The relentless promotion of Trump businesses from the president and members of his administration has sent a message to those seeking political influence that patronizing his businesses is a way to appeal to the president.

The corrupt relationship between the Trump Organization and the White House calls into question President Trump’s decision-making as president. When his personal financial interests diverge from America’s national ones, which does he prioritize? That’s not a question we should have to ask. 

[End of Article]








​Political Theory * -- John Locke
** -- Jean-Jacques Rosseau
*** - Adam Smith
Pictured below: New Federalism works
Political philosophy, also known as political theory, is the study of topics such as: 
  • politics, 
  • liberty, 
  • justice, 
  • property, 
  • rights, 
  • law and the enforcement of laws by authority:
  • in terms of what they are, if they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect, what form it should take, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever.

In a vernacular sense, the term "political philosophy" often refers to a general view, or specific ethic, political belief or attitude, about politics, synonymous to the term "political ideology".

Political philosophy is a branch of philosophy. Within political science, a strong focus has historically been placed on the role of political philosophy (also known as normative theory), moral philosophy and the humanities, although in recent years there has been increased focus to political theory based on quantitative methodological approaches as well as economic theory, the natural sciences and behavioralism.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Political Theory:






​
Political Corruption and Political Scandals, including a List of Political Scandal in the United StatesPictured below: Trump's conflicts of interest: a visual guide (The Guardian 12/1/2016)
Political corruption is the use of powers by government officials or their network contacts for illegitimate private gain.

Forms of corruption vary, but can include one or more of the following:
Corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking, though it is not restricted to these activities.

Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is also considered political corruption. Masiulis case is a typical example of political corruption.

Over time, corruption has been defined differently. For example, in a simple context, while performing work for a government or as a representative, it is unethical to accept a gift. Any free gift could be construed as a scheme to lure the recipient towards some biases. In most cases, the gift is seen as an intention to seek certain favors such as work promotion, tipping in order to win a contract, job or exemption from certain tasks in the case of junior employee giving the gift to a senior employee who can be key in winning the favor.

Some forms of corruption – now called "institutional corruption" – are distinguished from bribery and other kinds of obvious personal gain. A similar problem of corruption arises in any institution that depends on financial support from people who have interests that may conflict with the primary purpose of the institution.

An illegal act by an officeholder constitutes political corruption only if the act is directly related to their official duties, is done under color of law or involves trading in influence. The activities that constitute illegal corruption differ depending on the country or jurisdiction. For instance, some political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another.

In some cases, government officials have broad or ill-defined powers, which make it difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal actions. Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually. A state of unrestrained political corruption is known as a kleptocracy, literally meaning "rule by thieves".

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Political Corruption: ___________________________________________________________________________

A political scandal is an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong and causing general public outrage.

Politicians, government officials, party officials, lobbyists can be accused of various illegal, corrupt, or unethical practices. A political scandal can involve the breaking of the nation's laws or moral codes and may involve sexual scandal.

​Scandal journalism:

Scandal sells, and broadsides, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines and the electronic media have covered it in depth. The Muckraker movement in American journalism was a component of the Progressive Era in the U.S. in the early 20th century. Journalists have built their careers on exposure of corruption and political scandal, often acting on behalf of the opposition party.

There are numerous contextual factors that make a scandal noteworthy, such as the importance of the people and the depth of conspiracy, as well as the coverup strategies of policymakers.

The political ideology of media owners plays a role—they prefer to target the opposition but will reluctantly cover their own side. Journalists have to frame the story in terms of the audience's values and expectations to maximize the impact.

Below is a list of political scandals that involve officials from the government of the United States, sorted from most recent date to least recent: click on any blue hyperlinks for further amplification:






​
Political Spectrum Pictured below: Left vs Right: US Political Spectrum: A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. (This is a collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, taken from my book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th).THIS IS THE US VERSION WHERE BLUE=LEFT WING. RED=RIGHT WING: www.harpercollins.com/book/pre-order.aspx?isbn13=97800617.)
A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different political positions in relation to one another upon one or more geometric axes that represent independent political dimensions.

The expressions political compass and political map are used to refer to the political spectrum as well, especially to popular two-dimensional models of it.

Most long-standing spectra include the left–right dimension, which originally referred to seating arrangements in the French parliament after the Revolution (1789–1799), with radicals on the left and aristocrats on the right.

While communism and socialism are usually regarded internationally as being on the left, conservatism and fascism are regarded internationally as being on the right.

Liberalism can mean different things in different contexts: sometimes on the left (social liberalism), sometimes on the right (classical liberalism). Those with an intermediate outlook are sometimes classified as centrists. That said, liberals and neoliberals are often called centrists too.

Politics that rejects the conventional left–right spectrum is often known as syncretic politics though the label tends to mischaracterize positions that have a logical location on a two-axis spectrum because they seem randomly brought together on a one-axis left-right spectrum.

Political scientists have frequently noted that a single left–right axis is too simplistic and insufficient for describing the existing variation in political beliefs and included other axes. Though the descriptive words at polar opposites may vary, the axes of popular biaxial spectra are usually split between economic issues (on a left–right dimension) and socio-cultural issues (on a authority–liberty dimension).

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Political Spectrum: ​






​
Ideology, including a List of Political Ideologies Pictured below: A Political Ideology is a certain set of ethical ideals, principles, doctrines, myths or symbols of a social movement, institution, class, and/or large group that explains how society  should work, and offers some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order.
An ideology is a collection of normative beliefs and values that an individual or group holds for other than purely epistemic reasons. In other words, these rely on basic assumptions about reality that may or may not have any factual basis.

The term is especially used to describe systems of ideas and ideals which form the basis of economic or political theories and resultant policies. In these there are tenuous causal links between policies and outcomes owing to the large numbers of variables available, so that many key assumptions have to be made. In political science the term is used in a descriptive sense to refer to political belief systems.

The term was coined by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher, who conceived it in 1796 as the "science of ideas" during the French Reign of Terror by trying to develop a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational impulses of the mob.

However, in contemporary philosophy it is narrower in scope than that original concept, or the ideas expressed in broad concepts such as worldview, The Imaginary and in ontology.

In the sense defined by French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, ideology is "the imagined existence (or idea) of things as it relates to the real conditions of existence".

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Political Ideology:







​(Political) Lobbying in the United States including Citizens United v. FEC and "End Citizens United" Pictured below:
TOP: HOW MUCH MONEY IS SPENT ON LOBBYING EACH YEAR ?
BOTTOM: Defense contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin sell extensively to the government and must, of necessity, engage in lobbying to win contracts.
Your Webhost: no matter what your or my political beliefs might be, the corruption of our democracy can be expected whenever the politics of money prevails. Below, we cover three topics:
  • Lobbying in the United States
  • Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court Decision
  • End Citizens United

Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interests hire well-connected professional advocates, often lawyers, to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress. It is a highly controversial phenomenon, often seen in a negative light by journalists and the American public, with some critics describing it as a legal form of bribery or extortion.

While lobbying is subject to extensive and often complex rules which, if not followed, can lead to penalties including jail, the activity of lobbying has been interpreted by court rulings as constitutionally protected free speech and a way to petition the government for the redress of grievances, two of the freedoms protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Since the 1970s, lobbying activity has grown immensely in the United States in terms of the numbers of lobbyists and the size of lobbying budgets, and has become the focus of much criticism of American governance.

Since lobby rules require extensive disclosure, there is a large amount of information in the public sphere about which entities lobby, how, at whom, and for how much. The current pattern suggests much lobbying is done primarily by corporations, although a wide variety of coalitions representing diverse groups also occurs. Lobbying takes place at every level of government, including federal, state, county, municipal, and even local governments.

In Washington, D.C., lobbying usually targets members of Congress, although there have been efforts to influence executive agency officials as well as Supreme Court appointments.

Lobbying can have an important influence on the political system; for example, a study in 2014 suggested that special interest lobbying enhanced the power of elite groups and was a factor shifting the nation's political structure toward an oligarchy in which average citizens have "little or no independent influence".

The number of lobbyists in Washington is estimated to be over twelve thousand, but most lobbying (in terms of expenditures), is handled by fewer than 300 firms with low turnover.

A report in The Nation in 2014 suggested that while the number of registered lobbyists in 2013 (12,281) decreased compared to 2002, lobbying activity was increasing and "going underground" as lobbyists use "increasingly sophisticated strategies" to obscure their activity. Analyst James A. Thurber estimated that the actual number of working lobbyists was close to 100,000 and that the industry brings in $9 billion annually.

Lobbying has been the subject of academic inquiry in various fields, including law, public policy, economics and even marketing strategy.

Overview:

Political scientist Thomas R. Dye once said that politics is about battling over scarce governmental resources: who gets them, where, when, why and how.

Since government makes the rules in a complex economy such as the United States, it is logical that various organizations, businesses, individuals, nonprofits, trade groups, religions, charities and others—which are affected by these rules—will exert as much influence as they can to have rulings favorable to their cause.

And the battling for influence has happened in every organized society since the beginning of civilization, whether it was Ancient Athens, Florence during the time of the Medici, Late Imperial China, or the present-day United States. Modern-day lobbyists in one sense are like the courtiers of the Ancien Régime. If voting is a general way for a public to control a government, lobbying is a more specific, targeted effort, focused on a narrower set of issues.

​The term lobby has etymological roots in the physical structure of the British Parliament, in which there was an intermediary covered room outside the main hall. People pushing an agenda would try to meet with members of Parliament in this room, and they came to be known, by metonymy, as lobbyists, although one account in 1890 suggested that the application of the word "lobby" is American and that the term is not used as much in Britain.

The Willard Hotel, 2 blocks from the White House at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, claims the term originated there: "It was in the Willard lobby that Ulysses S. Grant popularized the term “lobbyist.” Often bothered by self-promoters as he sat in the lobby and enjoyed his cigar and brandy, he referred to these individuals as “lobbyists.”

The term lobbying in everyday parlance can describe a wide variety of activities, and in its general sense, suggests advocacy, advertising, or promoting a cause. In this sense, anybody who tries to influence any political position can be thought of as "lobbying", and sometimes the term is used in this loose sense. A person who writes a letter to a congressperson, or even questions a candidate at a political meeting, could be construed as being a lobbyist.

However, the term "lobbying" generally means a paid activity with the purpose of attempting to "influence or sway" a public official – including bureaucrats and elected officials – towards a desired specific action often relating to specific legislation. If advocacy is disseminating information, including attempts to persuade public officials as well as the public and media to promote the cause of something and support it, then when this activity becomes focused on specific legislation, either in support or in opposition, then it crosses the line from advocacy and becomes lobbying. This is the usual sense of the term "lobbying." One account suggested that much of the activity of nonprofits was not lobbying per se, since it usually did not mean changes in legislation.

A lobbyist, according to the legal sense of the word, is a professional, often a lawyer.

Lobbyists are intermediaries between client organizations and lawmakers: they explain to legislators what their organizations want, and they explain to their clients what obstacles elected officials face. One definition of a lobbyist is someone "employed to persuade legislators to pass legislation that will help the lobbyist's employer." Many lobbyists work in lobbying firms or law firms, some of which retain clients outside lobbying. Others work for advocacy groups, trade associations, companies, and state and local governments.

Lobbyists can be one type of government official, such as a governor of a state, who presses officials in Washington for specific legislation. A lobbyist may put together a diverse coalition of organizations and people, sometimes including lawmakers and corporations, and the whole effort may be considered to be a lobby; for example, in the abortion issue, there is a "pro-choice lobby" and a "pro-life lobby".

An estimate from 2007 reported that more than 15,000 federal lobbyists were based in Washington, DC; another estimate from 2011 suggested that the count of registered lobbyists who have actually lobbied was closer to 12,000. While numbers like these suggest that lobbying is a widespread activity, most accounts suggest that the Washington lobbying industry is an exclusive one run by a few well-connected firms and players, with serious barriers to entry for firms wanting to get into the lobbying business, since it requires them to have been "roaming the halls of Congress for years and years."

It is possible for foreign nations to influence the foreign policy of the United States through lobbying or by supporting lobbying organizations directly or indirectly. For example, in 2016, Taiwanese officials hired American senator-turned-lobbyist Bob Dole to set up a controversial phone call between president-elect Donald Trump and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen. 

There are reports that the National Rifle Association, a U.S.-based lobbying group advocating for gun rights, has been the target of a decade-long infiltration effort by Russian president Vladimir Putin, with allegations that Putin funneled cash through the NRA to aid the election of Donald Trump. There are also reports that Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates has waged an intense lobbying campaign to win over the Trump administration and Congress.

​Different types of lobbying:

The focus of lobbying efforts:

Generally, lobbyists focus on trying to persuade decision-makers: Congress, executive branch agencies such as the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Supreme Court, and state governments (including governors).

Federal agencies have been targeted by lobbyists since they write industry-specific rules; accordingly, interest groups spend "massive sums of money" trying to persuade them to make so-called "carve-outs" or try to block specific provisions from being enacted. A large fraction of overall lobbying is focused on only a few sets of issues, according to one report.

It is possible for one level of government to lobby another level; for example, the District of Columbia has been lobbying Congress and the President for greater power, including possible statehood or voting representation in Congress; one assessment in 2011 suggested that the district needed to rethink its lobbying strategy, since its past efforts have only had "mixed results".

Many executive branch agencies have the power to write specific rules and are a target of lobbying. Federal agencies such as the State Department make rules such as giving aid money to countries such as Egypt, and in one example, an Egyptian-American businessman named Kais Menoufy organized a lobby to try to halt U.S. aid to Egypt.

Since the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review and can render a congressional law unconstitutional, it has great power to influence the course of American life. For example, in the Roe v. Wade decision, it ruled on the legality of abortion. A variety of forces use lobbying tactics to pressure the court to overturn this decision.

Lobbyists represent their clients' or organizations' interests in state capitols. An example is a former school superintendent who has been lobbying state legislatures in California, Michigan and Nevada to overhaul teacher evaluations, and trying to end the "Last In, First Out" teacher hiring processes; according to one report, Michelle Rhee is becoming a "political force."

State governments can be lobbied by groups which represent other governments within the state, such as a city authority; for example, the cities of Tallahassee and St. Petersburg lobbied the Florida legislature using paid lobbyists to represent the city's interests. There is lobbying activity at the county and municipal levels, especially in larger cities and populous counties. For example, officials within the city government of Chicago called aldermen became lobbyists after serving in municipal government, following a one-year period required by city ethics rules to abstain from lobbying.

Paid versus free lobbying:

While the bulk of lobbying happens by business and professional interests who hire paid professionals, some lobbyists represent non-profits pro-bono for issues in which they are personally interested. Pro bono publico clients offer activities to meet and socialize with local legislators at events like fundraisers and awards ceremonies.

Single issue versus multiple issue lobbying:

Lobbies which push for a single issue have grown in importance during the past twenty years, according to one source. Corporations generally would be considered as single issue lobbies. If a corporation wishes to change public policy, or to influence legislation which impacts its success as a business, it may use lobbying as a "primary avenue" for this purpose. One research study suggested that single issue lobbies often operate in different kinds of institutional venues, sometimes bringing the same message to different groups.

Lobbies which represent groups such as labor unions, business organizations, trade associations and such are sometimes considered to be multiple issue lobbies, and to succeed they must be somewhat more flexible politically and be willing to accept compromise.

Inside versus outside lobbying:
  • Inside lobbying, or sometimes called direct lobbying, describes efforts by lobbyists to influence legislation or rule-making directly by contacting legislators and their assistants, sometimes called staffers or aides.
  • Outside lobbying, or sometimes indirect lobbying, includes attempts by interest group leaders to mobilize citizens outside the policymaking community, perhaps by public relations methods or advertising, to prompt them to pressure public officials within the policymaking community. One example of an outside lobbying effort is a film entitled InJustice, made by a group promoting lawsuit reform. Some lobbyists are now are using social media to reduce the cost of traditional campaigns, and to more precisely target public officials with political messages.

​History of lobbying:
Main article: History of lobbying in the United States

The Constitution was crafted in part to solve the problem of special interests, today usually represented by lobbies, by having these factions compete. 

James Madison identified a faction as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community", and Madison argued in Federalist No. 10 that there was less risk of injury by a narrowly focused faction in a large republic if any negative influence was counteracted by other factions.

In addition, the Constitution protected free speech, including the right to petition the government, and these rights have been used by lobbying interests throughout the nation's history. There has been lobbying at every level of government, particularly in state governments during the nineteenth century, but increasingly directed towards the federal government in the twentieth century. The last few decades have been marked by an exponential increase in lobbying activity and expenditures.

Lobbying as a business:

Key players:
Lobbyists: The number of registered Washington lobbyists is substantial. In 2009, the Washington Post estimated that there were 13,700 registered lobbyists, describing the nation's Capitol as "teeming with lobbyists.".

In 2011, The Guardian estimated that in addition to the approximately 13,000 registered lobbyists, thousands more unregistered lobbyists could exist in Washington. The ratio of lobbyists employed by the healthcare industry, compared with every elected politician, was six to one, according to one account.

Nevertheless, the numbers of lobbyists actively engaged in lobbying is considerably less, and the ones occupied with lobbying full-time and making significant money is even less.

Law firms:

Several law firms, including Patton Boggs, Akin Gump and Holland & Knight, had sizable departments devoted to so-called "government relations". One account suggested that the lobbying arms of these law firms were not held as separate subsidiaries, but that the law practices involved in government lobbying were integrated into the overall framework of the law firm. 

A benefit to an integrated arrangement was that the law firm and the lobbying department could "share and refer clients back and forth". Holland & Knight earned $13.9 million from lobbying revenue in 2011. 

One law firm employs so-called "power brokers" including former Treasury department officials such as Marti Thomas, and former presidential advisers such as Daniel Meyer. 

There was a report that two law firms were treating their lobbying groups as separate business units, and giving the non-lawyer lobbyists an equity stake in the firm.

Lobbying firms:

These firms usually have some lawyers in them, and are often founded by former congressional staffers, legislators, or other politicians. Some lobbying groups have been bought by large advertising conglomerates.

​Corporations:

Corporations which lobby actively tend to be few in number, large, and often sell to the government. Most corporations do not hire lobbyists. One study found that the actual number of firms which do lobbying regularly is fewer than 300, and that the percent of firms engaged in lobbying was 10% from 1998 to 2006, and that they were "mainly large, rich firms getting in on the fun."

These firms hired lobbyists year after year, and there was not much evidence of other large firms taking much interest in lobbying. Corporations considering lobbying run into substantial barriers to entry: corporations have to research the relevant laws about lobbying, hire lobbying firms, and cultivate influential people and make connections.

When an issue regarding a change in immigration policy arose, large corporations currently lobbying switched focus somewhat to take account of the new regulatory world, but new corporations—even ones likely to be affected by any possible rulings on immigration—stayed out of the lobbying fray, according to the study.

Still, of all the entities doing lobbying in Washington, the biggest overall spenders are, in fact, corporations. In the first decade of the 2000s, the most lucrative clients for Gerald Cassidy's lobbying firm were corporations, displacing fees from the appropriations business.

Wall Street lobbyists and the financial industry spent upwards of $100 million in one year to "court regulators and lawmakers", particularly since they were "finalizing new regulations for lending, trading and debit card fees." One academic analysis in 1987 found that firms were more likely to spend on lobbying if they were both large and concerned about "adverse financial statement consequences" if they did not lobby.

Big banks were "prolific spenders" on lobbying; JPMorgan Chase has an in-house team of lobbyists who spent $3.3 million in 2010; the American Bankers Association spent $4.6 million on lobbying; an organization representing 100 of the nation's largest financial firms called the Financial Services Roundtable spent heavily as well. A trade group representing Hedge Funds spent more than $1 million in one quarter trying to influence the government about financial regulations, including an effort to try to change a rule that might demand greater disclosure requirements for funds.

Amazon.com spent $450,000 in one quarter lobbying about a possible online sales tax as well as rules about data protection and privacy. Corporations which sell substantially to the government tend to be active lobbiers. For example, aircraft manufacturer Boeing, which has sizeable defense contracts, pours "millions into lobbying":

"Boeing Co. is one of the most influential companies in airline manufacturing and has continually shown its influence in lobbying Congress ... Between January and September, Boeing spent a total of $12 million lobbying according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Additionally, Boeing has its own political action committee, which donated more than $2.2 million to federal candidates during the 2010 election cycle. Of that sum, 53 percent went to Democrats. ...Through September, Boeing's PAC has donated $748,000 to federal politicians. — Chicago Sun-Times quoting OpenSecrets.org, 2011[
​
​In the spring of 2017, there was a fierce lobbying effort by Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast and AT&T, and tech firms such as Google and Facebook, to undo regulations protecting consumer privacy.

Rules passed by the Obama administration in 2016 required ISPs to get "explicit consent" from consumers before gathering browsing histories, locations of businesses visited and applications used, but trade groups wanted to be able to sell this information for profit without consent.

Lobbyists connected with Republican senator Jeff Flake and Republican representative Marsha Blackburn to sponsor legislation to dismantle Internet privacy rules; Flake received $22,700 in donations and Blackburn received $20,500 in donations from these trade groups. On March 23, 2017, abolition of privacy restrictions passed on a narrow party-line vote, and the lobbying effort achieved its result. 

In 2017, credit reporting agency Equifax lobbied Congress extensively, spending $1.1 million in 2016 and $500,000 in 2017, seeking rules to limit damage from lawsuits and less regulatory oversight; in August 2017, Equifax's databases were breached and the confidential data of millions of Americans was stolen by hackers and identity thieves, potentially opening up the firm to numerous class action lawsuits.

Major American corporations spent $345 million lobbying for just three pro-immigration bills between 2006 and 2008.

Internet service providers in the United States have spent more than $1.2 billion on lobbying since 1998, and 2018 was the biggest year so far with a total spend of more than $80 million.

Unions

One report suggested the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union spent $80,000 lobbying the federal government on issues relating to "the tax code, food safety, immigration reform and other issues."

Other players:

Other possible players in the lobbying arena are those who might influence legislation: House & Senate colleagues, public opinion in the district, the White House, party leaders, union leaders, and other influential persons and groups. Interest groups are often thought of as "nonparty organizations" which regularly try to change or influence government decision-making.

Lobbying methods and techniques:

Lobbying has much in common with highly people-intensive businesses such as management consulting and public relations, but with a political and legal sensibility.

​Like lawmakers, many lobbyists are lawyers, and the persons they are trying to influence have the duty of writing laws. That the disciplines of law and lobbying are intertwined could be seen in the case of a Texas lawyer who had been seeking compensation for his unfairly imprisoned client; since his exonerated-prisoner client had trouble paying the legal expenses, the lawyer lobbied the Texas state legislature to raise the state's payment for unfairly imprisoned prisoners from $50,000 per year to $80,000 per year; it succeeded, making it possible for his newly freed client to pay the lawyer's fees.

​Well-connected lobbyists work in Washington for years, know the issues, are highly skilled advocates, and have cultivated close connections with members of Congress, regulators, specialists, and others. They understand strategy and have excellent communication skills; many are well suited to be able to choose which clients they would like to represent. 

Lobbyists patiently cultivate networks of powerful people, over many years, trying to build trust and maintain confidence and friendships. When a client hires them to push a specific issue or agenda, they usually form coalitions to exert political pressure. Lobbying, as a result, depends on trying to be flexible to new opportunities, but at the same time, to act as an agent for a client.

As one lobbyist put it: "It's my job to advance the interests of my association or client. Period." — comment by a lobbyist.

Access is important and often means a one-on-one meeting with a legislator. Getting access can sometimes be difficult, but there are various avenues: email, personal letters, phone calls, face-to-face meetings, meals, get-togethers, and even chasing after congresspersons in the Capitol building:

"My style of lobbying is not to have big formal meetings, but to catch members on the fly as they're walking between the House and the office buildings." — a lobbyist commenting on access.

When getting access is difficult, there are ways to wear down the walls surrounding a legislator. Jack Abramoff explained:
  • Access is vital in lobbying. If you can't get in your door, you can't make your case. Here we had a hostile senator, whose staff was hostile, and we had to get in. So that's the lobbyist safe-cracker method: throw fundraisers, raise money, and become a big donor. — Lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2011

Lobbyists often assist congresspersons with campaign finance by arranging fundraisers, assembling PACs, and seeking donations from other clients. Many lobbyists become campaign treasurers and fundraisers for congresspersons. This helps incumbent members cope with the substantial amounts of time required to raise money for reelection bids; one estimate was that congresspersons had to spend a third of their working hours on fundraising activity.

PACs are fairly easy to set up; it requires a lawyer and about $300, roughly. An even steeper possible reward which can be used in exchange for favors is the lure of a high-paying job as a lobbyist; according to Jack Abramoff, one of the best ways to "get what he wanted" was to offer a high-ranking congressional aide a high-paying job after they decided to leave public office.

When such a promise of future employment was accepted, according to Abramoff, "we owned them". This helped the lobbying firm exert influence on that particular congressperson by going through the staff member or aide.

At the same time, it is hard for outside observers to argue that a particular decision, such as hiring a former staffer into a lobbying position, was purely as a reward for some past political decision, since staffers often have valuable connections and policy experience needed by lobbying firms. Research economist Mirko Draca suggested that hiring a staffer was an ideal way for a lobbying firm to try to sway their old bosses—a congressperson—in the future.

​Lobbyists, according to several sources, strive for communications which are clear, straightforward, and direct. In a one-on-one meeting with a lobbyist, it helps to understand precisely what goal is wanted. A lobbyist wants action on a bill; a legislator wants to be re-elected The idea is to persuade a legislator that what the lobbyist wants is good public policy. Lobbyists often urge lawmakers to try to persuade other lawmakers to approve a bill.

​Still, persuasion is a subtle business, requiring a deft touch, and carelessness can boomerang. In one instance of a public relations reversal, a lobbying initiative by the Cassidy firm which targeted Senator Robert C. Byrd blew up when the Cassidy-Byrd connection was published in the Washington Post; this resulted in a furious Byrd reversing his previous pro-Cassidy position and throwing a "theatrical temper tantrum" regarding an $18 million facility. Byrd denounced "lobbyists who collect exorbitant fees to create projects and have them earmarked in appropriation bills... for the benefit of their clients."

Since it often takes a long time to build the network of relationships within the lobbying industry, ethical interpersonal dealings are important. A maxim in the industry is for lobbyists to be truthful with people they are trying to persuade; one lobbyist described it this way: "what you've basically got is your word and reputation".

An untruth, a lie is too risky to the successful development of a long-term relationship and the potential gain is not worth the risk. One report suggested that below-the-belt tactics generally do not work. One account suggest that groping for "personal dirt" on opponents was counterproductive since it would undermine respect for the lobbyist and their clients. And, by reverse logic, if an untruth is told by an opponent or opposing lobby, then it makes sense to publicize it.

But the general code among lobbyists is that unsubstantiated claims are bad business. Even worse is planting an informant in an opponent's camp, since if this subterfuge is ever discovered, it will boomerang negatively in a hundred ways, and credibility will drop to zero.

The importance of personal relationships in lobbying can be seen in the state of Illinois, in which father-son ties helped push a smart-grid energy bill, although there were accusations of favoritism. And there is anecdotal evidence that a business firm seeking to profitably influence legislation has to pay particular attention to which lobbyist it hires.

Strategic considerations for lobbyists, trying to influence legislation, include "locating a power base" or a constituency logically predisposed to support a given policy.

Timing, as well, is usually important, in the sense of knowing when to propose a certain action and having a big-picture view of the possible sequence of desired actions.

Strategic lobbying tries to estimate the possible responses of different groups to a possible lobby approach; one study suggested that the "expectations of opposition from other interests" was a key factor helping to determine how a lobby should operate.

Increasingly, lobbyists seek to put together coalitions and use outside lobbying by swaying public opinion. Bigger, more diverse and deep pocketed coalitions tend to be more effective in outside lobbying, and the "strength in numbers" principle often applies.

Interest groups try to build "sustainable coalitions of similarly situated individual organizations in pursuit of like-minded goals". According to one study, it is often difficult for a lobbyist to influence a staff member in Congress directly, since staffers tend to be well-informed and subject to views from competing interests.

As an indirect tactic, lobbyists can try to manipulate public opinion which, in turn, can sometimes exert pressure on congresspersons. Activities for these purposes include trying to use the mass media, cultivating contacts with reporters and editors, encouraging them to write editorials and cover stories to influence public opinion, which may have the secondary effect of influencing Congress.

According to analyst Ken Kollman, it is easier to sway public opinion than a congressional staff member since it is possible to bombard the public with "half-truths, distortion, scare tactics, and misinformation." Kollman suggests there should be two goals: (1) communicate that there is public support behind an issue to policymakers and (2) increase public support for the issue among constituents.

Kollman suggested outside lobbying was a "powerful tool" for interest group leaders. In a sense, using these criteria, one could consider James Madison as having engaged in outside lobbying, since after the Constitution was proposed, he wrote many of the 85 newspaper editorials arguing for people to support the Constitution, and these writings later became the Federalist Papers. As a result of this "lobbying" effort, the Constitution was ratified, although there were narrow margins of victory in four of the state legislatures.

Lobbying today generally requires mounting a coordinated campaign, using targeted blitzes of telephone calls, letters, emails to congressional lawmakers, marches down the Washington Mall, bus caravans, and such, and these are often put together by lobbyists who coordinate a variety of interest group leaders to unite behind a hopefully simple easy-to-grasp and persuasive message.

It is important for lobbyists to follow rules governing lobbying behavior. These can be difficult and complex, take time to learn, require full disclosure, and mistakes can land a lobbyist in serious legal trouble.

Gifts for congresspersons and staffers can be problematic, since anything of sizeable value must be disclosed and generally such gifts are illegal. Failure to observe gift restrictions was one factor which caused lobbyist Jack Abramoff to eventually plead guilty to a "raft of federal corruption charges" and led to convictions for 20 lobbyists and public officials, including congressperson Bob Ney and Bush deputy interior secretary Stephen Griles.

Generally gifts to congresspersons or their staffs or federal officials are not allowed, but with a few exceptions: books are permitted, provided that the inside cover is inscribed with the congressperson's name and the name of one's organization. Gifts under $5 are allowed.

Another exception is awards, so it is permitted to give a congressperson a plaque thanking him or her for support on a given issue. Cash gifts payable by check can only be made to campaign committees, not to a candidate personally or to his or her staff; it is not permitted to give cash or stock.

Wealthy lobbyists often encourage other lobbying clients to donate to a particular cause, in the hope that favors will be returned at a later date. Lobbyist Gerald Cassidy encouraged other clients to give for causes dear to a particular client engaged in a current lobbying effort.

Some lobbyists give their own money: Cassidy reportedly donated a million dollars on one project, according to one report, which noted that Cassidy's firm received "many times that much in fees from their clients" paid in monthly retainers. And their clients, in turn, had received "hundreds of millions in earmarked appropriations" and benefits worth "hundreds of millions more".

​The dynamics of the lobbying world make it fairly easy for a semi-skilled operator to defraud a client. This is essentially what happened in the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal. There was a concerned client—in this case, an Indian casino—worried about possible ill-effects of legislation on its gambling business; and there were lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff who knew how to exploit these fears.

The lobbyists actively lobbied against their own casino-client as a way to ratchet up their fears of adverse legislation as well as stoke possible future contributions; the lobbyists committed other violations such as grossly overbilling their clients as well as violating rules about giving gifts to congresspersons.

Numerous persons went to jail after the scandal. The following are factors which can make fraud a fairly easy-to-do activity: that lobbyists are paid only to try to influence decision-makers, and may or may not succeed, making it hard to tell if a lobbyist did actual work; that much of what happens regarding interpersonal relations is obscure despite rather strict disclosure and transparency requirements; that there are sizable monies involved—factors such as these almost guarantee that there will be future scandals involving fraudulent lobbying activity, according to one assessment.

A fraud similar to Abramoff's was perpetrated in Maryland by lobbyist Gerard E. Evans, who was convicted of mail and wire fraud in 2000 in a case involving falsely creating a "fictitious legislative threat" against a client, and then billing the client to work against this supposed threat.

Lobbyists routinely monitor how congressional officials vote, sometimes checking the past voting records of congresspersons. One report suggested that reforms requiring "publicly recorded committee votes" led to more information about how congresspersons voted, but instead of becoming a valuable resource for the news media or voters, the information helped lobbyists monitor congressional voting patterns. As a general rule, lawmakers must vote as a particular interest group wishes them to vote, or risk losing support.

Strategy usually dictates targeting specific office holders. On the state level, one study suggested that much of the lobbying activity targeted the offices of governors as well as state-level executive bureaucrats; state lobbying was an "intensely personal game" with face-to-face contact being required for important decisions.

Lobbying can be a counteractive response to the lobbying efforts of others. One study suggested this was particularly true for battles surrounding possible decisions by the Supreme Court which is considered as a "battleground for public policy" in which differing groups try to "etch their policy preferences into law".

Sometimes there are lobbying efforts to slow or derail other legislative processes; for example, when the FDA began considering a cheaper generic version of the costly anti-clotting drug Lovenox, the French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi "sprang into action to try and slow the process." Lobbyists are often assembled in anticipation of a potential takeover bid, particularly when there are large high-profile companies, or a large foreign company involved, and substantial concern that the takeover may be blocked by regulatory authorities.

An example may illustrate. The company Tyco had learned that there had been discussion about a possible new tax provision that might have cost it $4 billion overall. So the firm hired Jack Abramoff and paid him a retainer of $100,000 a month. He assembled dozens of lobbyists with connections to key congressional committees with the ultimate objective being to influence powerful Senator Charles Grassley.

​Abramoff began with a fundraising effort to round up "every check" possible. He sought funds from his other lobbying clients:
  • "I had my clients understand that just as other clients who had nothing to do with them, would step up and give contributions to congressmen they needed to have some sway with, so similarly they needed to do the same. I went to every client I could, and rounded up every check we could for him."
— Lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2011

​Lobbyists as educators and advisors:

Since government has grown increasingly complex, having to deal with new technologies, the task of writing rules has become more complex. "Government has grown so complex that it is a virtual certainty that more than one agency would be affected by any piece of legislation," according to one view.

Lobbyists, therefore, spend considerable time learning the ins and outs of issues, and can use their expertise to educate lawmakers and help them cope with difficult issues. Lobbyists' knowledge has been considered to be an intellectual subsidy for lawmakers. Some lobbyists become specialists with expertise in a particular set of issues, although one study suggested that of two competing criteria for lobbyists—expertise or access—that access was far more important.

Lobby groups and their members sometimes also write legislation and whip bills, and in these instances, it is helpful to have lawyers skilled in writing legislation to assist with these efforts. It is often necessary to research relevant laws and issues beforehand. In many instances lobbyists write the actual text of the proposed law, and hire lawyers to "get the language down pat"—an omission in wording or an unclear phrase may open up a loophole for opponents to wrangle over for years. And lobbyists can often advise a lawmaker on how to navigate the approval process.

Lobbying firms can serve as mentors and guides. For example, after months of protesting by the Occupy Wall Street, one lobbying firm prepared a memo to its clients warning that Republicans may "turn on big banks, at least in public" which may have the effect of "altering the political ground for years to come." 

Here are parts of the memo which were broadcast on the MSNBC network: "Leading Democratic party strategists have begun to openly discuss the benefits of embracing the growing and increasingly organized Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement ... This would mean more than just short-term discomfort for Wall Street firms. If vilifying the leading companies of this sector is allowed to become an unchallenged centerpiece of a coordinated Democratic campaign, it has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye. ... the bigger concern should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies...
— Clark, Lytle, Geduldig, Cranford, law/lobbying firm, to a Wall Street client

A Growing Billion Dollar Business:
​
Since the 1970s, there has been explosive growth in the lobbying industry, particularly in Washington D.C.. By 2011, one estimate of overall lobbying spending nationally was $30+ billion dollars.[84] An estimate of lobbying expenses in the federal arena was $3.5 billion in 2010, while it had been only $1.4 billion in 1998. And there is prodigious data since firms are required to disclose lobbying expenditures on a quarterly basis.

The industry, however, is not immune to economic downturns. If Congress is gridlocked, such as during the summer and early fall of 2011, lobbying activity dipped considerably, according to The Washington Post. Lobbying firm Patton Boggs reported drops in revenue during that year, from $12 million in 2010 to $11 million in 2011. To cope with the downturn, some law firms compensated by increasing activity in litigation, regulatory work, and representing clients in congressional investigations.

A sea-change in government, such as a shift in control of the legislature from one political party to the other, can affect the lobbying business profoundly. For example, the primarily Democratic-serving lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates learned that control of Congress would change hands from Democrats to Republicans in 1994, and the firm acquired Republican lobbyists before the congressional handover of power, and the move helped the lobbying firm stay on top of the new political realities.

Examples of lobbying:

There are numerous examples of lobbying activity reported by the media. One report chronicled a somewhat unusual alliance of consumer advocates and industry groups to boost funding for the Food and Drug Administration; the general pattern of lobbying efforts had been to try to reduce the regulatory oversight of such an agency. In this case, however, lobbying groups wanted the federal watchdog agency to have tougher policing authority to avert expensive problems when oversight was lax; in this case, industry and consumer groups were in harmony, and lobbyists were able to persuade officials that higher FDA budgets were in the public interest.

Religious consortiums, according to one report, have engaged in a $400 million lobbying effort on such issues as the relation between church and state, civil rights for religious minorities, bioethics issues including abortion and capital punishment and end-of-life issues, and family issues.

​Lobbying as a career:

While national-level lobbyists working in Washington have the highest salaries, many lobbyists operating at the state level can earn substantial salaries. The table shows the top lobbyists in one state--Maryland—in 2011.

​Top power-brokers such as Gerald Cassidy have made fortunes from lobbying:
Cassidy's reaction to his own wealth has been complicated. He lives large, riding around town in his chauffeured car, spending thousands on custom-made clothes, investing big money in, for example, the Charlie Palmer Steak restaurant at the foot of Capitol Hill just for the fun of it. He has fashioned a wine cellar of more than 7,000 bottles. He loves to go to England and live like a gentleman of the kind his Irish antecedents would have considered an anathema.
— journalist Robert G. Kaiser in 2007 in the Washington Post.

Effectiveness of lobbying:

The general consensus view is that lobbying generally works overall in achieving sought-after results for clients, particularly since it has become so prevalent with substantial and growing budgets, although there are dissenting views.

A study by the investment-research firm Strategas which was cited in The Economist and the Washington Post compared the 50 firms that spent the most on lobbying relative to their assets, and compared their financial performance against that of the S&P 500 in the stock market; the study concluded that spending on lobbying was a "spectacular investment" yielding "blistering" returns comparable to a high-flying hedge fund, even despite the financial downturn of the past few years.

A 2009 study by University of Kansas professor Raquel Meyer Alexander suggested that lobbying brought a substantial return on investment. 

A 2011 meta-analysis of previous research findings found a positive correlation between corporate political activity and firm performance.

There are numerous reports that the National Rifle Association or NRA successfully influenced 45 senators to block a proposed rule to regulate assault weapons, despite strong public support for gun control. The NRA spends heavily to influence gun policy; it gives $3 million annually to the re-election campaigns of congresspersons directly, and gives additional money to PACs and others to influence legislation indirectly, according to the BBC in 2016.

There is widespread agreement that a key ingredient in effective lobbying is money. This view is shared by players in the lobbying industry.

Deep pockets speak; the money trumps it all — Anonymous lobbyist, 2002

Still, effectiveness can vary depending on the situational context. One view is that large multiple-issue lobbies tend to be effective in getting results for their clients if they are sophisticated, managed by a legislative director familiar with the art of compromise, and play "political hardball".

But if such lobbies became too big, such as large industrial trade organizations, they became harder to control, often leading to lackluster results. 

A study in 2001 which compared lobbying activity in US-style congressional against European-style parliamentary systems, found that in congressional systems there was an advantage favoring the "agenda-setters", but that in both systems, "lobbying has a marked effect on policies".

One report suggested that the 1,000 registered lobbyists in California were highly influential such that they were called the Third House.

Studies of lobbying by academics in previous decades painted a picture of lobbying being an ineffectual activity, although many of these studies were done before lobbying became prevalent in American politics.

A study in 1963 by Bauer, Pool, & Dexter suggested lobbyists were mostly "impotent" in exerting influence. Studies in the early 1990s suggested that lobbying exerted influence only "marginally", although it suggested that when lobbying activity did achieve political impacts, that the results of the political choices were sufficient to justify the expenditure on lobbying.

A fairly recent study in 2009 is that Washington lobbies are "far less influential than political rhetoric suggests", and that most lobbying campaigns do not change any views and that there was a strong entrenchment of the status quo. 

But it depends on what is seen as "effective", since many lobbying battles result in a stalemate, since powerful interests battle, and in many cases, merely keeping the "status quo" could be seen as a victory of sorts. What happens often is that varying coalitions find themselves in "diametrical opposition to each other" and that stalemates result.

There is anecdotal evidence from numerous newspaper accounts of different groups battling that lobbying activity usually achieves results. For example, the Obama administration pledged to stop for-profit colleges from "luring students with false promises", but with this threat, the lobbying industry sprang into action with a $16 million campaign, and their efforts succeeded in watering down the proposed restrictions. How did the lobbying campaign succeed? Actions taken included:
  1. spent $16 million
  2. hired "all-star list" of prominent players including Democrats with White House ties
  3. plotted strategy
  4. worked with "fund-raising bundler" Jamie Rubin, a former Obama communications director
  5. won support from influential people including congressperson-turned-lobbyist Dick Gephardt, senator-turned-lobbyist John Breaux, lobbyist Tony Podesta, Washington Post CEO Donald E. Graham, education entrepreneur and University of Phoenix founder John Sperling, and others.
  6. key leaders made "impassioned appeals"
  7. mobilization effort produced 90,000 public documents to the Education department advocating against changes

And sometimes merely keeping the status quo could be seen as a victory. When gridlock led to the supposed supercommittee solution, numerous lobbyists from all parts of the political spectrum worked hard, and a stalemate resulted, but with each side defended their own special interests. And while money is an important variable, it is one among many variables, and there have been instances in which huge sums have been spent on lobbying only to have the result backfire.

One report suggested that the communications firm AT&T failed to achieve substantial results from its lobbying efforts in 2011, since government antitrust officials rejected its plan to acquire rival T-Mobile.

Lobbying is a practical necessity for firms that "live and die" by government decisions, such as large government contractors such as Boeing.

A study done in 2006 by Bloomberg News suggested that lobbying was a "sound money-making strategy" for the 20 largest federal contractors. The largest contractor, Lockheed Martin Corporation, received almost $40 billion in federal contracts in 2003-4, and spent $16 million on lobbying expenses and campaign donations. For each dollar of lobbying investment, the firm received $2,517 in revenues, according to the report.

When the lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates began achieving results with earmarks for colleges and universities and medical centers, new lobbying firms rose to compete with them to win "earmarks of their own", a clear sign that the lobbying was exceedingly effective.

Lobbying controversies:

Lobbying has been the subject of much debate and discussion. There is general consensus that lobbying has been a significant corrupting influence in American politics, although criticism is not universal, and there have been arguments put forward to suggest that the system is working properly.

Unfavorable image:

Generally the image of lobbyists and lobbying in the public sphere is not a positive one, although this is not a universal sentiment. Lobbyists have been described as a "hired gun" without principles or positions. 

Scandals involving lobbying have helped taint the image of the profession, such as ones involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and Bob Ney and others, and which featured words such as "bribery", "lobbyist", "member of Congress" and "prison" tending to appear together in the same articles.

Negative publicity can sully lobbying's image to a great extent:
  • high-profile cases of lobbying fraud such as Abramoff's; 
  • dubious father-son exchange-of-favors ties;
  • public officials such as Newt Gingrich being accused and then denying accusations of having done lobbying and earning $1.6 million from "strategic advice". 

There are a variety of reasons why lobbying has acquired a negative image in public consciousness. While there is much disclosure, much of it happens in hard-to-disclose personal meetings, and the resulting secrecy and confidentiality can serve to lower lobbying's status.

Revolving door:
Main article: Revolving door (politics)

​​Since the 1980s, congresspersons and staffers have been "going downtown"—becoming lobbyists—and the big draw is money. The "lucrative world of K Street" means that former congresspersons with even "modest seniority" can move into jobs paying $1 million or more annually, without including bonuses for bringing in new clients.

The general concern of this revolving-door activity is that elected officials—persons who were supposed to represent the interests of citizens—have instead become entangled with the big-money interests of for-profit corporations and interest groups with narrow concerns, and that public officials have been taken over by private interests.

In July 2005, Public Citizen published a report entitled "The Journey from Congress to K Street": the report analyzed hundreds of lobbyist registration documents filed in compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act among other sources. It found that since 1998, 43 percent of the 198 members of Congress who left government to join private life have registered to lobby.

A similar report from the Center for Responsive Politics found 370 former members were in the "influence-peddling business", with 285 officially registered as federal lobbyists, and 85 others who were described as providing "strategic advice" or "public relations" to corporate clients.

The Washington Post described these results as reflecting the "sea change that has occurred in lawmakers' attitudes toward lobbying in recent years." The report included a case study of one particularly successful lobbyist, Bob Livingston, who stepped down as Speaker-elect and resigned his seat in 1999.

In the six years since his resignation, The Livingston Group grew into the 12th largest non-law lobbying firm, earning nearly $40 million by the end of 2004. During roughly the same time period, Livingston, his wife, and his two political action committees (PACs) contributed over $500,000 to the campaign funds of various candidates.

Numerous reports chronicle the revolving door phenomenon. A 2011 estimate suggested that nearly 5,400 former congressional staffers had become federal lobbyists over a ten-year period, and 400 lawmakers made a similar jump. It is a "symbiotic relationship" in the sense that lobbying firms can exploit the "experience and connections gleaned from working inside the legislative process", and lawmakers find a "ready pool of experienced talent." 

There is movement in the other direction as well: one report found that 605 former lobbyists had taken jobs working for lawmakers over a ten-year period. A study by the London School of Economics found 1,113 lobbyists who had formerly worked in lawmakers' offices.

The lobbying option is a way for staffers and lawmakers to "cash in on their experience", according to one view. Before the 1980s, staffers and aides worked many years for congresspersons, sometimes decades, and tended to stay in their jobs; now, with the lure of higher-paying lobbying jobs, many would quit their posts after a few years at most to "go downtown."

​And it is not just staffers, but lawmakers as well, including high-profile ones such as congressperson Richard Gephardt. He represented a "working-class" district in Missouri for many years but after leaving Congress, he became a lobbyist. In 2007, he began his own lobbying firm called "Gephardt Government Affairs Group" and in 2010 it was earning close to $7 million in revenues with clients including Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Visa Inc., Ameren Corporation, and Waste Management Inc..

Senators Robert Bennett and Byron Dorgan became lobbyists too. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour became a lobbyist. In 2010, former representative Billy Tauzin earned $11 million running the drug industry's lobbying organization, called Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

Tauzin's bill to provide prescription drug access to Medicare recipients gave major concessions to the pharmaceutical industry: (1) Medicare was prevented from negotiating lower costs for prescription drugs (2) the reimportation of drugs from first world countries was not allowed (3) Medicare D was undermined by a policy of Medigap D.

After the bill passed a few months later, Tauzin retired from Congress and took an executive position at PhRMA to earn an annual salary of $2 million. Many former representatives earned over $1 million in one year, including James Greenwood and Daniel Glickman.

Insider's Game:

A similar concern voiced by critics of lobbying is that Washington politics has become dominated by elites, and that it is an "insider's game" excluding regular citizens and which favors entrenched firms.

Individuals generally can not afford to lobby, and critics question whether corporations with "deeper pockets" should have greater power than regular persons. In this view, the system favors the rich, such that the "rich have gotten richer, the weak weaker", admits lobbyist Gerald Cassidy.

There is concern that those having more money and better political connections can exert more influence than others. However, analyst Barry Hessenius made a case that the excessive for-profit lobbying could be counteracted if there were more efforts to increase nonprofit lobbying and boost their effectiveness. There is so much money that it has been described as a "flood" that has a "corrupting influence", so that the United States appears to be "awash" in interest groups.

If coalitions of different forces battle in the political arena for favorable treatment and better rules and tax breaks, it can be seen as fair if both sides have equal resources and try to fight for their interests as best they can. 

Gerald Cassidy said: "In a lot of areas, the stakes are between big companies, and it's hard to argue that one solution is better than another solution with regard to the consumer's interest ... The issue ... is whether Company A's solution, or Company B's solution, based on their technology or their footprint, is the right one."
— Lobbyist Gerald Cassidy

A related but slightly different criticism is that the problem with lobbying as it exists today is that it creates an "inequity of access to the decision-making process". As a result, important needs get left out of the political evaluation, such that there are no anti-hunger lobbies or lobbies seeking serious solutions to the problem of poverty.

Nonprofit advocacy has been "conspicuously absent" from lobbying efforts, according to one view. Critics suggest that when a powerful coalition battles a less powerful one, or one which is poorly connected or underfunded, the result may be seen as unfair and potentially harmful for the entire society.

The increasing number of former lawmakers becoming lobbyists has led Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) to propose paring back the many Capitol Hill privileges enjoyed by former senators and representatives. His plan would deprive lawmakers-turned-lobbyists of privileges such as unfettered access to otherwise "members only" areas such as the House and Senate floors and the House gym.

​Choice-making problems:
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A concern among many critics is that influence peddling hurts overall decision making, according to this criticism. Proposals with merit are dropped in favor of proposals backed by political expediency.

An example cited in the media is the recent battling between food industry lobbyists and healthcare lobbyists regarding school lunches. A group supported by the United States Department of Agriculture proposed healthier lunches as a way to combat childhood obesity by limiting the number of potatoes served, limiting salty foods, and adding more fresh vegetables, but this group was countered by a strong food lobby backed by Coca-Cola, Del Monte, and makers of frozen pizza.

The food lobbyists succeeded in blocking the proposed reforms, even writing rules suggesting that the tomato paste on a pizza qualified as a vegetable, but overall, according to critics, this case appeared to be an example where business interests won out over health concerns.

Critics use examples such as these to suggest that lobbying distorts sound governance. A study by IMF economists found that the "heaviest lobbying came from lenders making riskier loans and expanding their mortgage business most rapidly during the housing boom," and that there were indications that heavy-lobbying lenders were more likely to receive bailout funds. The study found a correlation between lobbying by financial institutions and excessive risk-taking during 2000–2007, and the authors concluded that "politically active lenders played a role in accumulation of risks and thus contributed to the financial crisis".

Another study suggested that governments tend to protect domestic industries, and have a habit of shunting monies to ailing sectors; the study suggested that "it is not that government policy picks losers, it is that losers pick government policy." One critic suggested that the financial industry has successfully blocked attempts at regulation in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse.

Governmental focus:

Critics have contended that when lawmakers are drawn into battles to determine issues such as the composition over school lunches or how much an ATM fee should be, more serious issues such as deficit reduction or global warming or social security are neglected. It leads to legislative inertia.

The concern is that the preoccupation with what are seen as superficial issues prevents attention to long-term problems. Critics suggested that the 2011 Congress spent more time discussing per-transaction debit-card fees while neglecting issues seen as more pressing.

Methodological problems:

In this line of reasoning, critics contend that lobbying, in and of itself, is not the sole problem, but only one aspect of a larger problem with American governance. Critics point to an interplay of factors: citizens being uninvolved politically; congresspersons needing huge sums of money for expensive television advertising campaigns; increased complexity in terms of technologies; congresspersons spending three days of every week raising money; and so forth.

Given these temptations, lobbying came along as a logical response to meet the needs of congresspersons seeking campaign funds and staffers seeking personal enrichment. In a sense, in competitive politics, the common good gets lost:

I know what my client wants; no one knows what the common good is.
— Anonymous lobbyist

A lobbyist can identify a client's needs. But it is hard for a single individual to say what is best for the whole group. The intent of the Constitution's Framers was to have built-in constitutional protections to protect the common good, but according to these critics, these protections do not seem to be working well:
  • The structure of representative government, elected by the people, was to be our system's built-in protection of the whole of us—fairly elected officeholders were to represent their constituent groups, free from any obligations to special interests.
  • Unfortunately, money has corrupted the system and compromised both the fairness of the electoral process as well as the independence and impartiality of elected officials.
— Barry Hessenius in Hardball Lobbying for Nonprofits, 2007​

​Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School and author of Republic, Lost, suggested that the moneyed persuasive power of special interests has insinuated itself between the people and the lawmakers.

He quoted congressperson Jim Cooper who remarked that Congress had become a "Farm League for K Street" in the sense that congresspersons were focused on lucrative lobbying careers after Congress rather than on serving the public interest while in office. In a speech, Lessig suggested the structure of incentives was such that legislators were tempted to propose unnecessary regulations as a way to further lobbying industry activity.

According to one view, major legislation such as proposed Wall Street reforms have spurred demand for "participating in the regulatory process." Lessig suggested the possibility that it was not corporations deciding to take up lobbying, but Congress choosing to debate less-than-important issues to bring well-heeled corporations into the political fray as lobbyists.

As a result of his concerns, Lessig has called on state governments to summon a Second Constitutional Convention to propose substantive reform. Lessig believes that a constitutional amendment should be written to limit political contributions from non-citizens, including corporations, anonymous organizations, and foreign nationals.

Our current tax system with all its complexities is in part designed to make it easier for candidates, in particular congressmen, to raise money to get back to congress ... All sorts of special exceptions which expire after a limited period of time are just a reason to pick up the phone and call somebody and say 'Your exception is about to expire, here’s a good reason for you to help us fight to get it to extend.'

"And that gives them the opportunity to practice what is really a type of extortion – shaking the trees of money in the private sector into their campaign coffers so that they can run for congress again — Lawrence Lessig, 2011

Scholars such as Richard Labunski, Sanford Levinson, Glenn Reynolds, Larry Sabato as well as newspaper columnist William Safire, and activists such as John Booth of RestoringFreedom.org have called for constitutional changes that would curb the powerful role of money in politics.

​Expansion of lobbying:

Law in the United States is generally made by Congress, but as the federal government has expanded during much of the twentieth century, there are a sizeable number of federal agencies, generally under the control of the president. These agencies write often industry-specific rules and regulations regarding such things as automobile safety and air quality.

Unlike elected congresspersons who are constantly seeking campaign funds, these appointed officials are harder to influence, generally. However, there are indications that lobbyists seek to expand their influence from the halls of Congress deeper into the federal bureaucracy.

President Obama pledged during the election campaign to rein in lobbying. As president in January 2009, he signed two executive orders and three presidential memoranda to help ensure his administration would be more open, transparent, and accountable. These documents attempted to bring increased accountability to federal spending and limit the influence of special interests, and included a lobbyist gift ban and a revolving door ban.

​In May 2009, the Recovery Act Lobbying Rules. The Executive Branch Reform Act, H.R. 985, was a bill which would have required over 8,000 Executive Branch officials to report into a public database nearly any "significant contact" from any "private party." The purpose was to identify lobbying activity. The bill was supported by proponents as an expansion of "government in the sunshine" including groups such as Public Citizen.

​But the proposals ran into serious opposition from various groups including the lobbying industry itself. Opponents argued that the proposed reporting rules would have infringed on the right to petition, making it difficult not just for lobbyists, but for regular citizens to communicate their views on controversial issues without having their names and viewpoints entered into a government database.

Opposition groups suggested that although the proposed rules were promoted as a way to regulate "lobbyists," persons described as a "private party" could be practically anybody, and that anybody contacting a federal official might be deemed to be a "lobbyist".

The U.S. Department of Justice raised constitutional and other objections to the bill. Opponents mobilized over 450 groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Realtors with letter writing campaigns against the proposed restrictions.

Lobbyist Howard Marlowe argued in a "stern letter" that the restriction on gift-giving to federal employees would create "fear of retribution for political donations":
  • "Since your announcement to seek the Presidency you have consistently attacked the honorable profession of lobbying ... Lobbyists play an important role in the legislative process, serving as educators to elected officials. It is in the best interest to government to have informed individuals who serve as experts in every arena of public policy.
  • Our ability to access and navigate the legislative process and push issues forward through a bureaucratic cluster is a vital service to the nation. The Draft Order would inhibit one of the most vital tools in the advocate's arsenal by creating fear of retribution for political donations. Making this kind of disclosure a part of the bidding process tarnishes a competition based on qualifications, adds an unneeded level of bureaucracy, and endangers the protection of free speech afforded to all Americans by the First Amendment of the Constitution..."
— Howard Marlowe, president of the All American League of Lobbyists, in a letter to President Obama, May 31, 2011

In 2011, there were efforts to "shift regulatory power from the executive branch to Congress" by requiring that any "major rule" which may cost the economy more than $100 million must be decided by Congress with an up-or-down vote. But skeptics think that such a move proposed by Republican lawmakers could "usher in a lobbying bonanza from industry and other special-interest groups" to use campaign contributions to reshape the regulatory milieu.

Potential for reform:

Critics suggest that Congress has the power to fix itself, but is reluctant to sacrifice money and power. One report suggested that those in control had an "unbroken record of finding ways to navigate around reform laws or turn regulatory standards to their own advantage."

Arguments for lobbying:

There are counterarguments that the system is working as it should, despite being rather messy. According to this line of argument, the Madisonian view of politics—in which factions were supposed to compete with other factions—is working exactly as it should.

Competing factions, or in this case, competing interest groups, square off. Battling happens within the federal government, but instead of by settling arguments by elections, arguments are settled by powerful interest groups fighting each other, often financially. And it might appear to members of groups which lost in a lobbying battle that the reason for their loss was that the other side lobbied unfairly using more money.

There are numerous instances in which opposed lobbies stalemate, and instances in which these stalemates have been seen as a positive result. And sometimes powerful financial interests lose the battle.

Lobbying brings valuable information to policymakers, according to another argument in favor of lobbying. Since lobbyists often become highly knowledgeable about a specific issue by studying it in depth over years, they can bring considerable expertise to help legislators avoid errors as well as grasp the nuances of complex issues.

This information can also help Congress oversee numerous federal agencies which often regulate complex industries and issue highly detailed and specific rulings. Accordingly, it is difficult for Congress to keep track of what these agencies do. It has been argued that lobbyists can help Congress monitor this activity by possibly raising "red flags" about proposed administrative rulings.

Further, congresspersons can quickly gauge where they stand about a proposed administrative ruling simply by seeing which lobbying groups support the proposal, and which oppose it.

Another argument in support of lobbying is that different interest groups and lobbyists, while trying to build coalitions and win support, often amend or soften or change their positions in this process, and that interest groups and lobbyists regulate each other, in a sense.

But a more general sentiment supporting the lobbying arrangement is that every citizen can be construed as being "represented" by dozens of special interests:

Every citizen is a special interest... Blacks, consumers, teachers, pro-choicers, gun control advocates, handicapped people, aliens, exporters, and salesmen – are all special interests...

There is not an American today who is not represented (whether he or she knows it or not) by at least a dozen special interest groups. ... One person's special interest is another person's despotism...— Donald E. deKieffer, author of The Citizen's Guide to Lobbying Congress, 2007

​If powerful groups such as the oil industry succeed in winning a battle in government, consumers who drive gas-powered cars can benefit a bit, according to this view. Even readers of Wikipedia could be conceived as being a special interest and represented by various lobbies.

For example, opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act believed that the act might restrict sites such as Wikipedia; on January 18, 2012, as a form of protest and as a way to encourage readers and contributors of English Wikipedia to write their congresspersons, the online encyclopedia was "blacked out for a day as part of an effort to lobby the government.
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Another view in support of lobbying is that it serves a helpful purpose as helping guard against extremism. According to this view, lobbying adds "built-in delays" and permits and encourages opposing lobbies to battle. In the battling, possibly damaging decrees and incorrect decisions are stymied by seemingly unhelpful delays and waits.

A slightly different view is that lobbying is no different from other professions: "Lobbying is no more perfect than is the practice of law or the practice of medicine."
— Lobbyist Gerald S. J. Cassidy, 2007

The regulatory environment:

Disclosure and domestic regulations:

Generally, the United States requires systematic disclosure of lobbying, and it may be one of the few countries to have such extensive requirements. Disclosure in one sense allows lobbyists and public officials to justify their actions under the banner of openness and with full compliance of the law. 

The rules often specify how much a lobbyist can spend on specific activities, and how to report expenses; many of the laws and guidelines are specified in the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.

Transparency and disclosure requirements mean that there are volumes of statistics available for all kinds of analyses—by journalists, by the public, by rival lobbying efforts. Researchers can subdivide lobbying expenditures by numerous breakdowns, such as by contributions from energy companies.

Sometimes defining clearly who is a "lobbyist" and what precisely are lobbying activities can be difficult. According to the Lobbying Disclosure Act, several authorized definitions include:
  • Lobbying activities means "lobbying contacts and efforts in support of such contacts, including preparation and planning activities, research and other background work that is intended, at the time it is performed, for use in contacts, and coordination with the lobbying activities of others."
  • Lobbying contact means "any oral or written communication (including an electronic communication) to a covered executive branch official or a covered legislative branch official".

Still, distinguishing lobbyists from a strategic adviser can be difficult, since the duties of each can often overlap and are hard to define precisely. 

There have been issues raised about what constitutes the difference between a lobbyist and a bundler; one report described bundlers as "supporters who contribute their own money to his campaign and solicit it from others", and there was a question whether such persons were really lobbyists involved with raising campaign monies for the election of Barack Obama, and whether Obama had broken his own pledge not to receive money from lobbyists.

The legal ramifications of lobbying are further intertangled with aspects of campaign finance reform, since lobbyists often spend time seeking donations for the reelection efforts of congresspersons; sorting out these issues can pose ethical challenges.

There are numerous regulations governing the practice of lobbying, often ones requiring transparency and disclosure. People paid to lobby must register with the secretary of the Senate and the clerk of the House of Representatives within 45 days of contacting a legislator for the first time, or 45 days after being employed.

An exception is that lobbyists who earn less than $3,000 per client for each fiscal quarter, or whose total lobbying expenses are less than $11,500 each quarter, do not need to register.

Part-time lobbyists are exempt from registering unless they spend more than 20% of their working hours doing lobbying activities in any quarter. If lobbyists have two or more contacts with a legislator as a lobbyist, then they must register.

Requirements for registering also apply to companies that specialize in lobbying, or ones that have an in-house lobbyist, particularly if they spend more than $11,500 on lobbying.

Generally, nonprofit organizations, other than churches, are exempt from registering if they hire an outside lobbying firm. Filing must be made each quarter, and a separate file is needed for each of the lobbyist's clients, and include information such as the name and title of the client, an estimate of lobbying expenses, and an estimate of income the lobbyist achieved after doing the lobbying.

States, in addition, are moving in the direction of greater disclosure and transparency regarding lobbying activities. California has an online database called Cal-Access although there were reports that it has been underfunded. Money collected from registration fees are often used to pay for the disclosure services such as Cal-Access. 

​There were complaints in Illinois that the disclosure requirements were often not rigorous enough and allowed lobbyists to work "without public notice" and with possible "conflicts of interest".

Many local municipalities are requiring legislative agents register as lobbyists to represent the interests of clients to local city council members such as in the swing state of Ohio cities such as Columbus and Cincinnati.

Laws requiring disclosure have been more prevalent in the twentieth century. In 1946, there was a so-called "sunshine law" requiring lobbyists to disclose what they were doing, on whose behalf, and how much they received in payment. The resulting Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act of 1946 governed lobbying rules up until 1995 when the Lobbying Disclosure Act replaced it.

The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, later amended in 2002 as the McCain Feingold Act, had rules governing campaign contributions. Each branch of Congress has rules as well. Legislation generally requires reports containing an accounting of major expenditures as well as legislation that was influenced; the wording of some of the pertinent laws can be found in 2 U.S.C. ch. 26.

​Lobbying law is a constantly evolving field; the American Bar Association published a book of guidelines in 2009 with over 800 pages. The laws are often rather specific, and when not observed, can lead to serious trouble.

Failing to file a quarterly report, or knowingly filing an incorrect report, or failing to correct an incorrect report, can lead to fines up to $200,000 and imprisonment up to five years.

Penalties can apply to lobbyists who fail to list gifts made to a legislator. In other situations, the punishment can be light: for example, Congressional aide-turned-lobbyist Fraser Verrusio spent a few hours in jail after pleading guilty to taking a client to a World Series baseball game and failing to report it.

Tax rules can apply to lobbying. In one situation, the charity Hawaii Family Forum risked losing its tax-exempt status after it had engaged in lobbying activity; federal tax law requires charities such as that one to limit their lobbying to 20% of their overall expenditures or else be eligible for being taxed like a for-profit corporation.

Lobbyists sometimes support rules requiring greater transparency and disclosure:

"Our profession is at a critical point where we can either embrace the constructive changes and reforms by Congress or we can seek out loopholes and continue the slippery slide into history along side the ranks of snake oil salesmen" — Lobbyist Gerald S. J. Cassidy, 2007

Scandals can spur impetus towards greater regulation as well. The Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal, which started in the 1990s and led to a guilty plea in 2006, inspired the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006 (S. 2349). According to Time Magazine the Senate bill:
  1. barred lobbyists themselves from buying gifts and meals for legislators, but left a loophole in which firms and organizations represented by those lobbyists could still dole out gifts and perks;
  2. allowed privately funded trips if lawmakers got prior approval from a commissioned ethics committee;
  3. required lobbyists to file frequent and detailed activity reports and have them posted publicly. The bill was approved in 2006 by a 90–8 vote.

In 1995, the 104th Congress tried to reform Lobbying by passing the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 which defines and requires lobbyists who are compensated for their actions to register with congressional officials. The legislation was later amended by the Lobbying Disclosure Technical Amendments Act of 1998.

There were subsequent modifications leading to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. The Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006 (H.R. 4975) legislation modified Senate rules, although some senators and a coalition of good-government groups assailed the bill as being too weak.

The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 was a comprehensive ethics and lobbying reform bill, (H.R. 2316), which passed in 2007 in the House and Congress by a large majority. A parallel Senate version of the legislation, (S. 1), passed in 2007 by a nearly unanimous vote. After the House & Senate resolved their differences and passed an amended revision, President Bush signed the enrolled bill into law (Pub.L. 110–81).

Some states have considered banning government employees permanently from lobbying on issues they had worked on. For example, there was a proposal along these lines to prevent county employees in Maryland from ever lobbying on issues they had worked on. The proposal insisted that county officials post financial disclosures as well as prohibit gifts from contractors.

Jack Abramoff, emerging from prison, has spoken publicly about lobbying. In his view, regulations designed to rein in the excesses of lobbying have not been effective, and reforms and regulations have not cleaned up the system "at all".

Abramoff said lobbyists could "find a way around just about any reform Congress enacted", and gave an example: You can't take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak or something like that ... But you can take him to a fund-raising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fund-raiser – and have all the same access and all the same interactions with that congressman.
— Jack Abramoff, commenting on 60 Minutes, according to CNN

A similar view suggested that lobbying reform efforts have been "fought tooth and nail to prevent its passage" since the people with the power to reform would curtail their own powers and income flows.

Foreign lobbying:

Since commerce worldwide is becoming more integrated, with firms headquartered in one country increasingly doing business in many other countries, it is logical to expect that lobbying efforts will reflect the increasing globalization. Sometimes foreign-owned corporations will want to lobby the United States government, and in such instances, new rules can apply, since it can be particularly thorny resolving whether national security interests are at stake and how they might be affected.

In 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act required an explicit listing of all political activities undertaken by a lobbyist on behalf of any foreign principal. There were serious concerns about lobbying firms representing foreign entities – and potentially values opposed to American principles – after Axis power agitprop was planted in American soils during World War II through the efforts of public-relations specialist Ivy Lee's proxy firm "German Dye Trust".

As a result, in 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act or FARA was passed by Congress, and this law required foreign lobbyists to share information about their contracts with the Justice Department. FARA's mandate was to disclose to policymakers the sources of information that influenced public opinions, policies, and law.

However, the goal was not to restrict the speech of the lobbyist or the content of the lobbying. Nonetheless, it was estimated that less than half of foreign lobbyists who should have registered under FARA actually did so.

By the 1960s, perceived failures in FARA’s enforcement led to public outcry against lobbying excesses, while revelations of foreign bribery circulated regularly well into the early 1970s. This prompted legislation proposed to reduce the autonomy of foreign firms, most of which was not ratified for concerns over a lack of constitutionality.

​While the House of Representatives passed a rule to increase public scrutiny of foreign lobbying, one estimate was that about 75% of lobbyists were exempt from a registration requirement, including individuals representing foreign interests.

​A general trend is that the number of lobbyists representing foreign companies is rising. The case of Washington’s APCO Worldwide, a firm which represented the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha of Nigeria in 1995 whose regime had hanged nine pro-democracy activists, attracted negative publicity.

While current law forbids foreign nations from contributing to federal, state, or local elections, loopholes allow American subsidiaries of foreign corporations to establish so-called separated segregated funds or SSFs to raise money. According to one view, the definition of which firms are defined as "foreign" was unclear, and the lack of clarity undermines the ability to regulate their activity.

Foreign-funded lobbying efforts include those of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, and China lobbies. In 2010, foreign governments spent approximately $460 million on lobbying Congress and the U.S. Government. Between 2015–2017, the Saudi Arabia paid $18 million to 145 registered lobbyists to influence the U.S. government.

While Congress has tried to quell criticisms against the leverage of domestic lobbying firms by updating domestic lobbying legislation – such as the revision of the Lobbyist Disclosure Act in 1997)—there was a report that its inaction in rectifying loopholes in foreign lobbying regulation has led to scandals. There was a report of an upsurge of lobbying by foreign-owned U.S. subsidiaries against Democratic efforts to limit campaign spending in early 2010.

The proposed was to restrict lobbying by U.S. subsidiaries of foreign firms. In 2011, the Chinese firm Alibaba hired a lobbying firm in Washington when it began contemplating a purchase of the U.S. firm Yahoo!. There was a case in which a lobbying effort described as "extraordinary" was trying to change the designation of a fringe Iranian opposition group from being a terrorist organization to being a benign organization.

Lobbyists seeking to downgrade the designation hired influential foreign affairs officials, including former CIA directors, a former FBI director, and others to advocate for the change of designation. But there have been others accused of illegally lobbying for foreign nations or who failed to register as a foreign agen who may face prison time as a result.

For more about Political Lobbying in the United States, click on any of the following blue hyperlinks: ___________________________________________________________________________

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning campaign finance.

The Court held that the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.

The case arose after Citizens United, a conservative non-profit organization, sought to air and advertise a film critical of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary elections.

This violated the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which prohibited any corporation or labor union from making an "electioneering communication" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of an election, or making any expenditure advocating the election or defeat of a candidate at any time.

In a majority opinion joined by four other justices, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy held that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act's prohibition of all independent expenditures by corporations and unions violated the First Amendment's protection of free speech.

The Court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990), which had allowed different restrictions on speech-related spending based on corporate identity, as well as a portion of McConnell v. FEC (2003) that had restricted corporate spending on electioneering communications.

The ruling effectively freed labor unions and corporations to spend money on electioneering communications and to directly advocate for the election or defeat of candidates. In his dissenting opinion, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens argued that Court's ruling represented "a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government."

The decision remains highly controversial, generating much public discussion and receiving strong support and opposition from various groups. Senator Mitch McConnell commended the decision, arguing that it represented "an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights".

By contrast, President Barack Obama stated that the decision "gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington". The ruling had a major impact on campaign finance, allowing unlimited election spending by corporations and labor unions and fueling the rise of Super PACs. Later rulings by the Roberts Court, including McCutcheon v. FEC (2014), would strike down other campaign finance restrictions.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court Ruling: ___________________________________________________________________________

​End Citizens United (ECU) is a political action committee in the United States.

The organization is working to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,(see above) which deregulated limits on independent expenditure group spending for (or against) specific candidates.

ECU is focused on driving larger campaign donations out of politics with a goal to elect "campaign-finance reform champions" to Congress by contributing and raising money for these candidates as well as running independent expenditures End Citizens United was founded in 2015, operating in its first election cycle during 2016 with more than $25 million in funding.

The organization has endorsed Democratic candidates such as Zephyr Teachout, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, Beto O'Rourke, Elizabeth Warren and Jon Ossoff.

ECU was one of the largest outside groups funding the campaigns of U.S. Senators Maggie Hassan and Catherine Cortez Masto during the 2016 election, spending a combined $4.4 million on the races. End Citizens United announced that it had raised more than $7.5 million from grassroots donations by mid-2017, and planned to raise $35 million for the 2018 election cycle.

In the spring of 2018, an anonymous U.S.-based contractor paid at least 3,800 micro job workers to manipulate what stories would come up when people searched for the PAC via Google.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about "End Citizens United":






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​The Squad (United States House of Representatives Members -- 2019) including "Trump’s Hate Makes the ‘Squad’ Stronger" by the Atlantic (8/16/2019) Pictured below: Members of the Squad, Clockwise from Upper Left: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Lihan Omar, Rashida Tiab, and Ayanna Pressley
The Squad is an informal political grouping of four congresswomen elected in the 2018 United States House of Representatives elections, made up of: 
All are women of color under 50 and have been placed by news outlets such as Refinery29 and Politico on the left wing of the Democratic Party.

The group has been said to represent the demographic diversity of a younger political generation and the advocacy of progressive policies such as the Green New Deal which have sometimes clashed with their party's leadership. Ocasio-Cortez coined the "Squad" name in an Instagram post a week after Election Day.

​Name:
​
The colloquial use of the word "squad" arose from East Coast hip hop culture and describes "a self-chosen group of people that you want to identify with". Its use by Ocasio-Cortez signaled familiarity with millennial slang as a playful reference to youth social cliques.

Ocasio-Cortez's home borough of The Bronx was the origin of a hip hop group called Terror Squad, formed in 1998; musical acts with "Squad" in their name and lyrics started from the 1990s to the present day. The average age of the Squad was 38.3 years as of mid-2019, compared to the overall House age of 57.6 years. As it became adopted by "older and whiter" audiences, usage of the related hashtag "#SquadGoals" on Instagram began to decline.

The New York Times considers the "Squad" a sui generis, fitting neatly into neither the usual Congressional groupings of a "gang" (a bipartisan group focused on particular legislation), nor a "caucus" (a pressure group based on special interests). It notes that the term, with a militaristic connotation, conveys values of self-defense, allegiance, and having "something important to protect".

The moniker has been used not only pejoratively, but also self-referentially, with the Squad so-calling themselves to express solidarity among themselves and with supporters. For example, the Justice Democrats tweeted a quote from Pressley saying: "We are more than four people... Our squad includes any person committed to creating a more equitable and just world."

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about "The Squad": ___________________________________________________________________________

Trump's hate makes The Squad Stronger by the Atlantic Monthly.

​Who better to personify the opposition party than its official congressional leaders? Tom Daschle. Harry Reid. Chuck Schumer. Nancy Pelosi. Those Democrats have all been targeted by the GOP over the years, much as the Republicans Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell were targeted by Democrats.

The “squad” is different. The four Democrats referred to by that nickname—first-term Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib—have been the focus of attacks by President Donald Trump, who savages them on Twitter and insults them during campaign-style rallies, spurring his supporters to chant against them as they once did against Hillary Clinton.

But they are not leaders in the Democratic Party. They feud with its leader, Pelosi. That’s partly because their views are so much further left than that of the median Democrat. Their preferred agenda cannot pass the House, never mind the Senate. And none is or could be a contender in the 2020 presidential race.

Nevertheless, there was Trump on Thursday, tweeting that “Representatives Omar and Tlaib are the face of the Democrat Party, and they HATE Israel!” Were he working to “make America great again,” he’d take on the most powerful opponents of the agenda that he thinks is best for the country. He picks on the squad because he’s working to get himself reelected, and sees an electoral advantage in drawing the country’s attention to polarizing figures.

He knows that the Democratic leadership wants to distance itself from the squad. He also knows that he is hated intensely by the rank and file of the Democratic Party, and that its leadership feels commensurate pressure to vocally defend any Democrat he attacks (especially when he tells lies, like saying that Omar is pro-al-Qaeda).

Trump hopes to characterize those defenses as expressions of support not only for the individual members of the squad, but also for their agenda. That, he thinks, will persuade voters wary of leftist politics (or strongly attached to Israel) to stick with him.

Given Trump’s low approval rating, the many scandals associated with his presidency, and his failures to build a border wall, transform America’s infrastructure, improve health care, or end America’s foreign wars, running against the squad and socialism may well be a more promising strategy than running on his own record.

But the obvious effect of his actions is to elevate and strengthen the squad. Although most Americans don’t agree with the squad’s agenda and don’t want the left wing of the Democratic Party to drive the national debate, Trump is boosting the members’ name recognition, the media attention they get, their social-media followers, their war chests, and sympathy for them in the Democratic caucus, which will reliably rally around anyone Trump disparages.

That’s not to say the attacks aren’t personally hard for members of the squad to endure. As Daniel Larison wrote at The American Conservative, “Falsely claiming that someone is ‘pro-Al Qaeda’ is one of the most despicable things someone could say about any American, and to say it about a Muslim American is particularly dangerous and obnoxious ... Rep. Omar has already received numerous death threats, and the president’s attacks on her are guaranteed to lead to even more.” Trump’s lies may well be putting Omar’s life in danger.

But the fact is, he is simultaneously helping to boost the squad’s influence in American life.
Imagine if Hillary Clinton started going on Twitter and CNN every day attacking Representative Devin Nunes. Do you think that would help or hurt his ability to raise funds, go on TV, influence public debate, win reelection, and increase his name recognition, paving the way for future opportunities?

In this dysfunctional, nihilistic climate of negative partisanship, where many Americans act based on what they hate more than on what they love, a politics dominated by Trump and the squad attacking each other can plausibly increase the standing of both at the expense of politicians that better represent majority views.

Squad members can justify their focus on Trump by pointing out that they can hardly avoid criticizing the president, Republican standard-bearer, and most powerful man in the world. Trump has no similar justifications. If he believes even half of the negative things he says about the squad, then one can only conclude that he is trying to help his chances of getting reelected at America’s expense.








American political conspiracy theories Pictured below: ​What’s New About Conspiracy Theories? (the New Yorker: "Outsiders have always had a weakness for paranoid fantasies. Now our leaders are conspiracists, too." (See below for article's text)
What’s New About Conspiracy Theories? (New Yorker, April 22, 2019 Issue)

"Outsiders have always had a weakness for paranoid fantasies. Now our leaders are conspiracists, too.
​​
​Donald Trump got his start in national politics as a “birther,” promoting the idea that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Several news organizations have tried to keep track of the conspiracy theories Trump has floated since then. One list, posted by the Web site Business Insider, has nineteen entries.

These include the claims that vaccines can cause autism and that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered.

“They’re saying they found the pillow on his face,” Trump said of Scalia, during the 2016 campaign, “which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow.” (The Business Insider list is limited to full-blown conspiracy theories, and excludes the President’s more casual lies and fabrications.) “No president—indeed, no national official—has resorted to accusations of conspiracy so instinctively, so frequently, and with such brio as Donald Trump,” Muirhead and Rosenblum write.

With Trump in power, they worry, there’s a danger that his dark fantasies may be realized. Democracies depend on buy-in; citizens need to believe in certain basics, starting with the legitimacy of elections. Trump both runs the government and runs it down. The electoral system, he asserts, can’t be trusted. Voter fraud is rampant.

Trump's contempt for institutions ranging from the courts (“slow and political”) to the Federal Communications Commission (“so sad and unfair”) to the F.B.I. (“What are they hiding?”) weakens those institutions, thereby justifying his contempt. As government agencies “lose competence and capacity, they will come to look more and more illegitimate to more and more people,” Muirhead and Rosenblum observe.

Trump is so closely tied to the “new conspiracism” that it can be hard to tell the ranter from the rant. Then again, it’s hard to imagine his ascent without other key developments: the polarization of the electorate, a generation of attacks (mostly from the right) on the news media and government, and, of course, the rise of the Web.

​Spreading conspiracy theories once had a price—printing or even mimeographing a tract costs money—but now, as Muirhead and Rosenblum point out, anyone can post a madcap theory or a doctored photograph virtually for free.

The Internet revolution “has displaced the gatekeepers, the producers, editors, and scholars who decided what was worthy of dissemination,” they write. This has opened the way for “conspiracy entrepreneurs” who proffer “a seemingly infinite array of wild accusations.”

Is it possible to make a rigorous study of conspiracy theories? The task seems self-punishing, like trying to housebreak a chicken. Nevertheless, this is the mission that Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent have chosen to take on.

Research into conspiracy theories “has been hampered by a lack of long-term systematic data,” Uscinski and Parent, political scientists at the University of Miami and the University of Notre Dame, respectively, write in “American Conspiracy Theories.” Fortunately, “methods are now available to better scrutinize what we think we know.”

One of these methods is polling. Uscinski and Parent commissioned a survey of more than twelve hundred Americans, which asked them to react to statements like “Much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places.” On the basis of their answers, respondents were sorted into three groups: “high” (those predisposed to conspiratorial thinking), “low” (those opposed to it), and “medium” (those in the middle). Then the researchers looked at the cross-tabulations.

The less educated the respondent, the more likely he or she was to be a “high.” The poor tended to be more conspiratorially inclined than the rich. Roughly equal proportions of Democrats and Republicans were given to conspiracizing, but among respondents who identified with neither party the proportion jumped.

“He wasn’t even early—he was on his way home from a party!”

The conspiracy-minded, Uscinski and Parent conclude, “deserve their reputation as outsiders.” They are less likely to vote and more apt to view bloodshed as a form of political protest. While eighty per cent of the “lows” rejected the idea that “violence is sometimes an acceptable way to express disagreement with the government,” among the “highs” that figure dropped to fifty-nine per cent. “It is disconcerting that, when asked about gun control, around half of those with higher conspiratorial predispositions wanted less strict gun laws,” Uscinski and Parent observe.

For more long-term data, they turned to newspapers. A battery of assistants sifted through more than a hundred years’ worth of letters to the editor published in the Times and in the Chicago Tribune. Letters that referred to any sort of group acting in secret “at the expense of the common good” were coded as “conspiracy talk.” (No effort was made to distinguish between “talk” about actual conspiracies, e.g., Watergate, and baseless speculation.)

The groups denounced in such missives included the usual suspects—Catholics, Communists, Jews, the United Nations—as well as more surprising targets: ice companies, Lutheran newspapers, the Senate printing office, and the Prime Minister of Malta. The schemes, too, ranged all over the diabolical map, from Herbert Hoover’s secret business deals to bankrupt the U.S. to a C.I.A. plot to spread lesbianism.

When Uscinski and Parent tallied the number of conspiracy-coded letters published each year, they found no twenty-first-century surge in paranoid thinking. On the contrary, averaging out the short-term ups and downs, they conclude that the amount of “conspiracy talk” has remained constant since the nineteen-sixties and has actually declined since the eighteen-nineties: “We do not live in an age of conspiracy theories and have not for some time.” That we believe we do makes sense, since that sentiment, too, is a constant.

“It’s official: America is becoming a conspiratocracy,” the Daily News announced in 2011. “Are we living in a golden age of conspiracy theory?” the Boston Globe wondered in 2004.

It’s the “dawn of a new age of conspiracy theory,” the Washington Post declared in 1994.
“Presumably we could multiply examples back to Salem in 1692, but you understand the point,” Uscinski and Parent write. “Conspiracy scares are ubiquitous.” According to their analysis, short-term variations in the rate of conspiracy theorizing do not coincide with changing economic conditions or advances in technology, like the Web.

Such is their take on “scares” that it’s hard to imagine them finding anything new in the “new conspiracism.” Still, when it comes to paranoia in high places, they share some of Muirhead and Rosenblum’s concerns. When there’s an uptick in conspiracy theorizing by members of the “élite”—defined as government officials, entertainers, and journalists—they observe a corresponding uptick in paranoid theorizing more generally. “This means you, Donald Trump,” they write.

In 2015, a young journalist named Anna Merlan took a cruise to Mexico. Most of the passengers on board the ship, the Ruby Princess, were ordinary vacationers, but a significant minority had signed on for a cruise-within-a-cruise, dubbed by its organizers Conspira-Sea.

The Conspira-Sea crowd was treated to lectures from various “experts,” including Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor whose bogus studies launched the anti-vaxx movement. When Merlan returned to shore, she wrote a lighthearted feature about the experience, for the Web site Jezebel, in which she poked fun at the Conspira-Sea-ers for having lost touch with reality.

Then Trump was elected and Edgar Welch showed up with his guns at Comet Ping Pong. Merlan decided that perhaps she was the one who was out of touch.

In “Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power,” Merlan immerses herself in various subcultures of suspicion. She visits a gathering of white nationalists in eastern Kentucky; attends the annual meeting of the Mutual U.F.O. Network, known as mufon; and hangs out with proponents of “redemption theory,” a strain of nuttiness based on the idea that every American is owed a cache of cash held secretly by the government.

One of her first stops is a rally of Pizzagate diehards in Lafayette Park, not far from the White House. This takes place in March, 2017, three months after Welch’s arrest. Merlan finds the crowd split into factions, each convinced that the other is made up of plants. She’s interviewing a woman who wants to be known as LaLa when she notices a man filming them with his phone. The man accuses LaLa of belonging to the “controlled opposition.” He, in turn, is approached by other phone-wielding demonstrators and charged with working to undermine the cause.

“You’re protecting child molesters, bro,” someone yells at him. But who’s supposed to be doing the controlling or why is never quite clear. “It seems that the core element from everyone inside this ‘movement’ is distrust for everyone around them,” LaLa relates to Merlan. “Nobody knows who’s on whose side, or what the truth is.”
Merlan encounters this dynamic frequently.

People who believe conspiracy theories, it turns out, often suspect others who believe such theories of being crazy, or worse. At the mufon conference, just outside Las Vegas, a speaker named Corey Goode, an eminent figure in the world of ufology, describes how, as a kid, he was taken to an underground facility at Carswell Air Force Base, in Texas, and trained to fight aliens.

Later, Goode maintains, he roamed around the solar system doing “surveillance and recon,” until, finally, his government handlers performed “age regression” and sent him back home, once again as a child. Another U.F.O. researcher at the convention, Richard Dolan, tells Merlan he’s worried about claims like Goode’s, which “aren’t particularly credible.” Like the crowd in Lafayette Park, Dolan is concerned about plants, who he fears are out to undermine the whole ufology enterprise. History, he observes, is “replete with provocateurs and disinformation coming from U.S. government channels.”

Americans, as Merlan notes, have long suspected the government of suppressing the truth about extraterrestrials—such suspicions probably predate the term “extraterrestrial.” Other conspiracy theories, she observes, have even deeper roots.

The charge of ritual child abuse, key to Pizzagate, was levelled against the Jews back in the Middle Ages. It has surfaced many times since, including during what’s become known as the Satanic Panic—a rash of allegations that sent more than twenty Californians to prison in the nineteen-eighties.

(Virtually all the convictions have since been overturned.) Conspiracism, Merlan concludes, has “more or less always been with us”: pizza-parlor workers have simply replaced day-care workers, who replaced Jews.

But she also makes the opposite point. Like Muirhead and Rosenblum, Merlan believes that something novel and dangerous is going on right now. In her account, Trump gets a lot of the credit (or, if you prefer, the blame) and so, too, does the Internet. Merlan cites the Columbine shooting, which took place in 1999, “before the age of YouTube, easily buildable blogs, and widely used social media platforms.”

After the shooting, no one came forward to propose that Columbine had been staged. Today, it is pretty much guaranteed that a mass shooting will give rise to a community on the Web that insists the victims are “crisis actors.”

Merlan interviews Lenny Pozner, a former I.T. consultant whose six-year-old son, Noah, died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in 2012. Pozner has spent most of the past six years battling conspiracists who insist that the shooting never happened and that Noah never even existed. (In February, a Connecticut judge ordered Alex Jones, the owner of the Web site Infowars and a leading purveyor of the Sandy Hook-as-hoax theory, to sit for a deposition in a lawsuit brought by the parents of slain children.

In the deposition, in March, Jones claimed that a “form of psychosis” had made him believe the massacre was staged.)

“This category of recent conspiracy theorists is really a global network of village idiots,” Pozner tells Merlan. “They would have never been able to find each other before, but now it’s this synergistic effect of the combination of all of them from all over the world. There are haters from Australia and Europe and they can all make a YouTube video in fifteen seconds.”

During the 2016 Presidential election, Zeynep Tufekci was watching tapes of Trump rallies when she noticed something odd. Tufekci, an associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a self-described techno-sociologist, found that YouTube began cuing up for her videos filled with racist diatribes and Holocaust denials.

She wondered what was going on, so she created another account and began watching clips of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. This time, she found herself directed to what she later described in the Times as “videos of a leftish conspiratorial cast,” including some that argued that the U.S. government was responsible for the attacks of September 11th.

Tufekci concluded that YouTube had decided that the best way to hold viewers’ attention was to push them toward more and more sensational material. The motive wasn’t political; it was commercial. And probably the scheme wasn’t the work of a cabal, or even a person, but of an algorithm. “What we are witnessing is the computational exploitation of a natural human desire: to look ‘behind the curtain,’ ” Tufekci wrote.

At a minimum, what’s new about the “new conspiracism” is the number of people exposed to it. If there’s a “natural human desire” to get at some hidden truth, it’s never been easier to indulge that desire—or to imagine doing so—via YouTube or Infowars or Twitter.

It’s unclear how many of those who are led to posts on the “truth” about 9/11 or listen to Alex Jones or follow Trump’s tweets actually believe what they encounter, but only a tiny fraction can create a very big problem; after all, almost two billion people click on YouTube videos every month.

In a tacit acknowledgment of responsibility, Pinterest blocked vaccine-related searches on its sites after measles outbreaks in several states this winter. Facebook, too, recently said that it would “reduce the ranking of groups or Pages that spread misinformation about vaccinations.”

In January, without ever explaining how its “up next” algorithm works, YouTube announced that it would “begin reducing recommendations of borderline content,” including videos “making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”

Meanwhile, Pizzagate stumbles on. A couple of months ago, another man was arrested in connection with Comet Ping Pong—this one for setting fire to the place. ♦

[End of Article]
___________________________________________________________________________

American political conspiracy theories (Wikipedia)

American political conspiracy theories are usually defined by the same theme: a small, powerful group strives to hide secretive, destructive information, harm another rival group, or undermine society in general.

Theories play off of actual conspiracies, which include a similar concept: a few individuals work together in secret to unravel a larger system. Often, the struggle between a real conspiracy theory and a misconception of one is what leads to conflict, creating polarization in elections, dispersing distrust in government, as well as racial and political divisions. 

Many political conspiracies begin and spread due to politically charged circumstances, individual's partisan affiliations, and online platforms that form echo-chambers with like-minded individuals. Belief in American political conspiracies applies to all parties, ideologies, races and ethnicities, socioeconomic levels, and genders.

​Contributions:

Circumstantial fear:

Conspiracy theories quite often arise during new political or social circumstances, in which one group of people feels threatened by another set of actors that are either politically, religiously, ethnically, racially, or economically different. 

Theories have begun as early as when Europeans began to colonize the United States, and deemed the Natives as threatening actors. As a result, many colonizers, including Cotton Mather, speculated that Native Americans were controlled by the devil. Some even believed in the "myth of the super-chief," where every Indigenous attack was orchestrated by one Native American chief that controlled thousands of Indian soldiers, striving to wipe out the white.

Theories also arose in response to the counter-culture, feminist, and anti-war era in the 1960s. Many conservatives felt threatened and began to believe that these movements were formed with communistic motivations to undermine the current government. During the 1990s, many right-wing conspiracy theorists also feared that the Clintons were involved in drug cartels and assassinations. 

Some currently theorize that the government is planting drugs in predominately African-American neighborhoods, breeding a greater rate of incarceration and crime in the community. In the year 2020, conspiracy theories spread out of increased anxiety, more staying at home, and a greater focus on the Internet and social media outlets. One such conspiracy that has proliferated from the 2020 Presidential election is QAnon.

Conspiracy theories exist not only because of the fear of the "other," or a frustration with one's own disenfranchisement. Rather, they also come from an increase in change, whether that be social, political, or economical—and the theories are a response to rationalize anxiety about these events, and bring them into context with the country's ideals and laws.

To elaborate, Frank Donner, a 1980s civil liberties lawyer, claimed, especially in times of stress, exaggerated febrile explanations of unwelcome reality come to the surface of American life and attract support. [The increase of conspiratorial movements] illuminate a striking contrast between our claims to superiority, indeed our mission as a redeemer nation to bring a new world order, and the extraordinary fragility of our confidence in our institutions. [That] has led some observers to conclude that we are, subconsciously, quite insecure about the value and permanence of our society.

Conspiracy theories arise among all races and parties because of the fear of a society and a country destabilizing, and how that would affect one's own life. Conspiracy theories, according to Benedictine University Professor of Psychology, James Davis, come about because of three reasons related to this:

A recent review proposes three categories of motivations underlying belief in conspiracy theories...The motivation people have to seek causal explanations to reduce uncertainty ... and to feel in control and safe in their lives ... A third motivation for conspiracy theory endorsement is the desire for individuals to see themselves and their group in a more positive light.

Class structures and a lack of trust in government:

Class structure is also likely to predict one's belief in a political conspiracy theory. If one has a low income, a lack of higher education, a lack of secure employment, they are more likely to believe in a conspiracy due to a general feeling of helplessness.

This lack of control is correlated with class: individuals from higher classes have been proven to feel more in control with their lives, employment, education, and living standards.

Low socioeconomic circumstances can generate political and economical anxiety and a desire to explain the dire circumstances. This helplessness would lead several to find a psychologically soothing explanation: the idea that a group of government actors are plotting against the poor.

This is not to say that those with higher education or a higher IQ level will not believe in conspiracy theories. To understand the theory, many conspiracies require substantial mental effort. 

Believers are defined by more than just their class: they also engage in a psychological phenomenon called "confirmation bias" where they only accept information validating their belief, and reject information that is inconsistent with the conspiracy.

Many individuals also live in positions where specific government policies may cause economic distress. For example, many Americans believe that the government is forcing health industries to hide the cure for or cause of cancer; they also have been intaking drugs that are not FDA-approved because they do not trust the American Medical industry.

This likely may stem from a fear of, and frustration with current US policies on public health; several ill Americans that cannot afford healthcare may look to sources that blame the Medical industry, including conspiracies. It may also originate from a history of fear about the government's lack of transparency or truth in terms of medication: US doctors in the past have approved of mercury, radioactive material, and cigarettes, deeming them healthy when they are in fact the opposite.

Partisan affiliations

​Partisan affiliations sometimes determine a belief in conspiracy theories, but belief usually depends on the theory. There is a correlation between political parties and beliefs in the "birther" conspiracy, the JFK assassination conspiracy, the "truther" conspiracy, the "levee branch" theory, and the "death panel" conspiracy. Partisanship loyalty affects beliefs in some theories, while "conspiratorial thinking" (a general paranoia about the government) determines others.

Conspiracies directly affiliated with the Obama Administration (such as the "birthers" and "death panel" conspiracies) leaned politically to the right, while Democrats were more unlikely to believe in theories that lobbied against President Obama and his policies. As for the "levee branch," “truther," and Kennedy assassination, both political parties had a similar number of people who believed in the theories. 

The individuals that believed in those specific theories also had a previous affinity for conspiratorial thinking, or questioning the credibility of governmental actors. However, it has also been studied that conspiratorial thinkers may be more focused on an anti-governmental mindset—due to their lack of trust for higher authority—rather than a specific theory or party.

Each partisan group is partial to believe in conspiracies that target the opposite party, doing so because of their disbelief in the other party's ideologies and policies. Therefore, conspiracies can come from both political affiliations. In fact, University of Miami political scientist Joseph Uscinski stated that "both sides are equally conspiratorial in their thinking ... No one has a monopoly."

Intuitionists vs rationalists:

Political parties are not just what determine the cause of conspiratorial thinking. Rather, intuitionism and rationalism are two psychological patterns of thought that can determine specific conspiracies, and perhaps even catalyze partisan divisions. Intuitionism is when individuals rely on their emotional responses to current events, and then use heuristics to create an explanation for why the events are happening.

Rationalists instead determine the causes and effects of events based on quantitative evidence. While both intuitionists and rationalists believe in conspiracies, intuitionists more commonly associate themselves with conspiracies due to their association with more qualitative, emotional data stemming from anxiety about society.

Polarization:

Current polarization occurs because of increasingly far right and left thinking, and may also come from the conflict between intuitionists and rationalists. Because both have different ways of thinking, if an intuitionist conservative argues with a rational liberal—or vice versa—disagreement will arise. 

Over the course of history, the right wing has become increasingly intuitionist, often using Biblical or Christian reasoning for justification behind political beliefs or trust in conspiracies. The left wing has been commonly associated with basing belief on quantitative thought rather than religious affiliation; conspiratorial belief may increase because of misinterpretation of numerical data.

Often, political parties engage in the "us vs. them" mentality when understanding theories, believing that the opposite party has cooked up the conspiracy to literally conspire against them.

By defining specific theories to one's political affiliation, many party members become polarized. In fact, Steven Smallpage, Adam Enders, and Joseph Uscinski, all political research writers of Research and Politics, explained, "Although conspiracy theories are often attributed to cognitive hiccups, psychological traits, or psychopathologies, they actually follow the contours of more familiar partisan battles in the age of polarization ... Many conspiracy theories function more like associative partisan attitudes than markers of an alienated psychology."

Conspiracy theories do not arise just because of one's psychology; rather, they usually exist because of divisions in society. Once conspiracies increase, political divisions only grow with them.

Political ignorance:

A lack of awareness about political issues also may perpetuate belief in conspiracy theories. Often, because individuals engage in the mindset that they only hold "just one vote" and may believe that they have little impact, there is little motivation to look at politics objectively, or discover credible information about current events. 

Because individuals may have apathy towards politics, some may rather remain ignorant about issues. As constituents latch onto ignorance and apathy, some may have little care as to whether political information is biased or sometimes even true. 

When there is a lack of knowledge about how political systems function, or even a lack of information about a political candidate, they are much more likely to believe in extreme or false claims, such as conspiracy theories.

Echo-chambers and the spread of conspiracy:

Conspiracy theories have evolved with the media's always increasing developments. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media sites use algorithms that bring up posts, videos, and news that correlate with past searches and interests; conservative users commonly receive conservative information, liberal users usually receive liberal news, and every opinion in between likely receives likewise.

Social media is a key element in creating echo-chambers for conspiracy theorists to express their opinions.

One example of theorists using echo chambers is Alex Jones, the talkshow host of InfoWars. A far-right-leaning host who discusses and analyzes political issues, Jones frequently brought up information that was deemed extreme and sometimes even false, several times having little evidence to back up his claims. 

Because of the abilities of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites to contact individuals that think and believe similarly, InfoWars and its community grew quickly, where several like-minded individuals were given extreme information that they were more likely to believe due to their political affiliations.

Nationalism and multiculturalism:

The fear of a divided nation, or the definition of what it means to be "American," is also another cause to several conspiracies. Often, whenever a nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender differs from specific identities one already affiliates with, fear of national overthrow, of oppression by a separate group, or of attack on one's own way of life, form a distinct "us vs. them" mentality. 

As these fears and mentalities proliferate within like-minded groups, conspiracy theories form about the opposing party to justify the group's existence and beliefs.

For example, conspiracies have been perpetuated in the African-American community that the federal government have instigated AIDS or cocaine into the population; this follows the fear of one group oppressing another (specifically, whites against Black individuals). 

Conspiracies have also been created concerning Native Americans, either arguing against Native Americans or advocating for them.

Robert A. Goldberg, a University of Utah professor on history, also states as to why stigmatized and more privileged groups both struggle with conspiracy theories about the other,

"Recall a uniquely American word – Un-American. There are no unFrench, or UnSwedish, or UnIsraeli counterparts. Americans harbor this suspicion, the danger of betrayal from within..."

Americans are afraid of having their identity as "Americans," comprised by the "other" group that is different from them culturally, ethnically, racially, or religiously. Thus, several conspiracies have affected the social life of the Indigenous, the Black, and the white.

Impacts:

Elections:

Several conspiracies have been generated out of elections; one election-specific conspiracy is the belief in election fraud. The fear that ballots may have been faked, or cast incorrectly, spans political parties, genders, and races. Partisan affiliations and conspiratorial thinking are both to blame.

Commonly, before the election, a belief in widespread voter fraud influencing the election outcomes are likely to come from conspiratorial thinking and a distrust in higher authority After the election, a belief in fraud is likely to come from partisan affiliations (usually originating from the losing party). 

Democrats and Republicans, while both believing in election fraud, generally accept differing methods of fraud: Republicans often fear that Democrats will cast illegal ballots (such as if they are not a legal citizen of the US), and Democrats worry that not enough members of their party will be able to. Conspiracy theories, and the fear of an opposite party and their influence as a result, can also drive citizens to vote, and influence the outcomes of an election.

2016 Election:

The election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, many conspiracies developed about the opposite candidate—particularly theories against Clinton or Trump's other opponents. As a result, social media, especially Facebook, came under fire for fanning the flames of fake news. 

Because 44% of Americans receive their news from Facebook, some claim that if Facebook does not filter disinformation in extreme posts, the conspiracies could potentially be dangerous. Many also argue about the potential conflicts censorship has with the First Amendment.

2020 Election:
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In response to the 2020 election—and the fears generated out of whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden would win—several conspiracies have spread around social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter. 

QAnon is one such conspiracy with a massive following; it has generated over 100 million comments and likes on Facebook in the year 2020 alone. Many have expressed the fear that, because of QAnon's influence and beliefs in Donald Trump as the current Savior of the world, it supports Trump's threats to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. 

Since the Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 Presidential election, however, QAnon followers have experienced either a crisis of faith, or have been in denial, believing that President Trump is working behind the scenes to defeat "shadowy forces" that determined Biden's win.

Facebook has banned over 790 QAnon groups, 100 pages, and 1,500 ads tied to the theory in an attempt to dispel the following. Instagram has also taken action, restricting over 10,000 accounts where QAnon could have an effect on the populace and the election. 

​To avoid the creation of echo-chambers and further polarization, Facebook prevents QAnon groups from forming, but allows individuals to occasionally post their support. Facebook has also prevented followers from organizing fundraisers and selling merchandise to raise money for the organization.

See also:







Political Bias amidst the Paradox of Voting Pictured: 11 Cognitive Biases That Influence Political Outcomes
​Political bias is a bias or perceived bias involving the slanting or altering of information to make a political position or political candidate seem more attractive. With a distinct association with media bias, it commonly refers to how a reporter, news organisation, or TV show covers a political candidate or a policy issue.

Bias emerges in a political context when individuals engage in an inability or an unwillingness to understand a politically opposing point of view. Such bias in individuals may have its roots in their traits and thinking styles; it is unclear whether individuals at particular positions along the political spectrum are more biased than any other individuals.

Political Bias exists beyond simple presentation and understanding of view-points favoring a particular political leader or party but rather transcends into the readings and interactions among individuals undertaken on a daily basis. 

The prevalence of political bias has a lasting impact with proven effects on voter behavior and consequent political outcomes.

With an understanding of political bias, comes the acknowledgement of its violation of expected political neutrality. A lack of political neutrality is the result of political bias.

​Types of bias in a political context:

Concision bias: Refers to perspective reporting using only the words necessary to explain a view quickly and spends little or no time to detail unconventional, difficult to explain views.

Concision bias aims to increase communication by selectively focusing on the important information and eliminating redundancy. In a political context this can mean the omission of seemingly unnecessary details can actually constitute bias in itself depending on what information is deemed unnecessary. Political opinions are often reduced to a simple party understanding or belief system, with other challenging information excluded in its presentation.

Coverage bias: When political parties address topics and issues to different extents. This makes certain issues seem more prevalent and presents ideas as more important or necessary. In a political atmosphere this applies to the presentation of policies and the issues they address, along with the actual coverage by media and politicians.

Confirmation bias: A cognitive bias that favors and seeks information which affirms pre-existing beliefs and opinions. When set in a political atmosphere, individuals with like-minded political beliefs will seek and affirm their opinions, discounting contradictory information. A recent meta-analysis attempted to compare levels of confirmation bias among liberals and conservatives in the United States and found that both groups were roughly equally biased.

​False consensus bias: Exists when the normalization of an individual's opinions, beliefs and values are believed to be common. This bias exists in a group setting where the collective group opinion is attributed to the wider population, with little to no inter group challenges.

This is the basis of political party formation and engages in the ongoing attempt to normalize these views within the wider population with little recognition of different beliefs outside the party.

Speculative content: When stories focus on what has the potential to occur with speculative phrasing such as "may", "what if" and "could" rather than focusing on the evidence of what has and/or definitely will occur. When a piece is not specifically labelled as an opinion and analysis article, it can lead to further speculative bias. 

This occurs in a political context, particularly introducing policies, or addressing opposing policies. This bias allows parties to make their policies more appealing and appear to address issues more directly, by speculating the positive and negative outcomes.

Gatekeeping bias: This type of bias exists through the use of ideological selection, deselection and/or omission of stories based on individualized opinions. This is similarly related to agenda bias, existing primarily when the focus is on politicians and how they choose to cover and present preferred policy discussions and issues.

Partisan bias: Exists in the media when reporters serve and create the leaning of a particular political party.

Political neutrality:

Political neutrality is the counteraction for political bias, looking to ensure the ability of public servants to carry out any official duties impartially, relative to their political beliefs. 

In areas like media coverage, legal and bureaucratic decisions and academic teachings, the need for taking corrective action against politically biased actions is the foundation of political neutrality enforcement. 

Research suggests that political neutrality is favored over political bias, with Republicans, Independents and Democrats preferring to get their news from politically neutral media. Individuals responses to political bias and motivations are challenged when the engagement of bias furthers and assists their political party or ideology. 

The denunciation of political neutrality itself elicits a more aggravated response, directly controlling a normative acceptance of political bias. Limitations of political neutrality exist regarding media coverage and generate accusations for any actions or messages perceived as politically biased. 

Biases remain embedded in contextual intergroup competition, meaning political considerations based on action or message can challenge specific ideologies or further enhance and advance an ideology.

Political bias and framing:

Political bias exists primarily in the concept of framing. Framing is the social construction of political or social movements with a positive or negative representation. Political bias in this context is political leaders and parties presenting information to highlight a problem and offering solutions that favor their own political position. This makes their personal position appear more favorable and their policies as the expected course of action.

The framing effect looks at the situations in which people are only presented with options within two frames, one presented negatively and the other positively. The framing effect is increasingly significant in opinion polls designed to encourage specific organizations that are commissioned to poll. 

If reliable, credible and sufficient information is provided, this bias can be significantly reduced. Framing further looks at the impact of slanting in political campaigning and its potential impact on the distribution of political power where political bias is present. It is important to understand framing is an omnipresent process used in analysis to discern connections between aspects of reality and to convey an interpretation of opinions that may not be entirely accurate.

Evidence of political bias in search engines:

Search results from search engines like Google often shape opinions and perceptions of political issues and candidates. Google does not design algorithms to provide balanced or equal representation of controversial issues. 

Search engines influence democracy because of the potential distrust of media leading to increasing online searches for political information and understanding. 

Looking specifically at America, the Fairness Doctrine was introduced in 1949 to avoid political bias in all licensed broadcasting media. Within the context of polarizing topics such as political bias, the top search results can play a significant role in shaping opinions.

Through the use of a bias quantification framework, bias can be measured within the political bias by rank within the search system. It can further address the sources of the bias through the input data and ranking system. Within the context of information queries, a ranking system determines the search results, which in the case of topics such as politics can return politically biased search results. 

The bias presented in the search results can directly result from either biased data that collaborates the ranking system or because of the structure of the ranking system itself. This questionable nature of search results raises questions of the impact on users and to what degree the ranking system can impact political opinions and beliefs, which can directly translate into voter behavior. 

This can also affirm or encourage biased data within the Google search results. Whilst research has shown users do not place exclusive trust on the information provided by search engines, studies have shown that individuals who are undecided politically are susceptible to manipulation by bias relative to political candidates and the light in which their policies and actions are presented and conveyed. 

In the quantification of political bias, both the input data for search results and the ranking system in which they are presented to the user encapsulates bias to varying degrees.

There is distinctive political bias present in social media where the algorithm which structures user content facilitates confirmation bias. This involves presenting political information dependent on common searches and focuses of the users further re-affirming political bias and reducing exposure to politically neutral content.

Determining the difference between content and source bias is a significant focus of determining the role of political bias in search engines. This focus looks directly at the actual content of the information present and whether it is purposefully selective in the information presented, or rather whether the source of the information is projecting personalized opinions relative to their political opinions.

Political bias in the media:

Media bias highlights political bias in the reporting of political topics and the representation of politicians. Where a reporter sometimes emphasizes particular points of view and conveys selected information to further their own political view, they may present biased information favoring their own political opinion or that of their readership.

Determining media biases relative to political positioning, there are distinctive regulations which protect against the fabrication of information. The media, rather, may alter the representation of information to promote political positions. 

Media bias can alter political opinions, which directly impact voter behaviour and decisions, because of the failed representation of information. This form of political bias has continuing impacts when used to change opinions of others. Where media remains a powerful information source for political information, it can create political bias in the informational representation of political actors and policy issues.

​An example of quantification of political bias in the media is a propaganda model, a concept introduced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It is a political economy model, looking at the "manufacturing" of political policies through manipulation of mass media. This model further looked at the capital funding of media outlets and their ownership, which often relates to political ties.

Political bias in the media is also discussed showing how social leaders discuss political issues. To determine the existence of political bias, agenda determination is used. Agenda determination is designed to provide an understanding of the agenda behind the presentation of political issues and attempt to determine the political bias that is present.

Within a 2002 study by Jim A. Kuypers: Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues, he looks at the omission of left leaning points of view from the mainstream print press. 

Kuypers determined politicians would receive positive press coverage only when covering and delivering topics that aligned with press-supported beliefs. This meant the press were engaging in bias within the media through their coverage and selection/release of political information, which was challenging the neutral conveyance of political messages.

David Baron similarly presents a game-theoretic model of media behavior, suggesting that mass media outlets only hire journalists whose writing is aligned with their political positions. This engages false consensus bias, as beliefs are determined to be common because of being surrounding by aligned views. This effectively heightens the political bias within media representation of information.

​Attempts to counteract political bias on the left:

The Media Research Center (MRC) is an American media watch group, with specific focus on the presence of politically biased content. Its stated mission is to "expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the left". 

The Media Research Center currently operates numerous projects aimed at calling attention to political bias in the media and ensuring it is correctly identified. 

MRC releases a newsletter written by editor Brent Baker called CyberAlert aimed at profiling any inaccurate reports about politics within the news media, specific to America. He addresses media articles as potentially biased articles by labeling them BIASALERT. The analysis of political bias in the media is determined through collaboration with Media Reality Check, which specifically aims to combat liberal bias and reporting. 

In 2005, Media Research Center developed a website called NewsBusters, which acts as a blog for analysis of stories where political bias has been flagged. It operates on a more personal note, not only calling out bias in articles, but challenging the authors of the articles over their politically biased writing. 

In the United States, bias now needs to be disclosed as a conflict of interest when addressing political parties, candidates and policies. This addresses the point that individuals will hold different political opinions and have vested interests in different political topics. By disclosing the bias, the conflict of interest and the presence of a bias can be understood.

See also: ___________________________________________________________________________

The paradox of voting, also called Downs' paradox, is that for a rational, self-interested voter, the costs of voting will normally exceed the expected benefits.

Because the chance of exercising the pivotal vote (i.e., in an otherwise tied election) is minuscule compared to any realistic estimate of the private individual benefits of the different possible outcomes, the expected benefits of voting are less than the costs. Note this is only true in winner-takes-all voting systems like the U.S. system.

Moreover, the expected benefits are even less than what they might seem at first sight, because one's vote will never be certainly pivotal. This is because a person's vote can only obviate or necessitate a tiebreaker procedure: in the former case a voter's preferred candidate might have come out of the tiebreaker the winner anyway, and, in the latter, the voter's preferred candidate could still be the ultimate loser.

​History of scholarship:

The issue was noted by Nicolas de Condorcet in 1793 when he stated, "In single-stage elections, where there are a great many voters, each voter's influence is very small. It is therefore possible that the citizens will not be sufficiently interested [to vote]" and "... we know that this interest [which voters have in an election] must decrease with each individual's [i.e. voter's] influence on the election and as the number of voters increases."

In 1821, Hegel made a similar observation in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right: "As for popular suffrage, it may be further remarked that especially in large states it leads inevitably to electoral indifference, since the casting of a single vote is of no significance where there is a multitude of electors."

The mathematician Charles L. Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, published the paper "A Method of Taking Votes on More than Two Issues" in 1876.

This problem in modern public choice theory was analysed by Anthony Downs in 1957.

Responses:

Alternative responses modify the postulate of egoistic rationality in various ways. For example, Brennan and Lomasky suggest that voters derive 'expressive' benefits from supporting particular candidates.

However, this implies that voting choices are unlikely to reflect the self-interest of voters, as is normally assumed in public choice theory; that is, rational behavior is restricted to the instrumental as opposed to the intrinsic value of actions.

Some have hypothesized that voting is linked genetically with evolved behaviors such as cooperation. One study of identical and fraternal twins' voting patterns concluded that 60% of differences in turnout among twins can be accounted for by genetics, but another interpretation of this study put the figure at 40%.

Another suggestion is that voters are rational but not fully egoistic. In this view voters have some altruism, and perceive a benefit if others (or perhaps only others like them) are benefited. They care about others, even if they care about themselves more. Since an election affects many others, it could still be rational to cast a vote with only a small chance of affecting the outcome.

This view makes testable predictions: that close elections will see higher turnout, and that a candidate who made a secret promise to pay a given voter if they win would sway that voter's vote less in large and/or important elections than in small and/or unimportant ones.

Some argue that the paradox appears to ignore the collateral benefits associated with voting, besides affecting the outcome of the vote. For instance, magnitudes of electoral wins and losses are very closely watched by politicians, their aides, pundits and voters, because they indicate the strength of support for candidates, and tend to be viewed as an inherently more accurate measure of such than mere opinion polls (which have to rely on imperfect sampling).

However, these arguments themselves ignore that adherents to the paradox believe their individual vote makes a negligible difference; not only to the electoral outcome but also, by extension, to these supposed "collateral benefits".

Another argument that has been raised, is that researching who or what to vote for may increase the voter's political knowledge and community awareness, both of which may contribute to a general sense of civic duty, although in such a case the act of voting itself contributes nothing to this.

See also:






​
Political SociologyPictured below: Power, Politics, and Society : an Introduction to Political Sociology
​Political sociology is concerned with the sociological analysis of political phenomena ranging from the State and civil society to the family, investigating topics such as citizenship, social movements, and the sources of social power.

The lineage of this discipline is typically traced from such thinkers as Montesquieu, Smith and Ferguson through the founding fathers of sociology – Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber – to such contemporary theorists as Anthony Giddens, Jurgen Habermas and Michael Mann.

Traditional divisions:

Traditionally, there were four main areas of research:
  1. The sociopolitical formation of the modern state
  2. How social inequality between groups (class, race, gender) influences politics
  3. How public opinion, ideologies, personalities, social movements, and trends outside of the formal institutions of political power affect formal politics
  4. Power relationships within and between social groups (e.g. families, workplaces, bureaucracy, media)

In other words, political sociology was traditionally concerned with how social trends, dynamics, and structures of domination affect formal political processes, as well as exploring how various social forces work together to change political policies.

From this perspective, we can identify three major theoretical frameworks: 
  1. pluralism,
  2. elite or managerial theory,
  3. and class analysis, which overlaps with Marxist analysis. 

Pluralism sees politics primarily as a contest among competing interest groups. Elite or managerial theory is sometimes called a state-centered approach.

It explains what the state does by looking at constraints from organizational structure, semi-autonomous state managers, and interests that arise from the state as a unique, power-concentrating organization. A leading representative is Theda Skocpol.

Social class theory analysis emphasizes the political power of capitalist elites. It can be split into two parts: one is the "power structure" or "instrumentalist" approach, whereas another is the structuralist approach.

The power structure approach focuses on the question of who rules and its most well-known representative is G. William Domhoff. The structuralist approach emphasizes the way a capitalist economy operates; only allowing and encouraging the state to do some things but not others (Nicos Poulantzas, Bob Jessop).

Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been:
  • "Why do so few American or European citizens choose to vote?" 
  • or even, "What difference does it make if women get elected?", 
  • political sociologists also now ask,
    • "How is the body a site of power?", 
    • "How are emotions relevant to global poverty?", 
    • and, "What difference does knowledge make to democracy?"

Marxist theory of the state:

Marx's ideas about the state can be divided into three subject areas: pre-capitalist states, states in the capitalist (i.e. present) era and the state (or absence of one) in post-capitalist society. Overlaying this is the fact that his own ideas about the state changed as he grew older, differing in his early pre-communist phase, the young Marx phase which predates the unsuccessful 1848 uprisings in Europe and in his mature, more nuanced work.

In Marx's 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, his basic conception is that the state and civil society are separate. However, he already saw some limitations to that model, arguing: "The political state everywhere needs the guarantee of spheres lying outside it."

He as yet was saying nothing about the abolition of private property, does not express a developed theory of class, and "the solution [he offers] to the problem of the state/civil society separation is a purely political solution, namely universal suffrage." (Evans, 112)

By the time he wrote The German Ideology (1846), Marx viewed the state as a creature of the bourgeois economic interest. Two years later, that idea was expounded in The Communist Manifesto:

The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

This represents the high point of conformance of the state theory to an economic interpretation of history in which the forces of production determine peoples' production relations and their production relations determine all other relations, including the political. 

Although "determines" is the strong form of the claim, Marx also uses "conditions". Even "determination" is not causality and some reciprocity of action is admitted. The bourgeoisie control the economy, therefore they control the state. In this theory, the state is an instrument of class rule.

Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony is tied to his conception of the capitalist state:
  • Gramsci does not understand the state in the narrow sense of the government.
  • Instead, he divides it between political society (the police, the army, legal system, etc.) – the arena of political institutions and legal constitutional control – and civil society (the family, the education system, trade unions, etc.) – commonly seen as the private or non-state sphere, which mediates between the state and the economy.
  • However, he stresses that the division is purely conceptual and that the two often overlap in reality. 
  • Gramsci claims the capitalist state rules through force plus consent: political society is the realm of force and civil society is the realm of consent.
  • Gramsci proffers that under modern capitalism the bourgeoisie can maintain its economic control by allowing certain demands made by trade unions and mass political parties within civil society to be met by the political sphere.
  • Thus, the bourgeoisie engages in passive revolution by going beyond its immediate economic interests and allowing the forms of its hegemony to change.

Gramsci posits that movements such as reformism and fascism, as well as the scientific management and assembly line methods of Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford respectively, are examples of this.

English marxist sociologist Ralph Miliband was influenced by American sociologist C. Wright Mills, of whom he had been a friend. He published The State in Capitalist Society in 1969, a study in Marxist political sociology, rejecting the idea that pluralism spread political power, and maintaining that power in Western democracies was concentrated in the hands of a dominant class. 

Nicos Poulantzas's theory of the state reacted to what he saw as simplistic understandings within Marxism. For him Instrumentalist Marxist accounts such as that of Miliband held that the state was simply an instrument in the hands of a particular class.

Poulantzas disagreed with this because he saw the capitalist class as too focused on its individual short-term profit, rather than on maintaining the class's power as a whole, to simply exercise the whole of state power in its own interest.

Poulantzas argued that the state, though relatively autonomous from the capitalist class, nonetheless functions to ensure the smooth operation of capitalist society, and therefore benefits the capitalist class. In particular, he focused on how an inherently divisive system such as capitalism could coexist with the social stability necessary for it to reproduce itself—looking in particular to nationalism as a means to overcome the class divisions within capitalism.

Borrowing from Gramsci's notion of cultural hegemony, Poulantzas argued that repressing movements of the oppressed is not the sole function of the state. Rather, state power must also obtain the consent of the oppressed. It does this through class alliances, where the dominant group makes an "alliance" with subordinate groups as a means to obtain the consent of the subordinate group.

Bob Jessop was influenced by Gramsci, Miliband and Poulantzas to propose that the state is not as an entity but as a social relation with differential strategic effects. This means that the state is not something with an essential, fixed property such as a neutral coordinator of different social interests, an autonomous corporate actor with its own bureaucratic goals and interests, or the 'executive committee of the bourgeoisie' as often described by pluralists, elitists/statists and conventional marxists respectively.

Rather, what the state is essentially determined by is the nature of the wider social relations in which it is situated, especially the balance of social forces.

Max Weber on the state and rationalization:

In political sociology, one of Weber's most influential contributions is his "Politics as a Vocation" (Politik als Beruf) essay. Therein, Weber unveils the definition of the state as that entity that possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. 

Weber wrote that politics is the sharing of state's power between various groups, and political leaders are those who wield this power. Weber distinguished three ideal types of political leadership (alternatively referred to as three types of domination, legitimization or authority):
  1. charismatic authority (familial and religious),
  2. traditional authority (patriarchs, patrimonialism, feudalism)
  3. and legal authority (modern law and state, bureaucracy).

In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled contained such elements and they can be analysed on the basis of this tripartite distinction. He notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinize" into a more structured form of authority.

In a pure type of traditional rule, sufficient resistance to a ruler can lead to a "traditional revolution". The move towards a rational-legal structure of authority, utilizing a bureaucratic structure, is inevitable in the end. Thus this theory can be sometimes viewed as part of the social evolutionism theory. This ties to his broader concept of rationalization by suggesting the inevitability of a move in this direction.

"Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge." — Max Weber

Weber described many ideal types of public administration and government in Economy and Society (1922). His critical study of the bureaucratization of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularity of this term. 

Many aspects of modern public administration go back to Weber and a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the Continental type is called "Weberian civil service". As the most efficient and rational way of organizing, bureaucratization for Weber was the key part of the rational-legal authority and furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalization of the Western society. 

Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterized by hierarchical organization, by delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, by action taken (and recorded) on the basis of written rules, by bureaucratic officials needing expert training, by rules being implemented neutrally and by career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by organizations, not by individuals.

The Italian school of elite theory:

Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941), and Robert Michels (1876–1936), were cofounders of the Italian school of elitism which influenced subsequent elite theory in the Western tradition.

The outlook of the Italian school of elitism is based on two ideas: Power lies in position of authority in key economic and political institutions. The psychological difference that sets elites apart is that they have personal resources, for instance intelligence and skills, and a vested interest in the government; while the rest are incompetent and do not have the capabilities of governing themselves, the elite are resourceful and strive to make the government work.

For in reality, the elite would have the most to lose in a failed state.

Pareto emphasized the psychological and intellectual superiority of elites, believing that they were the highest accomplishers in any field. He discussed the existence of two types of elites:Governing elites and Non-governing elites. He also extended the idea that a whole elite can be replaced by a new one and how one can circulate from being elite to non-elite. 

Mosca emphasized the sociological and personal characteristics of elites. He said elites are an organized minority and that the masses are an unorganized majority. The ruling class is composed of the ruling elite and the sub-elites. He divides the world into two group: Political class and Non-Political class. Mosca asserts that elites have intellectual, moral, and material superiority that is highly esteemed and influential.

Sociologist Michels developed the iron law of oligarchy where, he asserts, social and political organizations are run by few individuals, and social organization and labor division are key. He believed that all organizations were elitist and that elites have three basic principles that help in the bureaucratic structure of political organization:
  1. Need for leaders, specialized staff and facilities
  2. Utilization of facilities by leaders within their organization
  3. The importance of the psychological attributes of the leaders

Pluralism and power relations:

Contemporary political sociology takes these questions seriously, but it is concerned with the play of power and politics across societies, which includes, but is not restricted to, relations between the state and society.

In part, this is a product of the growing complexity of social relations, the impact of social movement organizing, and the relative weakening of the state as a result of globalization.

To a significant part, however, it is due to the radical rethinking of social theory. This is as much focused now on micro questions (such as the formation of identity through social interaction, the politics of knowledge, and the effects of the contestation of meaning on structures), as it is on macro questions (such as how to capture and use state power).

Chief influences here include:
Political sociology attempts to explore the dynamics between the two institutional systems introduced by the advent of Western capitalist system that are the democratic constitutional liberal state and the capitalist economy. While democracy promises impartiality and legal equality before all citizens, the capitalist system results in unequal economic power and thus possible political inequality as well.

For pluralists, the distribution of political power is not determined by economic interests but by multiple social divisions and political agendas. The diverse political interests and beliefs of different factions work together through collective organizations to create a flexible and fair representation that in turn influences political parties which make the decisions.

The distribution of power is then achieved through the interplay of contending interest groups. The government in this model functions just as a mediating broker and is free from control by any economic power.

This pluralistic democracy however requires the existence of an underlying framework that would offer mechanisms for citizenship and expression and the opportunity to organize representations through social and industrial organizations, such as trade unions.

Ultimately, decisions are reached through the complex process of bargaining and compromise between various groups pushing for their interests. Many factors, pluralists believe, have ended the domination of the political sphere by an economic elite.

The power of organized labor and the increasingly interventionist state have placed restrictions on the power of capital to manipulate and control the state. Additionally, capital is no longer owned by a dominant class, but by an expanding managerial sector and diversified shareholders, none of whom can exert their will upon another.

The pluralist emphasis on fair representation however overshadows the constraints imposed on the extent of choice offered. Bachrauch and Baratz (1963) examined the deliberate withdrawal of certain policies from the political arena. For example, organized movements that express what might seem as radical change in a society can often by portrayed as illegitimate.

The "power elite":

A main rival to pluralist theory in the United States was the theory of the "power elite" by sociologist C. Wright Mills.

According to Mills, the eponymous "power elite" are those that occupy the dominant positions, in the dominant institutions (military, economic and political) of a dominant country, and their decisions (or lack of decisions) have enormous consequences, not only for the U.S. population but, "the underlying populations of the world."

​The institutions which they head, Mills posits, are a triumvirate of groups that have succeeded weaker predecessors:
  1. "two or three hundred giant corporations" which have replaced the traditional agrarian and craft economy,
  2. a strong federal political order that has inherited power from "a decentralized set of several dozen states" and "now enters into each and every cranny of the social structure,"
  3. and the military establishment, formerly an object of "distrust fed by state militia," but now an entity with "all the grim and clumsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain."

Importantly, and in distinction from modern American conspiracy theory, Mills explains that the elite themselves may not be aware of their status as an elite, noting that "often they are uncertain about their roles" and "without conscious effort, they absorb the aspiration to be ... The Onecide."

Nonetheless, he sees them as a quasi-hereditary caste. The members of the power elite, according to Mills, often enter into positions of societal prominence through educations obtained at establishment universities.

The resulting elites, who control the three dominant institutions (military, economy and political system) can be generally grouped into one of six types, according to Mills:
  • the "Metropolitan 400" - members of historically notable local families in the principal American cities, generally represented on the Social Register
  • "Celebrities" - prominent entertainers and media personalities
  • the "Chief Executives" - presidents and CEOs of the most important companies within each industrial sector
  • the "Corporate Rich" - major landowners and corporate shareholders
  • the "Warlords" - senior military officers, most importantly the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • the "Political Directorate" - "fifty-odd men of the executive branch" of the U.S. federal government, including the senior leadership in the Executive Office of the President, sometimes variously drawn from elected officials of the Democratic and Republican parties but usually professional government bureaucrats

Mills formulated a very short summary of his book: "Who, after all, runs America? No one runs it altogether, but in so far as any group does, the power elite."

Who Rules America? is a book by research psychologist and sociologist, G. William Domhoff, first published in 1967 as a best-seller (#12), with six subsequent editions . Domhoff argues in the book that a power elite wields power in America through its support of think-tanks, foundations, commissions, and academic departments.

Additionally, he argues that the elite control institutions through overt authority, not through covert influence. In his introduction, Domhoff writes that the book was inspired by the work of four men:
  1. sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, 
  2. sociologist C. Wright Mills,
  3. economist Paul Sweezy,
  4. and political scientist Robert A. Dahl.

T.H. Marshall on citizenship:

T. H. Marshall's Social Citizenship is a political concept first highlighted in his essay, Citizenship and Social Class in 1949.

Marshall's concept defines the social responsibilities the state has to its citizens or, as Marshall puts it, “from [granting] the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society”. 

One of the key points made by Marshall is his belief in an evolution of rights in England acquired via citizenship, from “civil rights in the eighteenth [century], political in the nineteenth, and social in the twentieth”. 

This evolution however, has been criticized by many for only being from the perspective of the white working man. Marshall concludes his essay with three major factors for the evolution of social rights and for their further evolution, listed below:
  1. The lessening of the income gap
  2. “The great extension of the area of common culture and common experience”
  3. An enlargement of citizenship and more rights granted to these citizens.

Many of the social responsibilities of a state have since become a major part of many state’s policies (see United States Social Security). However, these have also become controversial issues as there is a debate over whether a citizen truly has the right to education and even more so, to social welfare.

Seymour Martin Lipset on the social "requisites" of democracy:

In Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset provided a very influential analysis of the bases of democracy across the world.

Larry Diamond and Gary Marks argue that "Lipset's assertion of a direct relationship between economic development and democracy has been subjected to extensive empirical examination, both quantitative and qualitative, in the past 30 years. And the evidence shows, with striking clarity and consistency, a strong causal relationship between economic development and democracy." 

The book sold more than 400,000 copies and was translated into 20 languages, including: Vietnamese, Bengali, and Serbo-Croatian. Lipset was one of the first proponents of Modernization theory which states that democracy is the direct result of economic growth, and that “[t]he more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy.”

Lipset's modernization theory has continued to be a significant factor in academic discussions and research relating to democratic transitions. It has been referred to as the "Lipset hypothesis" and the "Lipset thesis".

See also:






​
McCarthyism (Josephy McCarthy)Pictured below: The Legacy of McCarthyism
​McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason, especially when related to communism, without any proper regard for evidence. The term refers to U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy (below and R-Wisconsin) and has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting from the late 1940s through the 1950s. It was characterized by heightened political repression and a campaign spreading fear of communist influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents.

After the mid-1950s, McCarthyism began to decline, mainly due to the gradual loss of public popularity and opposition from the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren Court made a series of rulings that helped bring an end to McCarthyism.

What would become known as the McCarthy era began before McCarthy's rise to national fame. Following the First Red Scare, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order in 1947 to screen federal employees for association with organizations deemed "totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive", or advocating "to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means."

In 1949, a high-level State Department official was convicted of perjury in a case of espionage, and the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb. The Korean War started the next year, raising tensions in the United States.

In a speech in February 1950, McCarthy presented a list of alleged members of the Communist Party USA working in the State Department, which attracted press attention. McCarthyism was published for the first time in late March of that year in The Christian Science Monitor, and in a political cartoon by Herblock in The Washington Post.

The term has since taken on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. In the early 21st century, the term is used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, and demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.

During the McCarthy era, hundreds of Americans were accused of being "communists" or "communist sympathizers"; they became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private industry panels, committees, and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, academics, and labor-union activists.

Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs were sometimes exaggerated.

Many people suffered loss of employment or destruction of their careers; some were imprisoned. Most of these punishments came about through:
  • trial verdicts that were later overturned, 
  • laws that were later declared unconstitutional, 
  • dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable, 
  • or extra-legal procedures, such as informal blacklists, that would come into general disrepute.

The most notable examples of McCarthyism include the so-called investigations conducted by Senator McCarthy, and the hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

In his book The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, journalist Ronald Kessler quoted former FBI agent Robert J. Lamphere, who participated in all of the FBI's major spy cases during the McCarthy period, as saying that FBI agents who worked counterintelligence were aghast that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover supported McCarthy. Lamphere told Kessler that "McCarthyism did all kinds of harm because he was pushing something that wasn't so."

The VENONA intercepts showed that over several decades, "[t]here were a lot of spies in the government, but not all in the State Department," Lamphere said. However, "[t]he problem was that McCarthy lied about his information and figures. He made charges against people that weren't true. McCarthyism harmed the counterintelligence effort against the Soviet threat because of the revulsion it caused. All along, Hoover was helping him."

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about McCarthyism: ___________________________________________________________________________

​Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician and attorney who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957.

Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion. 

He is known for alleging that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry and elsewhere. Ultimately, the smear tactics that he used led him to be censured by the U.S. Senate.

The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.

Born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, McCarthy commissioned into the Marine Corps in 1942, where he served as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bomber squadron. Following the end of World War II, he attained the rank of major.

He volunteered to fly twelve combat missions as a gunner-observer. These missions were generally safe, and after one where he was allowed to shoot as much ammunition as he wanted to, mainly at coconut trees, he acquired the nickname "Tail-Gunner Joe". Some of his claims of heroism were later shown to be exaggerated or falsified, leading many of his critics to use "Tail-Gunner Joe" as a term of mockery.

McCarthy successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1946, defeating Robert M. La Follette Jr. After three largely undistinguished years in the Senate, McCarthy rose suddenly to national fame in February 1950, when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of "members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department. 

In succeeding years after his 1950 speech, McCarthy made additional accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S. Truman, the Voice of America, and the U.S. Army. He also used various charges of communism, communist sympathies, disloyalty, or sex crimes to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government. This included a concurrent "Lavender Scare" against suspected homosexuals; as homosexuality was prohibited by law at the time, it was also perceived to increase a person's risk for blackmail.

With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, and following the suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt that same year, McCarthy's support and popularity faded. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67–22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. He continued to speak against communism and socialism until his death at the age of 48 at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 2, 1957.

His death certificate listed the cause of death as "Hepatitis, acute, cause unknown". Doctors had not previously reported him to be in critical condition. Some biographers say this was caused or exacerbated by alcoholism.

Click here for more about Joseph McCarthy.








Political Gerrymandering in the United States also "This is actually what America would look like without gerrymandering" (Washington Post 1/13/2016) Pictured below: Color shades:
  • blue= Democrat districts;
  • red= Republican districts
  • shades of each = mix of blue (Democrats) vs. red (Republicans) to represent districts that are split between the two political parties: the  more red a district is the more it is Republican and the more blue a district is the more it is Democrat.
Top image = Current Congressional District Map vs. Bottom Image = Without Gerrymandering. You will note that the Republican party with gerrymandering encompasses more overall seats in the House of Representatives. (Courtesy of Washington Post: see full article below)
This is actually what America would look like without gerrymandering (Washington Post, 1/13/2016)

​In his State of the Union speech, President Obama called on lawmakers and the public to take a number of steps "to change the system to reflect our better selves" for "a better politics."

The top item on that list was to end partisan gerrymandering: "we have to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around," Obama said.

In most states, state legislatures draw the district boundaries that determine how many delegates the state sends to the U.S. Congress, as well as the general partisan make-up of that delegation. State legislatures are partisan beasts, and if one party is in control of the process they can draw boundaries to give themselves a numeric advantage over their opponents in Congress. This process is called gerrymandering.

Some state legislatures are more brazen about the process than others. Maryland's districts, drawn by Democrats, are one particularly egregious example. North Carolina's, drawn by Republicans, are another. Advocates of reform have proposed various solutions to the problem over the years. In some states, redistricting is put in the hands of an independent commission. In others, lengthy court battles are playing out to draw the districts more fairly.
​
But a fundamental problem with district-drawing still remains: as long as humans are drawing the lines, there's a danger of bias and self-interest to creep into the process. There is another way, however: we could simply let computers do the drawing for us.

From a technological standpoint it's fairly straightforward -- a software engineer in Massachusetts named Brian Olson wrote an algorithm to do it in his spare time. As I described it in 2014, Olson's algorithm creates "optimally compact" equal-population congressional districts in each state, based on 2010 census data. It draws districts that respect the boundaries of census blocks, which are the smallest geographic units used by the Census Bureau. This ensures that the district boundaries reflect actual neighborhoods and don't, say, cut an arbitrary line through somebody's house."

Based on the maps above, to see what this looks like in practice, compare this map of our current congressional districts (top) with one we stitched together from Olson's output (bottom).

Big difference, isn't it? You can check out a larger version of the compacted map here. Rather than a confusing snarl of interlocked districts, you have neat, trim boundaries that make intuitive sense.

Click here for rest of article, including maps illustrating gerrymandering by state.
___________________________________________________________________________

Gerrymandering in the United States has been used to increase the power of a political party. The term "gerrymandering" was coined by a review of Massachusetts's redistricting maps of 1812 set by Governor Elbridge Gerry that was named because one of the districts looked like a salamander.

Gerrymandering, in other words, is the practice of setting boundaries of electoral districts to favor specific political interests within legislative bodies, often resulting in districts with convoluted, winding boundaries rather than compact areas.

In the United States, redistricting takes place in each state about every ten years, after the decennial census. It defines geographical boundaries, with each district within a state being geographically contiguous and having about the same number of state voters. The resulting map affects the elections of the state's members of the US House of Representatives and the state legislative bodies.

Redistricting has always been regarded as a political exercise and in most states, it is controlled by state legislators and governor. When one party controls the state's legislative bodies and governor's office, it is in a strong position to gerrymander district boundaries to advantage its side and to disadvantage its political opponents. 

Since 2010, detailed maps and high-speed computing have facilitated gerrymandering by political parties in the redistricting process, in order to gain control of state legislation and congressional representation, and to potentially maintain that control over several decades even against shifting political changes in a state's population.

Gerrymandering has been sought as unconstitutional in many instances, but it has made many elections more representative. Even as redistricting can advantage the party in control of the process, political science research suggests that its effects are not as large as critics may say. It does not necessarily "advantage incumbents, reduce competitiveness, or exacerbate political polarization."

Typical gerrymandering cases in the United States take the form of partisan gerrymandering, which is aimed at favor in one political party or weaken another; bipartisan gerrymandering, which is aimed at protecting incumbents by multiple political parties; and racial gerrymandering, which is aimed at weakening the power of minority voters.

Gerrymandering can also recreate districts with the aim of maximizing the number of racial minorities to assist particular nominees, who are minorities themselves. In some other cases that have the same goal of diluting the minority vote, the districts are reconstructed in a way that packs minority voters into a smaller or limited number of districts.

In the 20th century and afterwards, federal courts have deemed extreme cases of gerrymandering to be unconstitutional but have struggled with how to define the types of gerrymandering and the standards that should be used to determine which redistricting maps are unconstitutional.

The US Supreme Court has affirmed in Miller v. Johnson (1995) that racial gerrymandering is a violation of constitutional rights and upheld decisions against redistricting that is purposely devised based on race.

However, the Supreme Court has struggled as to when partisan gerrymandering occurs (Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004) and Gill v. Whitford (2018)) and a landmark decision, Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), ultimately decided that questions of partisan gerrymandering represent a nonjusticiable political question, which cannot be dealt with by the federal court system.

That decision leaves it to states and to Congress to develop remedies to challenge and to prevent partisan gerrymandering. Some states have created independent redistricting commissions to reduce political drivers for redistricting.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Political Gerrymandering:







​Political Diversity Pictured below: Diversity and Politics: Winners from the 2018 Midterm Elections
Diversity as seen in sociology and political studies is the degree of differences in identifying features among the members of a purposefully defined group, such as any group differences in racial or ethnic classifications, age, gender, religion, philosophy, physical abilities, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, gender identity, intelligence, mental health, physical health, genetic attributes, personality, behavior or attractiveness.

​When measuring human diversity, a diversity index exemplifies the likelihood that two randomly selected residents have different ethnicities. If all residents are of the same ethnic group it's zero by definition. If half are from one group and half from another, it is 50. The diversity index does not take into account the willingness of individuals to cooperate with those of other ethnicities.

International human rights:

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities affirms to "respect difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as human diversity and humanity" for protection of human rights of persons with disabilities.

Ideology:
Main articles: Diversity ideologies, New Left, and Multiculturalism

Political creeds which support the idea that diversity is valuable and desirable hold that recognizing and promoting these diverse cultures may aid communication between people of different backgrounds and lifestyles, leading to greater knowledge, understanding, and peaceful coexistence.

For example, "Respect for Diversity" is one of the six principles of the Global Greens Charter, a manifesto subscribed to by Green parties from all over the world. In contrast to diversity, some political creeds promote cultural assimilation as the process to lead to these ends.

Use in American academy:

This use of diversity in this sense also extends to American academy, where in an attempt to create a "diverse student body" typically supports the recruitment of students from historically excluded populations, such as students of African-American or Latino background as well as women in such historically underrepresented fields as the sciences.

Business and workplace:

Corporations make commitments to diversity in their personnel both for reasons of brand halo and competitive advantage, but progress is slow.

​See also:
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Diversity







Voter Suppression in the United States including Washington Post Article: "How GOP-backed voting measures could create hurdles for tens of millions of voters" Pictured below: Voters wait to cast their ballots Nov. 2 at a polling place in Sterling Heights, Mich. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
How GOP-backed voting measures could create hurdles for tens of millions of voters. At least 250 new laws have been proposed in 43 states to limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting. (Washington Post March 11, 2021)

By Amy Gardner, Kate Rabinowitz and Harry Stevens

The GOP’s national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction, when Southern states curtailed the voting rights of formerly enslaved Black men, a Washington Post analysis has found.

In 43 states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee, according to data compiled as of Feb. 19 by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. Even more proposals have been introduced since then.

Picture below: Restrictions to mail and early voting proposed in 33 states following a spike in 2020
​Proponents say the provisions are necessary to shore up public confidence in the integrity of elections after the 2020 presidential contest, when then-President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud convinced millions of his supporters that the results were rigged against him.

But in most cases, Republicans are proposing solutions in states where elections ran smoothly, including in many with results that Trump and his allies did not contest or allege to be tainted by fraud. The measures are likely to disproportionately affect those in cities and Black voters in particular, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic — laying bare, critics say, the GOP’s true intent: gaining electoral advantage.

The rush to crack down on voting methods comes after many states temporarily expanded mail and early voting in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to the largest voter turnout in more than a century. The changes reshaped both who turned out and how they voted, with an astounding 116 million people — 73 percent of the electorate — casting their ballots before Election Day, according to The Post’s analysis.

​Proponents say the provisions are necessary to shore up public confidence in the integrity of elections after the 2020 presidential contest, when then-President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud convinced millions of his supporters that the results were rigged against him.

But in most cases, Republicans are proposing solutions in states where elections ran smoothly, including in many with results that Trump and his allies did not contest or allege to be tainted by fraud. The measures are likely to disproportionately affect those in cities and Black voters in particular, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic — laying bare, critics say, the GOP’s true intent: gaining electoral advantage.

​In many states, Democrats are trying to make those expansions permanent — and broaden voting access in other ways. Congressional Democrats are also pushing a sweeping proposal to impose national standards that would override much of what Republican state lawmakers are trying to constrict, including measures that would provide universal eligibility to vote by mail, at least 15 days of early voting, mandatory online voter registration and the restoration of voting rights for released felons. The measure has passed the House but faces steep opposition in the evenly divided Senate.

Republican state legislators, meanwhile, echoing Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him, are pushing hard in the other direction.

The outcome of dueling efforts will vary depending on partisan control of statehouses. The same party controls both legislative chambers and the governorship in 38 states — 23 of them Republican and 15 of them Democratic. Many of the most restrictive proposals have surfaced in states where the GOP has a total hold on power, including Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri and Florida.

​Some of the bills in Democratic-controlled states such as Washington, one of the first states to implement all-mail voting, have little chance of passage. But others are steaming ahead: In Georgia, for example, the House has passed a sweeping bill that would limit early-voting hours on weekends and restrict the use of drop boxes for mail ballots, among other provisions.

The state Senate, meanwhile, approved a measure that would eliminate no-excuses absentee voting altogether — limiting eligibility to those ages 65 and over, people with disabilities or those who will be away from home on Election Day.

Limits to early or absentee voting are the most common measures among this year’s batch of proposed restrictions, with such bills on the table in 33 states. Nearly 85 million voters used one of those methods to cast their ballots in those states last year — more than half of all Americans who voted in the Nov. 3 election.

And the new proposals could do more than rein in early and mail voting. Like squeezing a balloon, the measures could dramatically shift voting to Election Day. That has raised alarm among voting rights advocates that the 2022 midterm elections and 2024 presidential contest could be marred by catastrophically long waits to vote — particularly in big cities, where lines are already a common hurdle for millions of Americans.

“Long lines are going to be the story of 2022 unless something is done,” said Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias, who said he is preparing for a “busy year” of litigation if these laws are enacted. “We have to recognize early on in this next election cycle that this is now the defining feature of the Republican Party, in competitive states and uncompetitive states.

In red states and blue states. They don’t run on economic issues, or even social issues. They run on shrinking the vote.”

Republicans deny the bills are aimed at suppressing turnout, saying they are essential to improving public confidence in the integrity of elections, even in places where elections ran smoothly, such as Florida.

“There’s nothing wrong with securing a great system,” said Florida state Sen. Dennis Baxley at a committee hearing Wednesday in Tallahassee, where lawmakers gave initial approval to a proposal to curtail the use of ballot boxes and eliminate automatic registration for absentee voting, which would force voters to reapply each election cycle.

[Post Reports: A turning point for voting rights]

Other Republicans noted that some of their proposals will help speed the process. The Florida bill, for instance, would allow election officials to begin mail-ballot tabulation earlier in the election cycle — a provision state elections supervisors support because it will ensure a quicker result and fewer doubts about the outcome.

In a statement, Mandi Merritt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said that the national party “remains laser focused on protecting election integrity, and that includes aggressively engaging at the state level on voting laws and litigating as necessary.”

“Democrats have abandoned any pretense that they still care about election issues such as voter roll maintenance and restricting ballot harvesting that were once welcomed as reasonable and routine,” she added. “The reality is that we want all eligible voters to be able to vote and vote easily — but voters must also have confidence that our elections systems have safeguards to prevent fraud and ensure accuracy.”

Nevertheless, multiple scholars and historians said the proposed restrictions would amount to the most dramatic curtailment of ballot access since the late-19th century, when Southern states effectively reversed the 15th Amendment’s prohibition on denying the vote based on race by enacting poll taxes, literacy tests and other restrictions that disenfranchised virtually all Black men.

It took many more decades for Congress to prohibit such laws and broadly enshrine voting rights with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other anti-discrimination laws. Voting rights advocates say the avalanche of proposed restrictions flowing through state legislatures this year could undo much of that progress.

“There’s this risk that we’re witnessing the rollback of the ‘Second Reconstruction,’ ” said Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, using a common term for the civil rights era. “It’s not exactly the same as the end of the first Reconstruction, and one has to hope that it won’t be. But there are enough parallels to be nerve-racking.”

Targeting mail voting

Of the roughly 250 voting restrictions proposed in 43 states — seven times the number introduced in state legislatures by the same time last year — about half seek to limit mail voting, according to the Brennan Center. Proposals target every step of the process, including limiting who is allowed to cast ballots by mail, eliminating the option of being sent a ballot automatically each election cycle and adding ID, notary or witness requirements.

Far more Democrats than Republicans voted by mail last year, in part because Trump warned his supporters to steer clear of mail ballots, falsely asserting that the process was not secure, and in part because Democrats urged their own to take advantage of the option to avoid long lines on Election Day. As a result, many of the proposed curtailments on mail balloting are expected to make it harder for Democrats to vote than Republicans.

Pictured below: Sixteen states currently require an excuse to vote absentee
​Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania are among the nine states considering limiting mail voting — or further limiting it — to narrow groups of people, such as seniors or those with disabilities.
Trump contested the results in all three states last fall, claiming falsely that lax security and new rules imposed illegally by judges caused his defeat there. With electoral margins of approximately 10,000, 12,000 and 82,000, respectively, these states could easily have swung for Trump if some of the proposed restrictions were in place last year, experts say.

[Analysis: How new voting restrictions in Georgia could have affected the 2020 election]

One extraordinary proposal in Arizona would require mail ballots to be postmarked by the Thursday before Election Day, even if they arrive at election offices before polls close.

No evidence has surfaced to support Republican claims of widespread fraud in the state, where President Biden defeated Trump by less than 11,000 votes, and where most Arizonans have been voting by mail for more than a decade. The Republican governor, Doug Ducey, told Trump in the Oval Office last year that it is “difficult, if not impossible, to cheat” under the state’s mail-voting system.

​Trump was open about his view that expanding mail voting would benefit Democrats, but he wrapped his grievance in a false narrative of fraud that conjured unsubstantiated beliefs among his supporters that thousands and even millions of absentee ballots were fraudulently submitted.

Trump also falsely claimed that there was no security in place to prevent ballot theft, and that election workers had abetted a giant crime by not checking signatures on ballot envelopes; sending ballots to the deceased or to empty lots; double- and even triple-counting Democratic votes; or accepting van loads of forged ballots at counting facilities.

No evidence has emerged to substantiate any of those claims.
But Trump’s attacks on voting through the mail led many Republicans to shy away from using mail ballots, and they opted instead to vote in person on Election Day.

In Pennsylvania, Biden won 76 percent of the absentee vote, while Trump won 65 percent of the Election Day vote. In Georgia, Biden won 65 percent of the absentee vote, while Trump won 60 percent of the Election Day vote.

Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, noted that the main reason Trump’s supporters don’t believe U.S. elections are secure is because Trump and his allies have drummed that point into them. Their claim of wanting to improve perceptions of voter integrity, he said, is an excuse to enact suppressive legislation that would disproportionately affect Democrats.

​“If Republicans truly wanted to increase confidence in elections, they would stop saying, ‘Don’t trust the elections,’ ” McDonald said.
​
​Election Day pressure:

Some of the GOP proposals would strain the overall election system — particularly in states with a history of disenfranchising voters of color, who often experience long lines in their precincts, among other hurdles.

In Georgia, for instance, Democrats say the Republican proposal to curtail early voting on weekends is a direct broadside at “Souls to the Polls,” the get-out-the-vote program that encourages Black voters to cast their ballots after church on Sundays during early voting.

Fewer early-voting hours would transfer more pressure onto Election Day resources. The same is true for another proposal that would prohibit election officials from accepting grants from nongovernmental entities. Such philanthropic grants are widely credited with helping election officials prepare for the surge of mail balloting and set up safe in-person voting amid the pandemic.

“There is no justification for that. None,” said Georgia state Sen. Elena Parent, a Democrat from the Atlanta area. “All it will do is lead to longer lines.” As for the Republican rationale that limiting early-voting hours is an equity issue for smaller counties with fewer resources, Parent said: “It’s not an equity issue when one county has a million people and others don’t.

The equity issue is preventing the very populous counties from making voting accessible for their people.”

​Georgia Republicans have also proposed banning “line-warming” activities such as passing out water and blankets to voters standing in long lines. Supporters of the measure, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), say the practice encourages illegal campaign activity if volunteers are advocating for their preferred candidate and handing out free goodies in the process.

Opponents say such activities are necessary to ease the discomfort that many voters face in cities that regularly struggle with long lines.[The most extreme voting restrictions proposed by the GOP]

As one epicenter for the voting wars this year, Georgia’s debate over election restrictions has prompted impassioned speeches from Black lawmakers and civil rights leaders about the echoes of racist voter suppression they see in the Republican proposals.

“Today is a dark, dark day in our state,” Rep. Nikema Williams, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said on March 1, the day the House approved its elections bill. “Republicans voted as a caucus to enact the most blatantly racist attacks on voting rights in the South since Jim Crow, after losing an election they planned, built and oversaw.”

Georgia state Rep. Barry Fleming, the top Republican booster for the sweeping House election bill, said during debate over the measure that day that the proposed law would “begin an effort to restore confidence in our election system by the voters of the state of Georgia.” Fleming did not respond to a request for an interview.

In Alabama, a proposal is under consideration to eliminate straight-ticket voting, which critics said is yet another example of a measure that would create longer lines. In Tennessee, Republican state Sen. Janice Bowling proposed eliminating early voting entirely — but withdrew the bill when she found no one to take it up in the House.

Bowling explained her rationale for the measure to the Herald Chronicle of Winchester, Tenn.: “There was a time in the not-too-distant past where we didn’t have early votes,” she said. “People went to their precinct on Election Day and they cast their ballot, which is one of the most important things citizens can do.”

[How the 2022 Senate map is shaping up]

Tennessee is among the states considering stiff new restrictions even though it is a deeply red state where no one contested the results last year. Another is Iowa, where Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) this week signed legislation that reduces early- and Election Day voting hours and moves up the deadline for mail ballots to arrive at local election offices.

​Such red-state initiatives also suggest that many Republicans feel compelled to propose restrictions to signal their loyalty to Trump and his supporters — and to avoid a primary challenge in their next elections.

“No one questioned the legitimacy of anything that happened in our state election,” said Sharon Steckman, a Democratic state representative in Iowa and a leading critic of the Republican election bill. “They won. They won overwhelmingly.

We had no fraud in Iowa.” Steckman thinks the restrictions could hurt Republican voters, too, especially with so many first-time voters coming out to support Trump last year.

“We have a lot of rural Iowa that went solidly for Trump,” she said. “We lost a Democratic seat we had for 40 years. I’m not sure how it’s going to play out, but there were a lot of people we had never seen before at the polls — young men, most of them. Young, White men.”

Iowa Republicans defended the new measures. David Kochel, a longtime GOP strategist in the state, said a provision that would prevent local election administrators from unilaterally changing their counties’ voting rules is reasonable.

“Auditors took advantage of the pandemic to do things outside their statutory authority,” Kochel said. “This just makes sure every voter in every county has the exact same access as the person in the neighboring county or neighboring town.”

​Kochel also said curtailments of early voting and Election Day voting are unlikely to produce long lines in his state, where waits are rare.

​​A building battle:

The Republican-backed bills are causing some angst inside the party, as some worry that support for the measures could hurt lawmakers in competitive districts. One GOP strategist in Georgia, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal party strategy, said state Republican leaders gave lawmakers “the green light to drop whatever bill they wanted” to placate Trump loyalists and avoid a primary challenge.

The plan was to prevent most of the measures from actually reaching the House and Senate floor, the strategist said. But now both the Georgia House and Senate have passed substantive bills.

That is forcing Republican lawmakers from more competitive districts to choose their poison: risk a primary challenge by voting against the measures, or risk a general-election challenge if they support them.

If many of the measures proposed across the country pass, legal scholars and voting advocates alike say some will be difficult to defend in court. Foley, the law professor at Ohio State, said taking away a previously granted voting right will prompt scrutiny of the law’s rationale — with the burden on the government to justify a new hurdle for voters.
​
Democrats will also be armed with the fact that until Trump launched his campaign against mail voting, Republicans were champions of the practice, passing legislation in Florida, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and developing sophisticated ballot “chase” operations to encourage their voters to request, fill out and return mail ballots.

Arguing that some of the proposals could disproportionately affect people of color is a trickier legal prospect because of the federal bench’s history of narrowly defining racist intent under the Voting Rights Act.

Laws that return states to pre-coronavirus standards will also be harder to challenge given the extraordinary circumstances that prompted voting changes in 2020.

But there is little question that a new wave of election-related litigation will follow quickly if any of these measures are enacted.

“We are actively monitoring every state’s legislature to see whether they are going to enact suppressive voting legislation,” said Elias, the Democratic lawyer. “I can promise those Republican legislatures that if they violate the rights of their voters in an effort to curry favor with a failed one-term president, we will see them in court.”

About this story:

Data on proposed bills to restrict voting is from the Brennan Center for Justice’s State Voting Bills Tracker and LegiScan. Election results and vote counts for the 2020 presidential election are from Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. The Survey of the Performance of American Elections from MIT Election Lab was used for share of voting method by state.
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​Voter suppression in the United States concerns various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible voters from exercising their right to vote.

Where found, such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Separately, there have also been various efforts to enfranchise and disenfranchise various voters in the country, which concern whether or not people are eligible to vote in the first place.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Voter Suppression in the United States: ​







The Political Compass (Web Site) Pictured below: Sonic Political Compass meme
The Political Compass is a website which uses responses to a set of 62 propositions to rate political ideology in a political spectrum with two axes: economic (left–right) and social (authoritarian–libertarian).

Website:

The website does not reveal the people behind it, beyond the fact that it seems to be based in the United Kingdom. At the bottom of any page on the website, it is stated that the copyright of "The Political Compass", which is claimed as a trademark, belongs to an organization named Pace News Limited. Pace News Limited is a company registered in New Zealand whose director is political journalist Wayne Brittenden. According to The New York Times, the site is the work of Brittenden.

According to Tom Utley, writing in The Daily Telegraph, the site is connected to One World Action, a charity founded by Glenys Kinnock. An early version of the site was published on One World Action's web server.

Political model:

The underlying theory of the political model used by "The Political Compass" is that political ideology may be better measured along two separate, independent axes. The economic (left–right) axis measures one's opinion of how the economy should be run: "left" is defined as the desire for the economy to be run by a cooperative collective agency (which can mean the state, but can also mean a network of communes) while "right" is defined as the desire for the economy to be left to the devices of competing individuals and organizations.

The other axis (authoritarian–libertarian) measures one's political opinions in a social sense, regarding the amount of personal freedom that one would allow: "libertarianism" is defined as the belief that personal freedom should be maximized while "authoritarianism" is defined as the belief that authority should be obeyed. The United States Republican Party, for example, would sit in the top right section of the compass as they support market freedom and a doctrine of law and order.

This makes it possible to divide people into four quadrants:
  1. authoritarian left (marked by red and placed in the top left),
  2. authoritarian right (blue in the top right),
  3. libertarian right (yellow or purple in the bottom right),
  4. and libertarian left (green in the bottom left).

However, the makers of the Political Compass say that the quadrants "are not separate categories, but regions on a continuum" 

Criticism and alternative models:

A number of other multi-axis models of political thought exist and some are based on similar axes to "The Political Compass," most famously the Nolan Chart, developed by the American libertarian, David Nolan.

A similar chart appeared in 1970 in The Floodgates of Anarchy by Albert Meltzer and Stuart Christie  Albert Meltzer and in 1968 in the Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought by Maurice C. Bryson and William R. McDill. Other online political quizzes also use the same two axes to improve upon the more primitive left-right political spectrum, such as iSideWith.com.

The website does not explain its scoring system. A number of writers, including Tom Utley and Brian Patrick Mitchell, have criticized its validity. Many test takers have also criticized the lack of "neutral" button as the only options listed are strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree.

There also are multiple other similar websites that have a compass but with different algorithms, such as Sapply and Spekd.

See also:
​






The Nolan Chart Pictured below: How do you interpret the Nolan chart?
The Nolan Chart is a political spectrum diagram created by American libertarian activist David Nolan in 1969, charting political views along two axes, representing economic freedom and personal freedom. It expands political view analysis beyond the traditional one-dimensional left–right/progressive-conservative divide, positioning libertarianism outside the traditional spectrum.

Development:

​The claim that political positions can be located on a chart with two axes: left-right (economics) and tough-tender (authoritarian-libertarian) was put forward by the British psychologist Hans Eysenck in his 1954 book The Psychology of Politics with statistical evidence based on survey data. 

This leads to a loose classification of political positions into four quadrants, with further detail based on exact position within the quadrant.

A similar two-dimensional chart appeared in 1970 in the publication The Floodgates of Anarchy by Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer, but that work distinguished between the axes collectivism–capitalism on the one hand, individualism–totalitarianism on the other, with anarchism, fascism, "state communism" and "capitalist individualism" in the corners. 

In Radicals for Capitalism (p. 321), Brian Doherty attributes the idea for the chart to an article by Maurice Bryson and William McDill in The Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought (Summer 1968) entitled "The Political Spectrum: A Bi-Dimensional Approach".

Steve Mariotti, a teenage colleague of Carl Oglesby's in the leftist student organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), credits Oglesby with describing a form of the two-axis Nolan Chart during a delivery of Oglesby's "Let Us Shape the Future" speech in 1965. 

Oglesby's political outlook was more eclectic than that of many leftists in SDS; he was heavily influenced by libertarian economist Murray Rothbard and he dismissed socialism as "a way to bury social problems under a federal bureaucracy." Oglesby even (unsuccessfully) proposed cooperation between SDS and the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom on some projects, and argued that "in a strong sense, the Old Right and the New Left are morally and politically coordinate." Nolan was a member of Young Americans for Freedom at the time.

David Nolan first published his version of the chart in an article named "Classifying and Analyzing Politico-Economic Systems" in the January 1971 issue of The Individualist, the monthly magazine of the Society for Individual Liberty (SIL). In December 1971, he helped to start the group that would become the Libertarian Party.

Frustrated by the "left-right" line analysis that leaves no room for other ideologies, Nolan devised a chart with two axes which would come to be known as the Nolan Chart, and later became the centerpiece of the World's Smallest Political Quiz.

Nolan's argument was that the major difference between various political philosophies, the real defining element in what a person believes politically, is the amount of government control over human action that is advocated. Nolan further reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided into two broad categories: economic and personal.

The "economic" category includes what people do as producers and consumers – what they can buy, sell and produce, where they work, who they hire and what they do with their money.

Examples of economic activity include starting or operating a business, buying a home, constructing a building and working in an office. The "personal" category includes what people do in relationships, in self-expression and what they do with their own bodies and minds.

Examples of personal activities include:
  • whom they marry;
  • choosing what books they read and movies they watch;
  • what foods, medicines and drugs they choose to consume;
  • recreational activities;
  • religious choices;
  • organizations they join;
  • and with whom they choose to associate.

According to Nolan, since most government activity (or government control) occurs in these two major areas, political positions can be defined by how much government control a person or political party favors in these two areas. The extremes are no government at all in either area (anarchism) or total or near-total government control of everything (various forms of totalitarianism). Most political philosophies fall somewhere in between.

In broad terms:
  • Those on the right, including American conservatives, tend to favor more freedom in economic matters (example: a free market), but more government intervention in personal matters (example: drug laws).
  • Those on the left, including American liberals, tend to favor more freedom in personal matters (example: no military draft), but more government activism or control in economics (example: a government-mandated minimum wage).
  • Libertarians favor both personal and economic freedom and oppose most (or all) government intervention in both areas. Like conservatives, libertarians believe in free markets. Like liberals, libertarians believe in personal freedom.
  • Authoritarians favor a lot of government control in both the personal and economic areas. Different versions of the chart as well as Nolan's original chart use terms such as "totalitarian", "statist", "communitarian" or "populist" to label this corner of the chart.
  • Centrists favor a balance or mix of both freedom and government involvement in both personal and economic matters.

In order to visually express this argument, Nolan came up with a two-axis graph. One axis was for economic freedom and the other was for personal freedom, with the scale on each of the two axes ranging from zero (total state control) to 100% (no state control). 100% freedom in economics would mean an entirely free market (laissez-faire); 100% freedom in personal issues would mean no government control of private, personal life.

By using the scale on each of the two axes, it was possible to graph the intersection of the amount of personal liberty and economic liberty a person, political organization, or political philosophy advocates. Therefore, instead of classifying all political opinion on a one-dimensional range from left to right, Nolan's chart allowed two-dimensional measurement: how much (or little) government control a person favored in personal and economic matters.

Nolan said that one of the impacts of his chart is that when someone views it, it causes an irreversible change as viewers henceforth view the included orientations in two dimensions instead of one.

In 1987, Marshall Fritz, founder of Advocates for Self-Government, tweaked the chart and added ten questions – which he called the World's Smallest Political Quiz – which enabled people to plot their political beliefs on the chart.

Positions:

​Differing from the traditional left–right distinction and other political taxonomies, the Nolan Chart in its original form has two dimensions, with a horizontal x-axis labeled "economic freedom" and a vertical y-axis labeled "personal freedom". It resembles a square divided into five sections, with a label assigned to each of the following sections:
  • Bottom left – Statism. The opposite of libertarianism, corresponding with those supporting low economic and personal freedom.
  • Top left – Left-wing political philosophies. Those supporting low economic freedom and high personal freedom.
  • Bottom right – Right-wing political philosophies. Those supporting high economic freedom and low personal freedom.
  • Top right – Libertarians. David Nolan's own philosophy, corresponding with those supporting high economic and personal freedom.
  • Center – Centrism. The center area defines the political middle, for those who favor a mixed system balancing both economic and personal freedom with the need for some market regulation and personal sacrifice.

Polling:

In August 2011, the libertarian Reason magazine worked with the Rupe organization to survey 1,200 Americans by telephone and place their views within the Nolan chart categories. The Reason-Rupe poll found that "Americans cannot easily be bundled into either the 'liberal' or 'conservative' groups". Specifically, 28% expressed conservative views, 24% expressed libertarian views, 20% expressed communitarian views and 28% expressed liberal views. The margin of error was ±3.

Criticism:

Brian Patrick Mitchell, who uses a different political taxonomy, cites these points of disagreement:
  • The strict separation of social and economic policy that the chart is based on, is untenable in general. In migration policy, for example, both sociocultural and economic issues are at play.
  • The view that the Right can be defined by its acceptance of state intervention into the domestic sphere (little 'personal freedom') and the Left by its rejection, is false. In the U.S., the Right generally opposed gun control, while the Left argues for it.

Similar criticisms, but from a libertarian perspective, are leveled by Jacob Hueber, who adds that the separation of personal and economic liberty is untenable when one considers the rights to prostitute oneself and to deal drugs, both of which are libertarian causes: adopting either profession is a personal (moral) as well as an economic decision. Also, Huebert notes that it is unclear where in the Nolan chart libertarian opposition to war belongs.

The libertarian response to these criticisms is that the issues are presented in a specific frame of reference by the political factions consistent with the chart. Free immigration is typically viewed as a personal liberty issue, so it is favored by those on the political left. The gun trade is framed as an economic issue, so it is favored by the right. 

Drug legalization is framed as a personal rights issue, so it tends to be favored by the left. War is viewed as a destruction of both society and the economy.

Further applications:

Some commentators have accepted Nolan's use of two axes of personal and economic freedom, but have argued that he either didn't go far enough or that the Nolan Chart can be used to demonstrate the validity of other ideologies. For example, Kelley L. Ross, a libertarian former philosophy professor who ran for California State Assembly in 1996, contends that a third axis of political liberty is required to make the chart more meaningful.

On the other hand, Owen Prell, a founding member of Unite America, formerly The Centrist Project, contends that the Nolan Chart is a definite improvement on the more primitive single-axis left-right political continuum, but that it better serves the cause of political centrism.

Several popular online tests, where individuals can self-identify their political values, utilize the same two axes as the Nolan Chart without attribution, including The Political Compass (above) and iSideWith.com.

See also​:







Glossary of American Politics ​Pictured below: A flow chart showing the hierarchies and checks and balances within the political system of the United States.
​​Glossary of American Politics:

This glossary of American politics is a list of definitions of terms and phrases used in politics in the United States. The list includes terms specific to U.S. political systems (at both national and sub-national levels), as well as concepts and ideologies that occur in other political systems but which nonetheless are frequently encountered in American politics.

​The following definitions apply to the Glossary of America Politics:

A: B:
  • battleground state
  • bellwether state: An individual U.S. state that is perceived as an indicator of trends or patterns in political tendencies, reflecting or predicting the political outlook of the nation as a whole. The term is often used in the context of U.S. presidential elections when the nationwide vote closely matches the ballots cast by voters in a particular state.
  • Bill of Rights: The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.
  • blanket primary: A type of primary election in which candidates from all parties appear on the same ballot paper, as opposed to a closed primary, in which voters are asked to choose from a ballot listing candidates from only a single party.
  • Blue Dog Coalition: A caucus in the United States House of Representatives comprising members of the Democratic Party who identify as centrists or conservatives and profess an independence from the leadership of both major parties. The caucus is the modern development of a more informal grouping of relatively conservative Democrats in U.S. Congress during the 1980s, generally from the Southern United States, who tended to support, across party lines, the economic policies of President Ronald Reagan (a Republican). The "Blue Dog" moniker is derived from the earlier Yellow Dog Democrat and also refers to the work of American artist George Rodrigue, known for paintings featuring a blue dog. Blue Dogs are sometimes seen as descendants of the boll weevils, a similar group of conservative, traditional Democrats.
  • blue slip
  • blue state is a U.S. state where the majority of the electorate has supported or tends to support candidates, members, or policies of the Democratic Party. In the two-party system of the United States, the results of national elections are commonly portrayed on a national map in which each of the fifty states is colored either blue (Democratic) or red (Republican) according to the party affiliation of the winning candidate in that state.
C: D:
  • Declaration of Independence:  A document written chiefly by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the Continental Congress in 1776 which formally declared the intent of the original American colonies to govern themselves independently of British rule and listed the various reasons why the American colonists no longer accepted British sovereignty. The adoption of the Declaration is remembered as one of the most significant moments of the American Revolution, as it officially brought to an end any effort to address the colonists' grievances within the strictures of the colonial system and publicly announced their demand for independence and their intention to fight for it if necessary. The text of the Declaration outlines the moral obligations of governments with respect to their subjects and then addresses specific cases in which the colonial governments under King George III had failed to meet these obligations. It is still frequently mentioned and cited in modern U.S. politics.
  • delegated powers: those powers granted by the states to the national legislature by Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution: namely, to manage the national debt; to regulate commerce between the states, with foreign powers, and with Native American nations; to mint a national currency and standardize weights and measures; to establish a mail service and construct roads; to enforce patents and copyright; to constitute federal courts under the Supreme Court; to manage the nation's military capability and defend its interests in foreign affairs; to guarantee the internal security of the nation; and "to make laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers". Every act of Congress must, in some way, be constitutionally justified by referring back to one of these delegated powers; this has often been aided by a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause.
  • democracy
  • Democratic Party: One of the two major contemporary political parties in the two-party system of the United States, along with its main rival, the Republican Party. Though the modern version of the party is a big-tent coalition comprising multiple distinct ideologies, Democrats generally espouse a philosophy that is socially and economically liberal. Since 2000, the color blue has been widely used to represent the Democratic Party in diagrams indicating partisanship, such as election maps.
  • denied powers:  Those powers that, as outlined by the United States Constitution, remain in possession of United States citizens and cannot be legislated away by the federal or state governments. Denied powers include, for example, the provisions contained within the Bill of Rights, such as freedom of speech.
  • direct primary: A type of primary election in which, at the national party convention, the victorious delegate is bound to vote for the candidate he or she officially pledged to support while campaigning for the primary. This is in contrast to an indirect primary, in which the delegate is under no such obligation and may use their discretion in choosing who to vote for as the party's candidate.
  • District of Columbia
  • divided government
  • dual federalism: The division of powers between the federal and state governments in the 19th century.
E: ​F: G: H: ​I:
  • impeachment: The process of officially charging an elected official, such as the President, with a crime and trying them.
  • implied powers: Those powers that, although not explicitly addressed in the Constitution, are deemed to be logical extensions or implications of it. For example, because the Constitution charges Congress with regulating the borrowing of money and the minting of currency on behalf of the United States, the formation of a national bank has been accepted as an implied power that serves as a logical extension of these responsibilities, and legislation establishing one was passed in 1791. Many of the implied powers are constitutionally justified by the Necessary and Proper Clause or the Commerce Clause.
  • indirect primary: A type of primary election in which the victorious delegate is under no obligation to vote for a particular candidate at the national party convention. By contrast, a direct primary requires winners to vote for the candidate they pledged to support while campaigning to be a delegate.
  • initiative election: A referendum on a specific issue that is initiated once a designated number of citizens registers their support for the referendum, upon which a decision on the issue is put before the electorate as a whole.
  • iron triangle: A colloquial term for the mutually supportive three-sided relationship that can develop between legislators, bureaucrats, and interest groups who prioritize securing each other's interests rather than serving the public good.
J: K: L:
  • lame duck
  • line-item veto: A power of the executive to strike or veto individual provisions or "line items" of a bill, such as spending on a particular item.
​​M: N: ​​O: P: Q:
  • qualified majority: See supermajority
  • quid pro quo: A Latin phrase meaning "something for something".
  • quorum: The minimum number of members of a deliberative assembly that is necessary to conduct the business of that assembly. The requirement is intended to protect against unrepresentative action in the name of the assembly by an unduly small number of members. In both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, the designated quorum is usually a simple majority of their respective members (218 and 51, respectively). Contrast plenum
R: S: T: U: V: W:
  • whip
  • whistleblower: A person who reports an illegal or unethical action.
  • whistle stop: A quick stop at a minor place during a campaign for an elected office.
Y:
See also:
​






Political polarization in the United States Pictures below: The polarization in today’s Congress has roots that go back decades (see article below images)
Refer to above Images: (PEW Research Center, March 10, 2022:

It’s become commonplace among observers of U.S. politics to decry partisan polarization in Congress. Indeed, a Pew Research Center analysis finds that, on average, Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years.

But the dynamics behind today’s congressional polarization have been long in the making. The analysis of members’ ideological scores finds that the current standoff between Democrats and Republicans is the result of several overlapping trends that have been playing themselves out – and sometimes reinforcing each other – for decades.
  • Both parties have grown more ideologically cohesive. There are now only about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans left on Capitol Hill, versus more than 160 in 1971-72.
  • Both parties have moved further away from the ideological center since the early 1970s. Democrats on average have become somewhat more liberal, while Republicans on average have become much more conservative.
  • The geographic and demographic makeup of both congressional parties has changed dramatically. Nearly half of House Republicans now come from Southern states, while nearly half of House Democrats are Black, Hispanic or Asian/Pacific Islander.

The Center’s analysis is based on DW-NOMINATE, a method that uses lawmakers’ roll-call votes to place them in a two-dimensional ideological space. It is designed to produce scores that are comparable across time. This analysis focuses on the first dimension, which is essentially the economic and governmental aspects of the familiar left-right spectrum and ranges from 1 (most conservative) to -1 (most liberal). (For more details on DW-NOMINATE and this analysis’ geographical definitions, read “How we did this.”)

How we did this

​Between the 92nd Congress of 1971-72 and the current 117th Congress, both parties in both the House and the Senate have shifted further away from the center, but Republicans more so. House Democrats, for example, moved from about -0.31 to -0.38, meaning that over time they’ve become modestly more liberal on average. House Republicans, by contrast, moved from 0.25 to nearly 0.51, a much bigger increase in the conservative direction.

As Democrats have grown more liberal over time and Republicans much more conservative, the “middle” – where moderate-to-liberal Republicans could sometimes find common ground with moderate-to-conservative Democrats on contentious issues – has vanished.

Five decades ago, 144 House Republicans were less conservative than the most conservative Democrat, and 52 House Democrats were less liberal than the most liberal Republican, according to the analysis. But that zone of ideological overlap began to shrink, as conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans – increasingly out of step with their caucuses and their constituents – either retired, lost reelection bids or, in a few cases, switched parties.

Since 2002, when Republican Rep. Constance Morella of Maryland was defeated for reelection and GOP Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York retired, there’s been no overlap at all between the least liberal Democrats and the least conservative Republicans in the House.

In the Senate, the end of overlap came in 2004, when Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia retired.

Ever since, the gaps between the least conservative Republicans and least liberal Democrats in both the House and Senate have widened – making it ever less likely that there’s any common ground to find.

The ideological shifts in the congressional parties have occurred alongside – and, perhaps to some extent, because of – geographic and demographic shifts in their composition.

In 1971-72, representatives from the 11 former Confederate states made up nearly a third (31.4%) of all the House Democrats who served in that Congress. Those Southern representatives were notably less liberal than Democrats from elsewhere in the country: Their average DW-NOMINATE score was -0.144, versus -0.388 for non-Southern House Democrats.

Over time, though, Southern Democrats became both fewer in number and more liberal – to the point where today, they account for only 22% of the House Democratic caucus, but ideologically are almost indistinguishable from their non-Southern colleagues (average scores of -0.383 and -0.381, respectively).

On the Republican side of the aisle, almost the exact opposite trend has occurred. Southerners made up less than 15% of the House GOP caucus 50 years ago but comprise about 42% of it today.

And while Republicans in general have become more conservative, that’s been especially true of Southern Republicans in the House: Their DW-NOMINATE score has moved from about 0.29 (only slightly to the right of non-Southern Republicans) in 1971-72 to 0.57 in the current Congress, versus about 0.46 today for non-Southern House Republicans. (These trends are similar in the Senate, although only four of the 22 senators from former Confederate states are currently Democrats.)

The racial and ethnic makeup of both parties’ Southern lawmakers has changed considerably:

In 1971-72, according to House records, only 12 African Americans served in the House and one in the Senate, and none were from the South. Of the five Hispanics in the House, two were from Texas (the lone Hispanic senator was from New Mexico). And the only Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders in Congress were Hawaii’s two senators (one Democrat, one Republican) and two representatives (both Democrats).

In the current Congress, 24 of the 50 House Democrats from the South are African American; seven are Hispanic; and two are Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders. (Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia is of both African American and Filipino descent.)

One of the four Democratic senators from the South (Raphael Warnock of Georgia) is African American. In contrast, only one of the 91 Southern House Republicans is Black (Byron Donalds of Florida); four others are Hispanic. One of the GOP’s 18 Southern senators is Black (Tim Scott of South Carolina) and two are Hispanic (Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida).

Note: The above is an updated version of a post originally published June 12, 2014.
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​Political polarization in the United States (Wikipedia)

Political polarization is a prominent component of politics in the United States. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization (differences between the policy positions) and affective polarization (a dislike and distrust of political out-groups), both of which are apparent in the United States. In the last few decades, the U.S. has experienced a greater surge in ideological polarization and affective polarization than comparable democracies.

Differences in political ideals and policy goals are indicative of a healthy democracy. Scholarly questions consider changes in the magnitude of political polarization over time, the extent to which polarization is a feature of American politics and society, and whether there has been a shift away from focusing on triumphs, to dominating the (perceived) abhorrent supporters of the opposing party.

Polarization among U.S. legislators is asymmetric, as it has primarily been driven by a substantial rightward shift among congressional Republicans. Since the 1970s, the United States has grown more polarized, with rapid increases in polarization during the 2000s onwards.

Definition:

​According to psychology professors Gordon Heltzel and Kristin Laurin, political polarization occurs when "subsets of a population adopt increasingly dissimilar attitudes toward parties and party members (i.e., affective polarization), as well as ideologies and policies (ideological polarization)". 

The Pew Research Center defines political polarization as "the vast and growing gap between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats".

Polarization has been defined as both a process and a state of being. A defining aspect of polarization, though not its only facet, is a bimodal distribution around conflicting points of view or philosophies. In general, defining a threshold at which an issue is "polarized" is imprecise; detecting the trend of polarization, however, (increasing, decreasing, or stable) is more straightforward.

A related concept is that of party homogeneity, which describes the similarities of the constituencies of two officials of the same party. There is also party polarization, which refers to the gap between the typical constituency of one party as compared to the other in a two-party system.

History:

Gilded Age:

The Gilded Age of the late 19th century (c. 1870 – 1900) is considered to be one of the most politically polarized periods in American history, with open political violence and highly polarized political discourse. A key event during this era was the election of 1896, which some scholars say led to an era of one-party rule, created "safe seats" for elected officials to build careers as politicians, increased party homogeneity, and increased party polarization. 

Political polarization was overall heightened, with Republicans strengthening their hold on industrial areas, and Democrats losing ground in the North and upper Midwest.

1950s and 1960s:

The 1950s and 1960s were marked by high levels of political bipartisanship, the results of a post-World War II "consensus" in American politics, as well as ideological diversity within each of the two major parties.

1990–present:

Media and political figures began espousing the narrative of polarization in the early 1990s, with a notable example being Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention. In the speech, he declared a culture war for the future of the country.

In 1994, the Democratic Party lost control of the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. The narrative of political polarization became a recurring theme in the elections of 2000 and 2004.

After George W. Bush was reelected in 2004, English historian Simon Schama noted that the US had not been so polarized since the American Civil War, and that a more apt name might be the Divided States of America. From 1994 to 2014, the share of Americans who expressed either "consistently liberal" or "consistently conservative" opinions doubled from 10% to 21%.

In 1994, the average Republican was more conservative than 70% of Democrats, compared to more conservative than 94% of Democrats in 2014. The average Democrat went from more liberal than 64% of Republicans to more liberal than 92% of Republicans during the same era.

Families, in contrast, are becoming more politically homogenous. As of 2018, 80% of marriages had spousal alignment on party affiliation. Parent-child agreement was 75%. Both of these represent significant increases from family homogeneity in the 1960s. A 2022 study found that there had been a substantial increase since 1980 in political polarization among adolescents, driven by parental influence.

A Brown University study released in 2020 found that the U.S. was polarizing faster compared to other democratic countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia.

According to Stony Brook University political scientists Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan, polarization in American politics is primarily a phenomenon among Americans who are deeply involved in politics and very expressive about their political views. Americans who are not as involved in politics are not as polarized.

Politically polarizing issues:

As of February 2020, a study conducted by the Pew Research Center highlights the current political issues that have the most amount of partisanship. By far, addressing climate change was the most partisan issue with only 21% of Republicans considering it a top policy priority as opposed to 78% of Democrats. 

Issues that are also extremely partisan include protecting the environment, reforming gun policy, and bolstering the country's military strength. These differences in policy priorities emerge as both Democrats and Republicans shift their focus away from improving the economy.

Since 2011, both parties have gradually placed economic stimulation and job growth lower on their priority list, with Democrats experiencing a sharper decline of importance when compared to Republicans. This is in stark contrast to the 1990s, when both Democrats and Republicans shared similar views on climate change and showed significantly much more agreement.

Furthermore, a poll conducted by Gallup identifies issues where the partisan gap has significantly increased over a period of about fifteen years. For Republicans, the most significant shift was the idea that the "federal government has too much power," with 39% of Republicans agreeing with that notion in 2002 as opposed to 82% agreeing in 2016.

On the Democratic side, the largest shift was increasing favorability towards Cuba, changing from 32% in 2002 to 66% in 2017. Ultimately, as partisanship continues to permeate and dominate policy, citizens who adhere and align themselves with political parties become increasingly polarized.

On some issues with a wide public consensus, partisan politics still divides citizens. For instance, even though 60% of Americans believe that the government should provide healthcare for its citizens, opinions are split among party lines with 85% of Democrats, including left-leaning independents, believing that healthcare is the government's responsibility and 68% of Republicans believe that it is not the government's responsibility.

Likewise, on some prominent issues where the parties are broadly split, there is bipartisan support for specific policies. For example, in health care, 79% of Americans think pre-existing conditions should be covered by health insurance; 60% think abortion should be broadly legal in the first trimester but only 28% in the second trimester and 13% in the third trimester. 77% of Americans think immigration is good for the country. 

On gun rights, 89% support more mental health funding, 83% support closing the gun show loophole, 72% support red flag laws, and 72% support requiring gun permits when purchasing. 

In the federal budget, there is 80% or more support to retain funding for veterans, infrastructure, Social Security, Medicare, and education.

Political polarization also shaped the public's reaction to COVID-19. A study that observed the online conversations surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic found that left-leaning individuals were more likely to criticize politicians compared to right-leaning users.

Additionally, left-leaning social media accounts often shared health prevention measures through hashtags, while right-leaning posts were more likely to spread conspiracies and retweet posts from the White House's Twitter account. 

The study continues to explain that, when considering geographic location, because individuals in conservative and right leaning areas are more likely to see the Coronavirus as a non-threat, they are less likely to stay home and follow health guidelines.

Potential causes:

Congress leads the public:
See also: Negative partisanship

Some scholars argue that diverging parties has been one of the major driving forces of polarization as policy platforms have become more distant. This theory is based on recent trends in the United States Congress, where the majority party prioritizes the positions that are most aligned with its party platform and political ideology. 

The adoption of more ideologically distinct positions by political parties can cause polarization among both elites and the electorate. For example, after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the number of conservative Democrats in Congress decreased, while the number of conservative Republicans increased.

Within the electorate during the 1970s, Southern Democrats shifted toward the Republican Party, showing polarization among both the elites and the electorate of both main parties.

Political scientists have shown politicians have an incentive to advance and support polarized positions. These argue that during the early 1990s, the Republican Party used polarizing tactics to become the majority party in the United States House of Representatives—which political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein refer to as Newt Gingrich's "guerrilla war." 

What political scientists have found is that moderates are less likely to run than are candidates who are in line with party doctrine, otherwise known as "party fit." Other theories state politicians who cater to more extreme groups within their party tend to be more successful, helping them stay in office while simultaneously pulling their constituency toward a polar extreme. 

A study by Nicholson (2012) found voters are more polarized by contentious statements from leaders of the opposing party than from the leaders of their own party. As a result, political leaders may be more likely to take polarized stances.

Political fund-raisers and donors can also exert significant influence and control over legislators. Party leaders are expected to be productive fund-raisers, in order to support the party's campaigns. After Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, special interests in the U.S. were able to greatly impact elections through increased undisclosed spending, notably through Super political action committees.

Some, such as Washington Post opinion writer Robert Kaiser, argued this allowed wealthy people, corporations, unions, and other groups to push the parties' policy platforms toward ideological extremes, resulting in a state of greater polarization. 

Other scholars, such as Raymond J. La Raja and David L. Wiltse, note that this does not necessarily hold true for mass donors to political campaigns. These scholars argue a single donor who is polarized and contributes large sums to a campaign does not seem to usually drive a politician toward political extremes.

Polarization among U.S. legislators is asymmetric, as it has primarily been driven by a substantial rightward shift among congressional Republicans.

Voting patterns:

In democracies and other representative governments, citizens vote for the political actors who will represent them. Some scholars argue that political polarization reflects the public's ideology and voting preferences.

Dixit and Weibull (2007) claim that political polarization is a natural and regular phenomenon. They argue that there is a link between public differences in ideology and the polarization of representatives, but that an increase in preference differences is usually temporary and ultimately results in compromise. Fernbach, Rogers, Fox and Sloman (2013) argue that it is a result of people having an exaggerated faith in their understanding of complex issues.

Asking people to explain their policy preferences in detail typically resulted in more moderate views. Simply asking them to list the reasons for their preferences did not result in any such moderation.

Morris P. Fiorina (2006, 2008) posits the hypothesis that polarization is a phenomenon which does not hold for the public, and instead is formulated by commentators to draw further division in government. 

Others, such as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and journalists Bill Bishop and Harry Enten, instead note the growing percentage of the U.S. electorate living in "landslide counties", counties where the popular vote margin between the Democratic and Republican candidate is 20 percentage points or greater.

In 1976, only 27 percent of U.S. voters lived in landslide counties, which increased to 39 percent by 1992. Nearly half of U.S. voters resided in counties that voted for George W. Bush or John Kerry by 20 percentage points or more in 2004. In 2008, 48 percent of U.S. voters lived in such counties, which increased to 50 percent in 2012 and increased further to 61 percent in 2016. In 2020, 58 percent of U.S. voters lived in landslide counties. 

At the same time, the 2020 U.S. presidential election marked the ninth consecutive presidential election where the victorious major party nominee did not win a popular vote majority by a double-digit margin over the losing major party nominee(s), continuing the longest sequence of such presidential elections in U.S. history that began in 1988 and in 2016 eclipsed the previous longest sequences from 1836 through 1860 and from 1876 through 1900. 

Other studies indicate that cultural differences focusing on ideological movements and geographical polarization within the United States constituency is correlated with rises in overall political polarization between 1972 and 2004.

Demographic changes:

Religious, ethnic, and other cultural divides within the public have often influenced the emergence of polarization. According to Layman et al. (2005), the ideological split between U.S. Republicans and Democrats also crosses into the religious cultural divide. They claim that Democrats have generally become more moderate in religious views whereas Republicans have become more traditionalist.

For example, political scientists have shown that in the United States, voters who identify as Republican are more likely to vote for a strongly evangelical candidate than Democratic voters. This correlates with the rise in polarization in the United States. 

Another theory contends that religion does not contribute to full-group polarization, but rather, coalition and party activist polarization causes party shifts toward a political extreme.

A 2020 paper studying polarization across countries found a correlation between increasing polarization and increasing ethnic diversity, both of which are happening in the United States.

Redistricting:

The impact of redistricting—potentially through gerrymandering or the manipulation of electoral borders to favor a political party—on political polarization in the United States has been found to be minimal in research by leading political scientists. The logic for this minimal effect is twofold: first, gerrymandering is typically accomplished by packing opposition voters into a minority of congressional districts in a region, while distributing the preferred party's voters over a majority of districts by a slimmer majority than otherwise would have existed.

The result of this is that the number of competitive congressional districts would be expected to increase, and in competitive districts representatives have to compete with the other party for the median voter, who tends to be more ideologically moderate. Second, political polarization has also occurred in the Senate, which does not experience redistricting because Senators represent fixed geographical units, i.e. states. 

The argument that redistricting, through gerrymandering, would contribute to political polarization is based on the idea that new non-competitive districts created would lead to the election of extremist candidates representing the supermajority party, with no accountability to the voice of the minority.

One difficulty in testing this hypothesis is to disentangle gerrymandering effects from natural geographical sorting through individuals moving to congressional districts with a similar ideological makeup to their own. Carson et al. (2007), has found that redistricting has contributed to the greater level of polarization in the House of Representatives than in the Senate, however that this effect has been "relatively modest". Politically motivated redistricting has been associated with the rise in partisanship in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1992 and 1994.

Majoritarian electoral institutions have been linked to polarization. However, ending gerrymandering practices in redistricting cannot correct for increased polarization due to the growing percentage of the U.S. electorate living in "landslide counties", counties where the popular vote margin between the Democratic and Republican candidate is 20 percentage points or greater. 

Of the 92 U.S. House seats ranked by The Cook Political Report as swing seats in 1996 that transitioned to being non-competitive by 2016, only 17 percent came as a result of changes to district boundaries while 83 percent came from natural geographic sorting of the electorate election to election.

Television and the Internet:
See also:  ​
A 2020 paper comparing polarization across several wealthy countries found no consistent trend, prompting Ezra Klein to reject the theory that the Internet and social media were the underlying cause of the increase in the United States.

​A 2013 review concluded that there is no firm evidence that media institutions contributed to the polarization of average Americans in the last three decades of the 20th century. No evidence supports the idea that longstanding news outlets become increasingly partisan.

Analyses confirm that the tone of evening news broadcasts remained unchanged from 1968 to 1996: largely centrist, with a small but constant bias towards Democratic Party positions.

However, more partisan media pockets have emerged in blogs, talk radio, websites, and cable news channels, which are much more likely to use insulting language, mockery, and extremely dramatic reactions, collectively referred to as "outrage". People who have strongly partisan viewpoints are more likely to watch partisan news.

A 2017 study found no correlation between increased media and Internet consumption and increased political polarization, although the data did confirm a larger increase in polarization among individuals over 65 compared to those aged 18–39.

Along with political scientist Sam Abrams, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that political elites in the United States became more polarized beginning in the 1990s as the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation (fundamentally shaped by their living memories of World War I, World War II, and the Korean War) were gradually replaced with Baby boomers and Generation Jones (fundamentally shaped by their living memories of the U.S. culture war of the 1960s). 

Haidt argues that because of the difference in their life experience relevant to moral foundations, Baby boomers and Generation Jones may be more prone to what he calls "Manichean thinking," and along with Abrams and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff,

Haidt argues that changes made by Newt Gingrich to the parliamentary procedure of the U.S. House of Representatives beginning in 1995 made the chamber more partisan.

Also, unlike the first half of the 20th century, protests of the 1960s civil rights movement (such as the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965) were televised, along with police brutality and urban race rioting during the latter half of the decade.

In 1992, 60 percent of U.S. households held cable television subscriptions in the United States, and Haidt, Abrams, and Lukianoff argue that the expansion of cable television, and Fox News in particular since 2015 in their coverage of student activism over political correctness at colleges and universities in the United States, is one of the principal factors amplifying political polarization since the 1990s.

Haidt and Lukianoff also argue that the filter bubbles created by the News Feed algorithm of Facebook and other social media platforms are also one of the principal factors amplifying political polarization since 2000 (when a majority of U.S. households first had at least one personal computer and then internet access the following year). In 2002, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having a mobile phone.

Big data algorithms are used in personalized content creation and automatization; however, this method can be used to manipulate users in various ways. The problem of misinformation is exacerbated by the educational bubble, users' critical thinking ability and news culture. 

Based on a 2015 study, 62.5% of the Facebook users are oblivious to any curation of their News Feed. Furthermore, scientists have started to investigate algorithms with unexpected outcomes that may lead to antisocial political, economic, geographic, racial, or other discrimination.

Facebook has remained scarce in transparency of the inner workings of the algorithms used for News Feed correlation. Algorithms use the past activities as a reference point for predicting users' taste to keep them engaged. However, this leads to the formation of a filter bubble that starts to refrain users from diverse information. Users are left with a skewed worldview derived from their own preferences and biases.

In 2015, researchers from Facebook published a study indicating that the Facebook algorithm perpetuates an echo chamber amongst users by occasionally hiding content from individual feeds that users potentially would disagree with: for example the algorithm removed one in every 13 diverse content from news sources for self-identified liberals.

In general, the results from the study indicated that the Facebook algorithm ranking system caused approximately 15% less diverse material in users' content feeds, and a 70% reduction in the click-through-rate of the diverse material.

Facebook has, at least in the political field, a counter-effect on being informed: in two studies from the US with a total of more than 2,000 participants, the influence of social media on the general knowledge on political issues was examined in the context of two US presidential elections. The results showed that the frequency of Facebook use was moderately negatively related to general political knowledge. This was also the case when considering demographic, political-ideological variables and previous political knowledge.

According to the latter, a causal relationship is indicated: the higher the Facebook use, the more the general political knowledge declines. In 2019, Jonathan Haidt argued that there is a "very good chance American democracy will fail, that in the next 30 years we will have a catastrophic failure of our democracy."

Influence operations:

According to a report by Oxford researchers including sociologist Philip N. Howard, social media played a major role in political polarization in the United States, due to computational propaganda -- "the use of automation, algorithms, and big-data analytics to manipulate public life"—such as the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories.

The researchers highlighted the role of the Russian Internet Research Agency in attempts to undermine democracy in the US and exacerbate existing political divisions. The most prominent methods of misinformation were ostensibly organic posts rather than ads, and influence operation activity increased after, and was not limited to, the 2016 election.

During Russian interference in the 2016 election, examples of efforts included "campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016", "encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational", and "spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across the political spectrum."

Sarah Kreps of Brookings points out that in the wake of foreign influence operations which are nothing new but boosted by digital tools, the U.S. has had to spend exorbitantly on defensive measures "just to break even on democratic legitimacy."

According to the House Intelligence Committee, by 2018, organic content created by the Russian IRA reached at least 126 million US Facebook users, while its politically divisive ads reached 11.4 million US Facebook users. Tweets by the IRA reached approximately 288 million American users. According to committee chair Adam Schiff, "[The Russian] social media campaign was designed to further a broader Kremlin objective: sowing discord in the U.S. by inflaming passions on a range of divisive issues.

The Russians did so by weaving together fake accounts, pages, and communities to push politicized content and videos, and to mobilize real Americans to sign online petitions and join rallies and protests."

Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, believes the U.S. has faced a democratic decline, stemming from elite polarization and damage done by former President Donald Trump to trust in elections and bonds with democratic allies.

McFaul states that the decline in democracy weakens national security and heavily restrains foreign policy.

Portrayals of violence in the media can lead to fear of crime or terrorism or fear of "other" groups. These can appear out of proportion to their actual frequency, and due to the availability heuristic, these fears can be out of proportion to the actual threat from other groups.

Issues:

According to a 2020 study, "polarization is more intense when unemployment and inequality are high" and "when political elites clash over cultural issues such as immigration and national identity."

Absence of external threats:

One common hypothesis for polarization in the United States is the end of the Cold War and a greater absence of severe security threats. A 2021 study disputed this, finding little evidence that external threats reduce polarization.

Effects:

Political violence:

Some authors have found a correlation between polarization of political discourse and the prevalence of political violence. For instance, Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on the rule of law and post-conflict governance, writes that political violence is extremely calculated and, while it may appear "spontaneous," it is the culmination of years of "discrimination and social segregation."

Part of the problem lies in partisan politics, as partisanship in the political arena fosters partisan violence. In return, this increases polarization within the public, resulting in a public that ends up justifying political violence. Politicians may use political polarization as a weapon to further push existing institutions, which may also foster political violence.

When applied to the United States, the current polarized climate may create conditions that can lead political violence within the country, unless there is meaningful reform.[97] In fact, data shows that within three years, both Democrats and Republicans increasingly agree that political violence is at least "a little" justified as long as their party's political agenda is advanced.

In 2017, only 8% of both Democrats and Republicans justified the use of political violence, but as of September 2020, that number jumped to 33% and 36%, respectively.

Trust in science:
See also: Denialism

The General Social Survey periodically asks Americans whether they trust scientists. The proportion of American conservatives who say they place "a great deal of trust" in scientists fell from 48% in 1974 to 35% in 2010 and rose again to 39% in 2018. Liberals and independents, meanwhile, report different levels of trust in science.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought these differences front and center, with partisanship often being an indicator of how a citizen saw the gravity of the crisis. In the early stages of the pandemic, Republican governors often went against the advice of infectious disease experts while most of their Democratic counterparts translated the advice into policy through policies such as stay at home orders.

Similar to other polarizing topics in the US, a person's attitude towards COVID-19 became a matter of political identity. While the crisis had very little precedent in US history, reactions from both liberals and conservatives stemmed from long-held messaging cues among their parties.

Conservative responded to the anti-elite, states' rights, and small government messaging cues surrounding the virus. This then translated into avid hostility towards any measure that limited a person's autonomy (mask requirements, schools closing, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, etc.).

Meanwhile, liberals' attitude towards science made them more likely to follow the guidance from institutions like the CDC and well-known medical experts, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Congress:

Political polarization among elites is negatively correlated with legislative efficiency, which is defined by the total number of laws passed, as well as the number of "major enactments" and "key votes". 

Evidence suggests that political polarization of elites may more strongly affect efficiency than polarization of Congress itself, with authors hypothesizing that the personal relationships among members of Congress may enable them to reach compromises on contentiously advocated legislation, though not if elites allow no leeway for such.

Negative effects of polarization on the United States Congress include increased gridlock and partisanship at the cost of quality and quantity of passed legislation. It also incentivizes stall tactics and closed rules, such as filibusters and excluding minority party members from committee deliberations. 

These strategies hamper transparency, oversight, and the government's ability to handle long-term domestic issues, especially those regarding the distribution of benefits. Further, they foster animosity, as majority parties lose bipartisan and legislative coordination trying to expedite legislation to overcome them.

Some scholars claim that political polarization is not so pervasive or destructive in influence, contending that partisan agreement is the historical trend in Congress and still frequent in the modern era, including on bills of political importance. Some studies have found approximately 80% of House bills passed in the modern era to have had support from both parties.

The public:

​Opinions on polarization's effects on the public are mixed. Some argue that the growing polarization in government has directly contributed to political polarization in the electorate, but this is not unanimous.

Some scholars argue that polarization lowers public interest in politics, party identification and voter turnout. It encourages confrontational dynamics between parties that can lower overall public trust and approval in government and causes the public to perceive the general political debate as less civil, which can alienate voters. More polarized candidates, especially when voters aren't aware of the increase, also tend to be less representative of the public's wishes.

On the other hand, others assert that elite polarization has galvanized the public's political participation in the United States, citing greater voting and nonvoting participation, engagement and investment in campaigns, and increased positive attitude toward government responsiveness. Polarized parties become more ideologically unified, furthering voter knowledge about their positions and increasing their standard to similarly aligned voters.

Affective polarization has risen in the US, with members of the public likely to say that supporters of the other major political party are hypocritical, closed-minded, and selfish.

Based on survey results by the American National Election Study, affective polarization has increased significantly since 1980. This was determined by the differences of views an individual had of their political party and the views they had of the other party. Americans have also gotten increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of their child marrying someone of another political party.

In 1960, 4–5% of Americans said they were uncomfortable with the idea. By 2010, a third of Democrats would be upset at this outcome, and half of all Republicans.

The media:

As Mann and Ornstein argue, political polarization and the proliferation of media sources have "reinforce[d] tribal divisions, while enhancing a climate where facts are no longer driving the debate and deliberation, nor are they shared by the larger public." As other scholars have argued, the media often support and provoke the stall and closed rules tactics that disrupt regular policy procedure.

While the media are not immune to general public opinion and reduced polarization allows them to appeal to a larger audience, polarized environments make it easier for the media and interest groups to hold elected officials more accountable for their policy promises and positions, which is generally healthy for democracy.

Trust in the democratic process:

The issue of political polarization in the US has also had noticeable effects on how citizens view the democratic process. In both of the two last presidential elections, a large segment of voters among the losing party raised concerns about the fairness of the election.

When Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the share of Democratic voters who were "not confident" in the election results more than doubled compared to pre-election day data (14% on October 15, 2016, versus 28% on January 28, 2017).

In 2020, three-in-four Republicans doubted the fairness of the presidential election. This narrative of a stolen election narrative was in large part driven by Trump himself, who refused to concede the election up until less than two weeks before Joe Biden's inauguration.

This took place after the events of January 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump's supporters stormed the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the election.

Judicial systems:

Judicial systems can also be affected by the implications of political polarization. For the United States, in particular, polarization lowers confirmation rates of judges; In 2012, the confirmation rate of presidential circuit court appointments was approximately 50% as opposed to the above 90% rate in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

More polarized parties have more aggressively blocked nominees and used tactics to hinder executive agendas. Political scientist Sarah Binder (2000) argues that "senatorial intolerance for the opposing party's nominees is itself a function of polarization."

Negative consequences of this include higher vacancy rates on appellate courts, longer case-processing times and increased caseloads for judges. Voting margins have also become much closer for filling vacancies on the Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia was confirmed 98–0 in 1986; Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed 96–3 in 1993. Samuel Alito was confirmed 58–42 in 2005, and Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed 50–48 in 2018.

Political scientists argue that in highly polarized periods, nominees become less reflective of the moderate voter as "polarization impacts the appointment and ideological tenor of new federal judges." It also influences the politics of senatorial advice and consent, giving partisan presidents the power to appoint judges far to the left or right of center on the federal bench, obstructing the legitimacy of the judicial branch.

Ultimately, the increasing presence of ideology in a judicial system impacts the judiciary's credibility. Polarization can generate strong partisan critiques of federal judges, which can damage the public perception of the justice system and the legitimacy of the courts as nonpartisan legal arbiters.

Foreign policy:

Political polarization can undercut unified agreement on foreign policy and harm a nation's international standing; divisiveness on foreign affairs strengthens enemies, discourages allies, and destabilizes a nation's determination.

Political scientists point to two primary implications of polarization with regards to the foreign policy of the United States.

First, when the United States conducts relations abroad and appears divided, allies are less likely to trust its promises, enemies are more likely to predict its weaknesses, and uncertainty as to the country's position in world affairs rises.

Second, elite opinion has a significant impact on the public's perception and understanding of foreign policy, a field where Americans have less prior knowledge to rely on.

Democratic backsliding:

A 2021 study in Public Opinion Quarterly found evidence that polarization contributed to reductions in support for democratic norms.

In a 2021 report Freedom House said that political polarization was a cause of democratic backsliding in the U.S. since political polarization undermines the "idea of a common national identity" and impedes solutions to governance problems. Gerrymandering was singled out as a cause for this since it creates safe seats for one party that can lead it to become more radical so its candidates can win their primary elections.

Proposed solutions:

The United States is currently more politically divided now than it has been in the past twenty years. Not only is there less collaboration and mutual understanding between Democrats and Republicans, but members of both political parties increasingly view each other in an extremely negative way. 

As a result, partisan politics has begun to shape the relationships individuals have with others, with 50% of Republicans and 35% of Democrats likely to surround themselves with friends who share similar political views. Towards the respective ends of the political spectrum, nearly two-thirds (63%) of consistent conservatives and about half (49%) of consistent liberals say most of their close friends share their political views.

Additionally, increased animosity and distrust among American politicians and citizens can be attributed to the increased skepticism of American institutions - a problem that is extremely catalyzed by political polarization and may lead to democratic backsliding. 

As polarization creates a less than ideal political climate, scholars have proposed multiple solutions to fix or mitigate the effects of the political polarization in the United States.

Voting process reform:

Various changes to voting procedures have been proposed to reduce political polarization. Two proposed reforms would potentially move the U.S. from a two-party system to a multi-party system.

Proportional representation would divide Congressional seats based on the percentage of people who voted for a specific political party. For instance, if Democrats won 20% of the vote, they would receive 20% of the Congressional seats.

Advocates of instant-runoff voting (IRV) say it encourages more moderation in political campaigns by allowing candidates to argue they should be the second choice for supporters of an opponent. It could potentially be used to replace the Electoral College with a less partisan popular vote.

IRV also makes third parties more viable because it removes the spoiler effect.

Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution suggest ways to work within the two-party system, such as taking measures to increase voter turnout to elect more moderate representatives in Congress. 

She reasons that abolishing closed primaries may invite independents or individuals from the opposing political party to vote for a representative other than their registered party's candidate. In doing so, the strict ideological divides may subside, allowing for more moderate representatives to be elected. Thus, as a result there would be an increasing ideological overlap in Congress and less polarization.

Kamarck also proposes instituting a nationwide voting process like "California's top-two method," where there is only one general election for all political parties, and the top two candidates advance into the general election. Once again, this process is meant to elect more moderates into government, but there is no evidence that this has happened.

Advocates for setting fixed terms for selection of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States argue it will reduce the partisanship of confirmation battles if both major parties are satisfied they will have the chance to make a certain number of appointments.

Intergroup contact:

Shifting to a more societal-based solution, social psychologists state that more social contact with those holding opposing political views may help mitigate political polarization.

Focusing specifically on the creation of citizens' assemblies, the idea is to create a space where representatives and citizens are encouraged to discuss political topics and issues in a constructive fashion, hopefully resulting in compromise or mutual understanding.

Yet, intergroup contact, as psychologists warn, must be created within specific parameters in order to create meaningful change. These boundaries, which make actual social implementation difficult, include a constant, meaningful dialogue between multiple members of each group. 

Constructive conversations should focus on principles, legislation, and policies and avoid inflammatory trigger words such as left and right, blue and red, and liberal and conservative. These words can make people become emotional and defensive when supporting their own side and stop listening with an open mind to what those on the other side are saying. In short, conversations can be more productive and meaningful by avoiding contrasting tribal and political identities.

In Talking Sense about Politics: How to Overcome Political Polarization in Your Next Conversation, Jack Meacham encourages having conversations based on four neutral, impartial perspectives—detached, loyal, caring, and tactful—that underlie how people think about and respond to political issues. A number of groups in the U.S. actively host interpartisan discussions in an attempt to promote understanding and social cohesion.

Social and historical complexity:

A third solution recognizes that American society, history, and political thought are more complex than what can be conveyed by only two partisan positions. The notion that political parties could be arranged along a single dimension anchored at the right and left ends arose during the French revolution.

These who sat on the right side in the parliament supported tradition and the monarchy. Those on the left side supported the revolution and the republic. Now, two centuries later these simplistic terms, right and left, fail to accurately and fully describe the complexity, nuances, and subtle differences of American politics.

Unfortunately, far too often pundits, political leaders, and media personalities continue to dominate American political discourse by focusing on only simplistic, bimodal, oppositional, and antagonistic political positions. The solution is to call attention to and highlight the complex reality of American political thought. Concretely, this means describing American social and political groups with three, four, five, or more terms—-any number other than two political positions.

Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America, first published in 1981, was an early attempt to analyze such multiple positions. Colin Woodard revisited Garreau's theories in his 2011 book American Nations. Frank Bruni wrote that America was emerging from the 2016 election with four political parties:
  1. Paul Ryan Republicans,
  2. a Freedom Caucus,
  3. establishment Democrats,
  4. and an Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders party. 

Similarly, David Brooks in 2016 identified four political parties:
  1. Trump's populist nationalism,
  2. a libertarian Freedom Caucus,
  3. a Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren progressive party,
  4. and a Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi Democratic establishment party.

In Talking Sense about Politics: How to Overcome Political Polarization in Your Next Conversation, Jack Meacham argues that four fundamental, impartial perspectives have powered our economic and social progress and enabled Americans to better understand themselves and others. People holding the first of these four perspectives, the loyal perspective, aim to compete, be in charge, and win.

The aim of people holding the second perspective, tactful, is to negotiate and get along with others. The third perspective, detached, is represented by people who want to disengage from others and work things out for themselves. People who reflect the fourth perspective, caring, aim to cooperate with and look out for others.

George Packer, in Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, also argues that America can best be understood not as two polarities but instead as four American narratives:
  • Free America, focuses on personal freedom, consumer capitalism, and hostility to government.
  • The smart America narrative includes professionals who value novelty and diversity, embrace meritocracy, and welcome globalization.
  • The real America narrative includes the working class—anti-intellectual, nationalist, religious, and white supremacist.
  • And the just America narrative includes educated younger people for whom American institutions are unjust, corrupt, and fail to address issues of environment, race, and gender.

There are nine social classes in America, according to David Brooks:
  • The four classes of a red hierarchy include:
    1. corporate executives and entrepreneurs;
    2. large property-owning families;
    3. middle managers and small-business owners;
    4. and the rural working class.
  • The five classes of a blue hierarchy include:
    1. tech and media executives,
    2. foundation heads and highly successful doctors and lawyers;
    3. a creative class of scientists, engineers, lawyers, professors, doctors, and other professionals;
    4. a younger educated elite with growing cultural power;
    5. and low-paid members of the service sector.

The Pew Research Center's political typology, based on a survey of 10,221 adults in July 2021, includes nine groups. There are substantial divisions within both the Democratic and Republican parties:
  • The Democrats include:
    1. progressive left,
    2. establishment liberals,
    3. democratic mainstays, and
    4. and the outsider left.
  • The Republicans include:
    1. faith and flag conservatives,
    2. committed conservatives,
    3. populist right,
    4. and ambivalent right.
  • Stressed sideliner is a ninth group with no partisan leaning.

Outsider left, ambivalent right, and stressed sideliners have low interest in politics and low rates of voting.

Accommodation:

Some commentators propose accommodating partisan differences by taking advantage of federalism and moving more authority away from the federal government and into state and local governments. 

Ezra Klein proposes that having clear differences between the two main parties gives voters a better choice than having two political parties that have mostly the same views. But he suggests reducing the negative consequences of partisanship by eliminating "ticking time bombs" like fights over raising the federal debt ceiling.

See also:







Political Eras of the United States Pictured below: Timeline of the Development of Political Parties in the United States and the various party eras.
Political eras of the United States refer to a model of American politics used in history and political science to periodize the political party system existing in the United States.

The United States Constitution is silent on the subject of political parties. The Founding Fathers did not originally intend for American politics to be partisan.

In Federalist Papers No. 9 and No. 10, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, respectively, wrote specifically about the dangers of domestic political factions.

​In addition, the first President of the United States, George Washington, was not a member of any political party at the time of his election or throughout his tenure as president. Furthermore, he hoped that political parties would not be formed, fearing conflict and stagnation, as outlined in his Farewell Address.

First Party System:
Main article: First Party System

The "First Party System" began in the 1790s with the 1792 re-election of George Washington and the 1796 election of John Adams, and ended in the 1820s with the presidential elections of 1824 and of 1828, resulting in Andrew Jackson's presidency.

George Washington's cabinet:
See also: Presidency of George Washington

The beginnings of the American two-party system emerged from George Washington's immediate circle of advisers, which split into two camps:
Ironically, Hamilton and Madison wrote the Federalist Papers against political factions, but ended up being the core leaders in this emerging party system. Though distasteful to the participants, by the time John Adams and Thomas Jefferson ran for president in 1796, partisanship in the United States came to being.

Era of Good Feelings:
Main article: Era of Good Feelings

The disastrous Panic of 1819 and the Supreme Court's McCulloch v. Maryland reanimated the disputes over the supremacy of state sovereignty and federal power, between strict construction of the US Constitution and loose construction. 

The Missouri Crisis in 1820 made the explosive political conflict between slave and free soil open and explicit. Only through the adroit handling of the legislation by Speaker of the House Henry Clay was a settlement reached and disunion avoided. 

Jacksonian democracy:
Main article: Jacksonian democracy

Jacksonian democracy" is a term to describe the 19th-century political philosophy that originated with the seventh U.S. president, The United States presidential election of 1824 brought partisan politics to a fever pitch, with General Andrew Jackson 's popular vote victory (and his plurality in the United States Electoral College being overturned in the United States House of Representatives).

With the decline in political consensus, it became imperative to revive Jeffersonian principles on the basis of Southern exceptionalism. The agrarian alliance, North and South, would be revived to form Jacksonian Nationalism and the rise of the Democratic-Republican Party. 

As a result, the Democratic-Republican Party split into the Jacksonian faction, which became the modern Democratic Party in the 1830s, and the Henry Clay faction, which was absorbed by Clay's Whig Party. The term "Jacksonian democracy" was in active use by the 1830s.

Second Party System:
Main article: Second Party System

Many historians and political scientists use "Second Party System" to describe American politics between the mid-1820s until the mid-1850s. The system was demonstrated by rapidly rising levels of voter interest (with high election day turnouts), rallies, partisan newspapers, and high degrees of personal loyalty to parties. 

It was in full swing with the 1828 United States presidential election, since the Federalists shrank to a few isolated strongholds and the Democratic-Republicans lost unity during the buildup to the American Civil War. describe the operating in the United States: the political party system of the United States was dominated by two major parties:
  • The Jacksonian Democrats led by Andrew Jackson. The Jacksonian Democrats stood for the "sovereignty of the people" as expressed in popular demonstrations, constitutional conventions, and majority rule as a general principle of governing,
  • The Whig Party, assembled by Henry Clay from the National Republicans and from other opponents of Jackson. Whigs advocated the rule of law, written and unchanging constitutions, and protections for minority interests against majority tyranny.

After taking office in 1829, President Andrew Jackson restructured a number of federal institutions. Jackson's professed philosophy became the nation's dominant political worldview for the remainder of the 1830s, helping his vice president (Martin Van Buren) secure election in the presidential election of 1836. In the presidential election of 1840, the "Whig Party" had its first national victory with the election of General William Henry Harrison, but he died shortly after assuming office in 1841. 

John Tyler (a self-proclaimed "Democrat") succeeded Harrison, as the first Vice President of the United States to ascend to the presidency via death of the incumbent.

Minor parties of the era included:
Third Party System:
Main article: Third Party System

The "Third Party System" refers to the period which came into focus in the 1850s (during the leadup to the American Civil War) and ended in the 1890s. The issues of focus during this time: Slavery, the civil war, Reconstruction, race, and monetary issues.

It was dominated by the new Republican Party, which claimed success in saving the Union, abolishing slavery and enfranchising the freedmen, while adopting many Whig-style modernization programs such as national banks, railroads, high tariffs, homesteads, social spending (such as on greater Civil War veteran pension funding), and aid to land grant colleges.

While most elections from 1876 through 1892 were extremely close, the opposition Democrats won only the 1884 and 1892 presidential elections (the Democrats also won the popular vote in the 1876 and 1888 presidential elections, but lost the electoral college vote), though from 1875 to 1895 the party usually controlled the United States House of Representatives and controlled the United States Senate from 1879-1881 and 1893-1895.

Indeed, some scholars emphasize that the 1876 election saw a realignment and the collapse of support for Reconstruction. The northern and western states were largely Republican, except for the closely balanced New York, Indiana, New Jersey, and Connecticut. After 1876, the Democrats took control of the "Solid South".

Historians and political scientists generally believe that the Third Party System ended in the mid-1890s, which featured profound developments in issues of American nationalism, modernization, and race. This period, the later part of which is often termed the Gilded Age, is defined by its contrast with the preceding and following eras.

Fourth Party System:
Main article: Fourth Party System

The "Fourth Party System" is the term used in political science and history for the period in American political history from the mid-1890s to the early 1930s, It was dominated by the Republican Party, excepting when 1912 split in which Democrats (led by President Woodrow Wilson) held the White House for eight years.

American history texts usually call the period the Progressive Era. The concept was introduced under the name "System of 1896" by E. E. Schattschneider in 1960, and the numbering scheme was added by political scientists in the mid-1960s.

The era began in the severe depression of 1893 and the extraordinarily intense election of 1896. It included the Progressive Era, World War I, and the start of the Great Depression. The Great Depression caused a realignment that produced the Fifth Party System, dominated by the Democratic New Deal Coalition until the 1970s.

The central domestic issues concerned government regulation of railroads and large corporations ("trusts"), the money issue (gold versus silver), the protective tariff, the role of labor unions, child labor, the need for a new banking system, corruption in party politics, primary elections, the introduction of the federal income tax, direct election of senators, racial segregation, efficiency in government, women's suffrage, and control of immigration.

Foreign policy centered on the 1898 Spanish–American War, Imperialism, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and the creation of the League of Nations.

Dominant personalities included presidents William McKinley (R), Theodore Roosevelt (R), and Woodrow Wilson (D), three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan (D), and Wisconsin's progressive Republican Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

The Fourth Party System ended with the Great Depression, a worldwide economic depression that started in 1929.

A few years after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Herbert Hoover lost the 1932 United States presidential election to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Later systems:

The later party systems (with periods indicated in parenthesis) include:






​
Political Parties
The three following videos spotlight what it is like to live under a Dictatorship: Pictured below:  This Is What the Future of American Politics Looks Like (Politico)
​A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or policy goals.

Political parties have become a major part of the politics of almost every country, as modern party organizations developed and spread around the world over the last few centuries. It is extremely rare for a country to have no political parties. Some countries have only one political party while others have several.

Parties are important in the politics of autocracies as well as democracies, though usually democracies have more political parties than autocracies. Autocracies often have a single party that governs the country, and some political scientists consider competition between two or more parties to be an essential part of democracy.

Parties can develop from existing divisions in society, like the divisions between lower and upper classes, and they streamline the process of making political decisions by encouraging their members to cooperate.

Political parties usually include a party leader, who has primary responsibility for the activities of the party; party executives, who may select the leader and who perform administrative and organizational tasks; and party members, who may volunteer to help the party, donate money to it, and vote for its candidates.

There are many different ways in which political parties can be structured and interact with the electorate. The contributions that citizens give to political parties are often regulated by law, and parties will sometimes govern in a way that favours the people who donate time and money to them.

Many political parties are motivated by ideological goals. It is common for democratic elections to feature competitions between liberal, conservative, and socialist parties; other common ideologies of very large political parties include communism, populism, nationalism, and Islamism.

Political parties in different countries will often adopt similar colors and symbols to identify themselves with a particular ideology. However, many political parties have no ideological affiliation, and may instead be primarily engaged in patronage, clientelism, or the advancement of a specific political entrepreneur.

Definition:

Political parties are collective entities that organize competitions for political offices.

The members of a political party contest elections under a shared label. In a narrow definition, a political party can be thought of as just the group of candidates who run for office under a party label. 

In a broader definition, political parties are the entire apparatus that supports the election of a group of candidates, including voters and volunteers who identify with a particular political party, the official party organizations that support the election of that party's candidates, and legislators in the government who are affiliated with the party. 

In many countries, the notion of a political party is defined in law, and governments may specify requirements for an organization to legally qualify as a political party.

According to Anson D. Morse, a political party is a durable organization united by common principles which "has for its immediate end the advancement of the interests and the realization of the ideals... of the particular group or groups which it represents."

Political parties are distinguished from other political groups and clubs, such as political factions or interest groups, mostly by the fact that parties are focused on electing candidates, whereas interest groups are focused on advancing a policy agenda. This is related to other features that sometimes distinguish parties from other political organizations, including a larger membership, greater stability over time, and a deeper connection to the electorate.

​Causes of political parties:

Political parties are a nearly ubiquitous feature of modern countries. Nearly all democratic countries have strong political parties, and many political scientists consider countries with fewer than two parties to necessarily be autocratic. 

However, these sources allow that a country with multiple competitive parties is not necessarily democratic, and the politics of many autocratic countries are organized around one dominant political party. 

The ubiquity and strength of political parties in nearly every modern country has led researchers to remark that the existence of political parties is almost a law of politics, and to ask why parties appear to be such an essential part of modern states. 

Political scientists have therefore come up with several explanations for why political parties are a nearly universal political phenomenon. 

Social cleavages:
Main article: Cleavage (politics)

One of the core explanations for the existence of political parties is that they arise from pre-existing divisions among people: society is divided in a certain way, and a party is formed to organize that division into the electoral competition.

By the 1950s, economists and political scientists had shown that party organizations could take advantage of the distribution of voters' preferences over political issues, adjusting themselves in response to what voters believe in order to become more competitive.

Beginning in the 1960s, academics began identifying the social cleavages in different countries that might have given rise to specific parties, such as religious cleavages in specific countries that may have produced religious parties there.
​
The theory that parties are produced by social cleavages has drawn several criticisms. Some authors have challenged it on empirical grounds, either finding no evidence for the claim that parties emerge from existing cleavages, or arguing that the claim is not empirically testable.

Others note that while social cleavages might cause political parties to exist, this obscures the opposite effect: that political parties also cause changes in the underlying social cleavages.

A further objection is that, if the explanation for where parties come from is that they emerge from existing social cleavages, then the theory is an incomplete story of where political parties come from unless it also explains the origins of these social cleavages.

Individual and group incentives:
​
An alternative explanation for why parties are ubiquitous across the world is that the formation of parties provides compatible incentives for candidates and legislators. For example, the existence of political parties might coordinate candidates across geographic districts, so that a candidate in one electoral district has an incentive to assist a similar candidate in a different district. 

Thus, political parties can be mechanisms for preventing candidates with similar goals from acting to each other's detriment when campaigning or governing. This might help explain the ubiquity of parties: if a group of candidates form a party and are harming each other less, they may perform better over the long run than unaffiliated politicians, so politicians with party affiliations will out-compete politicians without parties.

Parties can also align their member's incentives when those members are in a legislature. The existence of a party apparatus can help coalitions of electors to agree on ideal policy choices, whereas a legislature of unaffiliated members might never be able to agree on a single best policy choice without some institution constraining their options.

Parties as heuristics:
Main article: Party identification

Another prominent explanation for why political parties exist is psychological: parties may be necessary for many individuals to participate in politics because they provide a massively simplifying heuristic, which allows people to make informed choices with much less mental effort than if voters had to consciously evaluate the merits of every candidate individually.

Without political parties, electors would have to individually evaluate every candidate in every election. But political parties enable electors to make judgments about just a few groups, and then apply their judgment of the party to all the candidates affiliated with that group.

​Because it is much easier to become informed about a few parties' platforms than about many candidates' personal positions, parties reduce the cognitive burden for people to cast informed votes. However, evidence suggests that over the last several decades, the strength of party identification has been weakening, so this may be a less important function for parties to provide than it was in the past.

​Structure of political parties:

Political parties are often structured in similar ways across countries. They typically feature a single party leader, a group of party executives, and a community of party members. Parties in democracies usually select their party leadership in ways that are more open and competitive than parties in autocracies, where the selection of a new party leader is likely to be tightly controlled. 

In countries with large sub-national regions, particularly federalist countries, there may be regional party leaders and regional party members in addition to the national membership and leadership.

Party leaders:

​Parties are typically led by a party leader, who serves as the main representative of the party and often has primary responsibility for overseeing the party's policies and strategies. The leader of the party that controls the government usually becomes the head of government, such as the president or prime minister, and the leaders of other parties explicitly compete to become the head of government. 

In both presidential democracies and parliamentary democracies, the members of a party frequently have substantial input into the selection of party leaders, for example by voting on party leadership at a party conference. Because the leader of a major party is a powerful and visible person, many party leaders are well-known career politicians. 

Party leaders can be sufficiently prominent that they affect voters' perceptions of the entire party, and some voters decide how to vote in elections partly based on how much they like the leaders of the different parties.

The number of people involved in choosing party leaders varies widely across parties and across countries. On one extreme, party leaders might be selected from the entire electorate; on the opposite extreme, they might be selected by just one individual. Selection by a smaller group can be a feature of party leadership transitions in more autocratic countries, where the existence of political parties may be severely constrained to only one legal political party, or only one competitive party.

Some of these parties, like the Chinese Communist Party, have rigid methods for selecting the next party leader, which involves selection by other party members. A small number of single-party states have hereditary succession, where party leadership is inherited by the child of an outgoing party leader. 

Autocratic parties use more restrictive selection methods to avoid having major shifts in the regime as a result of successions.

Party executives:

In both democratic and non-democratic countries, the party leader is often the foremost member of a larger party leadership. A party executive will commonly include administrative positions, like a party secretary and a party chair, who may be different people from the party leader. These executive organizations may serve to constrain the party leader, especially if that leader is an autocrat. 

​It is common for political parties to conduct major leadership decisions, like selecting a party executive and setting their policy goals, during regular party conferences.

​Much as party leaders who are not in power are usually at least nominally competing to become the head of government, the entire party executive may be competing for various positions in the government.

For example, in Westminster systems, the largest party that is out of power will form the Official Opposition in parliament and select a shadow cabinet which (among other functions) provides a signal about which members of the party would hold which positions in the government if the party were to win an election.

Party membership:

Citizens in a democracy will often affiliate with a specific political party. Party membership may include paying dues, an agreement not to affiliate with multiple parties at the same time, and sometimes a statement of agreement with the party's policies and platform. 

In democratic countries, members of political parties often are allowed to participate in elections to choose the party leadership. Party members may form the base of the volunteer activists and donors who support political parties during campaigns. 

The extent of participation in party organizations can be affected by a country's political institutions, with certain electoral systems and party systems encouraging higher party membership. Since at least the 1980s, membership in large traditional party organizations has been steadily declining across a number of countries, particularly longstanding European democracies.

Types of party organizations:

Political scientists have distinguished between different types of political parties that have evolved throughout history. These include cadre parties, mass parties, catch-all parties and cartel parties. Cadre parties were political elites that were concerned with contesting elections and restricted the influence of outsiders, who were only required to assist in election campaigns.

Mass parties tried to recruit new members who were a source of party income and were often expected to spread party ideology as well as assist in elections. In the United States, where both major parties were cadre parties, the introduction of primaries and other reforms has transformed them so that power is held by activists who compete over influence and nomination of candidates.

Cadre parties:
Main article: Elite party

A cadre party, or elite party, is a type of political party that was dominant in the nineteenth century before the introduction of universal suffrage. The French political scientist Maurice Duverger first distinguished between "cadre" and "mass" parties, founding his distinction on the differences within the organisational structures of these two types.  

Cadre parties are characterized by minimal and loose organisation, and are financed by fewer larger monetary contributions typically originating from outside the party. Cadre parties give little priority to expanding the party's membership base, and its leaders are its only members.

The earliest political parties, such as the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists, are classified as cadre parties.

Mass parties:
​
A mass party is a type of political party that developed around cleavages in society and mobilized the ordinary citizens or 'masses' in the political process. 

In Europe, the introduction of universal suffrage resulted in the creation of worker's parties that later evolved into mass parties; an example is the German Social Democratic Party. 

These parties represented large groups of citizens who had not previously been represented in political processes, articulating the interests of different groups in society. In contrast to cadre parties, mass parties are funded by their members, and rely on and maintain a large membership base. Further, mass parties prioritize the mobilization of voters and are more centralized than cadre parties.

Catch-all parties:
Main article: Big tent party

The term "catch-all party" was developed by German-American political scientist Otto Kirchheimer to describe the parties that developed in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of changes within the mass parties.The term "big tent party" may be used interchangeably.

Kirchheimer characterized the shift from the traditional mass parties to catch-all parties as a set of developments including the "drastic reduction of the party's ideological baggage" and the "downgrading of the role of the individual party member". By broadening their central ideologies into more open-ended ones, catch-all parties seek to secure the support of a wider section of the population.

Further, the role of members is reduced as catch-all parties are financed in part by the state or by donations. In Europe, the shift of Christian Democratic parties that were organized around religion into broader centre-right parties epitomizes this type.

Cartel parties:
Main article: Cartel party theory

Cartel parties are a type of political party that emerged post-1970s and are characterized by heavy state financing and the diminished role of ideology as an organizing principle. The cartel party thesis was developed by Richard Katz and Peter Mair, who wrote that political parties have turned into "semi-state agencies", acting on behalf of the state rather than groups in society.

The term 'cartel' refers to the way in which prominent parties in government make it difficult for new parties to enter, as such forming a cartel of established parties. As with catch-all parties, the role of members in cartel parties is largely insignificant as parties use the resources of the state to maintain their position within the political system.

Niche parties:
​See also: Single-issue politics

Niche parties are a type of political party that developed on the basis of the emergence of new cleavages and issues in politics, such as immigration and the environment. 

In contrast to mainstream or catch-all parties, niche parties articulate an often limited set of interests in a way that does not conform to the dominant economic left-right divide in politics, in turn emphasizing issues that do not attain prominence within the other parties. 

Further, niche parties do not respond to changes in public opinion to the extent that mainstream parties do. Examples of niche parties include Green parties and extreme nationalist parties, such as the National Rally in France. 

However, over time these parties may grow in size and shed some of their niche qualities as they become larger, a phenonmenon observable among European Green parties during their transformation from radical environmentalist movements to mainstream center-left parties. 

Entrepreneurial parties:
Main article: Entrepreneurial party

An Entrepreneurial party is a political party that is centered on a political entrepreneur, and dedicated to the advancement of that person or their policies. While some definitions of political parties state that a party is an organization that advances a specific set of ideological or policy goals, many political parties are not primarily motivated by ideology or policy, and instead exist to advance the career of a specific political entrepreneur.

Party positions and ideologies:

Ideological roles and types:
Main article: List of political ideologies

​Political ideologies are one of the major organizing features of political parties, and parties often officially align themselves with specific ideologies. Parties adopt ideologies for a number of reasons. Ideological affiliations for political parties send signals about the types of policies they might pursue if they were in power. 

Ideologies also differentiate parties from one another, so that voters can select the party that advances the policies that they most prefer. A party may also seek to advance an ideology by convincing voters to adopt its belief system.

Common ideologies that can form a central part of the identity of a political party include: ​​
​Liberalism is the ideology that is most closely connected to the history of democracies and is often considered to be the dominant or default ideology of governing parties in much of the contemporary world. Many of the traditional competitors to liberal parties are conservative parties. 

Socialist, communist, anarchist, fascist, and nationalist parties are more recent developments, largely entering political competitions only in the 19th and 20th centuries. Feminism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, and certain types of fundamentalism became prominent towards the end of the 20th century.

Parties can sometimes be organized according to their ideology using an economic left–right political spectrum. However, a simple left-right economic axis does not fully capture the variation in party ideologies. 

​Other common axes that are used to compare the ideologies of political parties include ranges from liberal to authoritarian, from pro-establishment to anti-establishment, and from tolerant and pluralistic (in their behavior while participating in the political arena) to anti-system.

​Non-ideological parties:

Though ideologies are central to a large number of political parties around the world, not all political parties have an organizing ideology, or exist to promote ideological policies.

For example, some political parties may be clientelistic or patronage-based organizations, which are largely concerned with distributing goods. Other political parties may be created as tools for the advancement of an individual politician. 

It is also common, in countries with important social cleavages along ethnic or racial lines, to represent the interests of one ethnic group or another. This may involve a non-ideological attachment to the interests of that group or may be a commitment based on an ideology like identity politics. While any of these types of parties may be ideological, there are political parties that do not have any organizing ideology.

Party systems:
Main article: Party system

Political parties are ubiquitous across both democratic and autocratic countries, and there is often very little change in which political parties have a chance of holding power in a country from one election to the next. This makes it possible to think about the political parties in a country as collectively forming one of the country's central political institutions, called a party system. 

Some basic features of a party system are the number of parties and what sorts of parties are the most successful. These properties are closely connected to other major features of the country's politics, such as how democratic it is, what sorts of restrictions its laws impose on political parties, and what type of electoral systems it uses. 

Even in countries where the number of political parties is not officially constrained by law, political institutions affect how many parties are viable. For example, democracies that use a single-member district electoral system tend to have very few parties, whereas countries that use proportional representation tend to have more.  

The number of parties in a country can also be accurately estimated based on the magnitude of a country's electoral districts and the number of seats in its legislature. 

An informative way to classify the party systems of the world is by how many parties they include. Because some party systems include a large number of parties that have a very low probability of winning elections, it is often useful to think about the effective number of parties (the number of parties weighted by the strength of those parties) rather than the literal number of registered parties.

Non-partisan systems:
Main article: Non-partisan democracy
​
​In a non-partisan system, no political parties exist, or political parties are not a major part of the political system. There are very few countries without political parties.

In some non-partisan countries, the formation of parties is explicitly banned by law. The existence of political parties may be banned in autocratic countries in order to prevent a turnover in power. 

For example, in Saudi Arabia, a ban on political parties has been used as a tool for protecting the monarchy. However, parties are also banned in some polities that have long democratic histories, usually in local or regional elections of countries that have strong national party systems.

Political parties may also temporarily cease to exist in countries that have either only been established recently, or that have experienced a major upheaval in their politics and have not yet returned to a stable system of political parties. For example, the United States began as a non-partisan democracy, and it evolved a stable system of political parties over the course of many decades. 

A country's party system may also dissolve and take time to re-form, leaving a period of minimal or no party system, such as in Peru following the regime of Alberto Fujimori. 

However, it is also possible – albeit rare – for countries with no bans on political parties, and which have not experienced a major disruption, to nevertheless have no political parties: there are a small number of pacific island democracies, such as Palau, where political parties are permitted to exist and yet parties are not an important part of national politics.[98]

One-party systems:
Main article: One-party state

In a one-party system, power is held entirely by one political party. When only one political party exists, it may be the result of a ban on the formation of any competing political parties, which is a common feature in authoritarian states.

For example, the Communist Party of Cuba is the only permitted political party in Cuba, and is the only party that can hold seats in the legislature. When only one powerful party is legally permitted to exist, its membership can grow to contain a very large portion of society and it can play substantial roles in civil society that are not necessarily directly related to political governance; one example of this is the Chinese Communist Party. 

Bans on competing parties can also ensure that only one party can ever realistically hold power, even without completely outlawing all other political parties. For example, in North Korea, more than one party is officially permitted to exist and even to seat members in the legislature, but laws ensure that the Workers' Party of Korea retains control.

It is also possible for countries with free elections to have only one party that holds power.

These cases are sometimes called dominant-party systems or particracies. Scholars have debated whether or not a country that has never experienced a transfer of power from one party to another can nevertheless be considered a democracy.  

There have been periods of government exclusively or entirely by one party in some countries that are often considered to have been democratic, and which had no official legal barriers to the inclusion of other parties in the government; this includes recent periods in Botswana, Japan, Mexico, Senegal, and South Africa. 

It can also occur that one political party dominates a sub-national region of a democratic country that has a competitive national party system; one example is the southern United States during much of the 19th and 20th centuries, where the Democratic Party had almost complete control, with the Southern states being functionally one-party regimes, though opposition parties were never prohibited.

Two-party systems:
Main article: Two-party system

In several countries, there are only two parties that have a realistic chance of competing to form government. 

One canonical two-party democracy is the United States, where the national government has for much of the country's history exclusively controlled by either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. 

Other examples of countries which have had long periods of two-party dominance include Colombia, Uruguay, Malta, and Ghana. Two-party systems are not limited to democracies; they may be present in authoritarian regimes as well. Competition between two parties has occurred in historical autocratic regimes in countries including Brazil and Venezuela.

A democracy's political institutions can shape the number of parties that it has. In the 1950s Maurice Duverger observed that single-member district single-vote plurality-rule elections tend to produce two-party systems,  and this phenomenon came to be known as Duverger's law. Whether or not this pattern is true has been heavily debated over the last several decades. 

Some political scientists have broadened this idea to argue that more restrictive political institutions (of which first past the post is one example) tend to produce a smaller number of political parties, so that extremely small parties systems – like those with only two parties – tend to form in countries with very restrictive rules.

Two-party systems have attracted heavy criticism for limiting the choices that electors have, and much of this criticism has centered around their association with restrictive political institutions. For example, some commentators argue that political institutions in prominent two-party systems like the United States have been specifically designed to ensure that no third party can become competitive. 

Criticisms also center around these systems' tendencies to encourage insincere voting and to facilitate the spoiler effect. 

Multi-party systems:
Main article: Multi-party system

​Multi-party systems are systems in which more than two parties have a realistic chance of holding power and influencing policy. A very large number of systems around the world have had periods of multi-party competition, and two-party democracies may be considered unusual or uncommon compared to multi-party systems. 

Many of the largest democracies in the world have had long periods of multi-party competition, including India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Brazil. 

Multi-party systems encourage characteristically different types of governance than smaller party systems, for example by often encouraging the formation of coalition governments.

The presence of many competing political parties is usually associated with a greater level of democracy, and a country transitioning from having a one-party system to having a many-party system is often considered to be democratizing. 

Authoritarian countries can include multi-party competition, but typically this occurs when the elections are not fair. For this reason, in two-party democracies like the United States, proponents of forming new competitive political parties often argue that developing a multi-party system would make the country more democratic. 

However, the question of whether multi-party systems are more democratic than two-party systems, or if they enjoy better policy outcomes, is a subject of substantial disagreement among scholars as well as among the public. 

In the opposite extreme, a country with a very large number of parties can experience governing coalitions that include highly ideologically diverse parties that are unable to make much policy progress, which may cause the country to be unstable and experience a very large number of elections; examples of systems that have been described as having these problems include periods in the recent history of Israel, Italy, and Finland. 

Multi-party systems are often viewed as fairer or more representative than one- or two-party systems, but they also have downsides, like the likelihood that in a system with plurality voting the winner of a race with many options will only have minority support.

Some multi-party systems may have two parties that are noticeably more competitive than the other parties. Such party systems have been called "two-party-plus" systems, which refers to the two dominant parties, plus other parties that exist but rarely or never hold power in the government. 

Such parties may serve a crucial factor in election outcomes. It is also possible for very large multi-party systems, like India's, to nevertheless be characterized largely by a series of regional contests that realistically have only two competitive parties, but in the aggregate can produce many more than 2 parties that have major roles in the country's national politics.

Funding:
Main article: Political party funding

Many of the activities of political parties involve the acquisition and allocation of funds in order to achieve political goals. The funding involved can be very substantial, with contemporary elections in the largest democracies typically costing billions or even tens of billions of dollars. 

Much of this expense is paid by candidates and political parties, which often develop sophisticated fundraising organizations. Because paying for participation in electoral contests is such a central democratic activity, the funding of political parties is an important feature of a country's politics.

Sources of party funds:

Common sources of party funding across countries include dues-paying party members, advocacy groups and lobbying organizations, corporations, trade unions, and candidates who may self-fund activities. 

In most countries, the government also provides some level of funding for political parties. 

Nearly all of the 180 countries examined by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance have some form of public funding for political parties, and about a third have regular payments of government funds that goes beyond campaign reimbursements. 

In some countries, public funding for parties depends on the size of that party: for example, a country may only provide funding to parties which have more than a certain number of candidates or supporters. 

A common argument for public funding of political parties is that it creates fairer and more democratic elections by enabling more groups to compete, whereas many advocates for private funding of parties argue that donations to parties are a form of political expression that should be protected in a democracy. 

Public financing of political parties may decrease parties' pursuit of funds through corrupt methods, by decreasing their incentive to find alternate sources of funding.

One way of categorizing the sources of party funding is between public funding and private funding. Another dichotomy is between plutocratic and grassroots sources; parties which get much of their funding from large corporations may tend to pursue different policies and use different strategies than parties which are mostly funded through small donations by individual supporters. 

Private funding for political parties can also be thought of as coming from internal or external sources: this distinguishes between dues from party members or contributions by candidates, and donations from entities outside of the party like non-members, corporations, or trade unions. 

Internal funding may be preferred because external sources might make the party beholden to an outside entity.

Uses for party funds:

There are many ways in which political parties may deploy money in order to secure better electoral outcomes. Parties often spend money to train activists, recruit volunteers, create and deploy advertisements, conduct research and support for their leadership in between elections, and promote their policy agenda. 

Many political parties and candidates engage in a practice called clientelism, in which they distribute material rewards to people in exchange for political support; in many countries this is illegal, though even where it is illegal it may nevertheless be widespread in practice.

Some parties engage directly in vote buying, in which a party gives money to a person in exchange for their vote.

Though it may be crucial for a party to spend more than some threshold to win a given election, there are typically diminishing returns for expenses during a campaign. Once a party has crossed a particular spending threshold, additional expenditures might not increase their chance of success.

Restrictions:

Fundraising and expenditures by political parties are typically regulated by governments, with many countries' regulations focusing on who can contribute money to parties, how parties' money can be spent, and how much of it can pass through the hands of a political party. 

Two main ways in which regulations affect parties are by intervening in their sources of income and by mandating that they maintain some level of transparency about their funding.

One common type of restriction on how parties acquire money is to limit who can donate money to political parties; for example, people who are not citizens of a country may not be allowed to make contributions to that country's political parties, in order to prevent foreign interference. 

It is also common to limit how much money an individual can give to a political party each election. Similarly, many governments cap the total amount of money that can be spent by each party in an election. 

Transparency regulations may require parties to disclose detailed financial information to the government, and in many countries transparency laws require those disclosures to be available to the public, as a safeguard against potential corruption. 

Creating, implementing, and amending laws regarding party expenses can be extremely difficult, since governments may be controlled by the very parties that these regulations restrict.

Party colors and symbols:
Main articles: 
Nearly all political parties associate themselves with specific colors and symbols, primarily to aid voters in identifying, recognizing, and remembering the party. This branding is particularly important in polities where much of the population may be illiterate, so that someone who cannot read a party's name on a ballot can instead identify that party by color or logo. 

Parties of similar ideologies will often use the same colours across different countries. Color associations are useful as short-hand for referring to and representing parties in graphical media. 

They can also be used to refer to coalitions and alliances between political parties and other organizations; examples include purple alliances, red-green alliances, traffic light coalitions, pan-green coalitions, and pan-blue coalitions.

However, associations between color and ideology can also be inconsistent: parties of the same ideology in different countries often use different colors, and sometimes competing parties in a country may even adopt the same colors. These associations also have major exceptions.

For example, in the United States, red is associated with the more conservative Republican Party while blue is associated with the more left-leaning Democratic Party.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Political Parties:
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Political Parties in the United States, including a List Pictured below are Political Emblems as: Donkey = Democratic Party; Elephant = Republican Party
American electoral politics have been dominated by two major political parties since shortly after the founding of the republic of the United States of America. Since the 1850s, the two have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—one of these has won every United States presidential election since 1852 and controlled the United States Congress since at least 1856. 

Despite keeping the same names, the two parties have both evolved in terms of ideologies, positions, and support bases over their long lifespans, in response to social, cultural, and economic developments—the Democratic Party being the left-of-center party since the time of the New Deal, and the Republican Party now being the right-of-center party.

Political parties are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution (which predates the party system). The two-party system is based on laws, party rules and custom. Several third parties also operate in the U.S., and from time to time elect someone to local office. Some of the larger ones include the Constitution, Green, Alliance, and Libertarian parties, with the latter being the largest third party since the 1980s.

A small number of members of the US Congress, a larger number of political candidates, and a good many voters (35-45%) have no party affiliation. However, most self-described independents consistently support one of the two major parties when it comes time to vote, and members of Congress with no political party affiliation caucus (meet to pursue common legislative objectives) with either the Democrats or Republicans.

The need to win popular support in a republic led to the American invention of voter-based political parties in the 1790s. Americans were especially innovative in devising new campaign techniques that linked public opinion with public policy through the party.

Political scientists and historians have divided the development of America's two-party system into six or so eras or "party systems", starting with Federalist Party, which supported the ratification of the Constitution, and the Democratic-Republican Party or the Anti-Administration party (Anti-Federalists), which opposed a powerful central government.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for moe about Political Parties in the United States:







Political Hypocrisy Pictured below: Democracy and hypocrisy
Political hypocrisy

​Political hypocrisy or hypocrisy in policy refers to any discrepancy between what a political party claims and the practices the party is trying to hide. Modern political debate is often characterized by accusations and counter-accusations of hypocrisy.
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The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was an outspoken opponent of political hypocrisy, though he considered it inevitable. David Runciman writes that "Hobbes was at pains not to set the bar for sincerity too high, which would let in the most corrosive forms of hypocrisy through the back door. But he also believed that some forms of hypocrisy, unchecked, would render political life impossible". 

The author Bernard Mandeville goes further, distinguishing two types of hypocrisy: one in which politicians wear a mask of hypocrisy to protect public interests, and the other more sinister hypocrisy to serve the interests of malicious politicians. The distinction between the two, as Mandeville seeks to demonstrate, is difficult to maintain in any political setting. 

The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau devoted much of his writing to creating portraits of innocence, virtue, and integrity as counterpoints to his scathing critique of the corruption, flattery, and hypocrisy that afflicted the social and political life in his view. For the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the mask of hypocrisy is intended to conceal or deceive and must always be removed. 

Similarly, in his book On Compromise (dubbed "The Prince for Victorian liberalism" by his biographer), the British politician John Morley expresses his concerns about the triumph of the political spirit, which he defines as the abandonment of principles and the willingness of politicians of all stripes to dissimulate and compromise in the name of the party. 

In contrast, the English philosopher Francis Bacon, believed that wisdom is striking the correct balance between honesty and deception, so that one's reputation for honesty and their ability to deceive are both preserved.


Definition:

The notion of hypocrisy has its origins in the theater. The Greek word (hypokrisis) meant 'acting' and the first 'hypocrites' were classical theater actors. As a result, the phrase was first used to describe the theatrical function of appearing to be someone else. 

As an attempt to separate one's personal behavior from the standards that apply to everyone else, hypocrisy in its pejorative connotation always implies some form of deception. 

American political journalist Michael Gerson says that political hypocrisy is "the conscious use of a mask to fool the public and gain political benefit".


Historical views:

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was an outspoken opponent of political hypocrisy, though he considered it inevitable. David Runciman writes that "Hobbes was at pains not to set the bar for sincerity too high, which would let in the most corrosive forms of hypocrisy through the back door. But he also believed that some forms of hypocrisy, unchecked, would render political life impossible". 

The author Bernard Mandeville goes further, distinguishing two types of hypocrisy: one in which politicians wear a mask of hypocrisy to protect public interests, and the other more sinister hypocrisy to serve the interests of malicious politicians. The distinction between the two, as Mandeville seeks to demonstrate, is difficult to maintain in any political setting.

The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau devoted much of his writing to creating portraits of innocence, virtue, and integrity as counterpoints to his scathing critique of the corruption, flattery, and hypocrisy that afflicted the social and political life in his view. For the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the mask of hypocrisy is intended to conceal or deceive and must always be removed. 

Similarly, in his book On Compromise (dubbed "The Prince for Victorian liberalism" by his biographer), the British politician John Morley expresses his concerns about the triumph of the political spirit, which he defines as the abandonment of principles and the willingness of politicians of all stripes to dissimulate and compromise in the name of the party.  

In contrast, the English philosopher Francis Bacon, believed that wisdom is striking the correct balance between honesty and deception, so that one's reputation for honesty and their
ability to deceive are both preserved.


Hypocrisy in democratic politics:

In democratic politics, according to Dhruba Ghosh, the need for hypocrisy arises from the structure of political interactions. David Runciman suggests that hypocrisy is common in politics and particularly unavoidable in liberal democratic democracies: "No one likes it, but everyone is at it." 

In her book Ordinary Vices (1984), Judith Shklar downplays hypocrisy, ranking it as an unimportant vice based on its damage to liberal communities in comparison with, for instance, cruelty. 

Nevertheless, because hypocrisy is despised and commonplace, Shklar writes that democratic politicians are often tempted to reveal their opponents' double standards: it is easier to dispose of an opponent's character by exposing his hypocrisy than to challenge his political convictions. 

Shklar believes that we should be more accepting of hypocrisy and realize that liberal democratic politics can only be sustained with a certain amount of deception and pretense.


Examples:

According to the Middle East Monitor, campaigns to ban Israel from international sporting events have yielded few results. Palestinians have been repeatedly informed by FIFA, the international governing body of association football, that "sport and politics don't mix."

Nevertheless, FIFA and similar agencies, such as UEFA and IOC, have joined the West's anti-Russian sanctions in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In contrast, Fethi Nourine, an Algerian judoka, was suspended for ten years, along with his instructor, for withdrawing from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to avoid an Israeli opponent.

Other athletes and teams have been fined for showing symbolic sympathy for Palestine, and even fans have been punished for just holding Palestinian flags or chanting for Palestinian freedom.

The disparity in the treatment of Syrian and Ukrainian refugees in Europe has been considered an instance of political hypocrisy.


Case study: United States:

John Mearsheimer suggests that the U.S. foreign policy rhetorics of high liberal ideas does not match its actions. Such a chasm, according to Eugenio Lilli, has fueled accusations of U.S. hypocrisy and harmed the U.S. image in Muslim communities, providing fertile ground for extremist organizations to recruit people willing to carry out terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens and assets. 

In particular, the constant support for Israel is said to have harmed the U.S. image in the Greater Middle East. As another example, the U.S. official policy of promoting democratic values contradicts the U.S. warm relations with monarchies and dictatorships in the Middle East. 

While claiming to be a proponent of the human rights, the U.S. has also turned a blind eye to alleged violations of human rights in countries like South Korea, the Philippines, and Iran's Pahlavi dynasty, which consistently abused human rights. 

In another instance, the charges against Iran for its nuclear programme have not been met with any U.S. criticism of Israel which possesses more than two-hundred nuclear warheads.

Human rights:

The U.S. has been accused of scant ratification of human rights treaties despite its official policy of promoting human rights worldwide.[20] In one case, the U.S. has been criticized for refusing to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the American opposition to this convention is said to be primarily shaped by political and religious conservatives.,

The U.S. has publicly stated that it is opposed to torture, but has been criticized for condoning it in the School of the Americas. The U.S. has advocated a respect for national sovereignty but has supported internal guerrilla movements and paramilitary organizations, such as the Contras in Nicaragua. 

The U.S. has also been accused of denouncing alleged rights violations in China while overlooking alleged human rights abuses by Israel. 

The Defense Technical Information Center reports that the U.S. did not pursue its human rights policy in South Korea, the Philippines, and Iran's Pahlavi dynasty, for strategic reasons, exposing the hypocrisy of "human rights diplomacy." 

According to the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, trust is the fundamental problem of the U.S. in the Arab and non-Arab Muslim world. Arabs and the rest of the Muslim world, according to this report, have simply spent too much time listening to U.S. rhetoric and then watching the U.S. continually fail to deliver on it. 

A number of authors have attacked the U.S. attitude towards human rights: Ahmed an-Naim sees the U.S. monitoring of the international human rights as a pretext for its coercive humanitarian intervention in pursuit of its own foreign policy goals. 

Francis Boyle writes that genocide is perceived legal today when carried out at the request of the U.S. and its allies, such as Israel. According to Boyle, the U.S. government promoted the man responsible for blowing up an Iranian civilian airliner but wrongly sanctioned Libya when a U.S. airliner was attacked. 

When former US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, took office, his department outlined general guidelines to be followed “We should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea and Iran,” read the leaked memo, sent to Tillerson to guide his policy actions, suggesting that human rights is a tool that can only be used against enemies, not friends.

Democracy:

The U.S. foreign policy language extols its worldwide support for the cause of democracy, though Eugenio Lilli suggests that this rhetoric does not match the conduct of U.S., particularly in the Greater Middle East. 

In an article called Astounding Hypocrisy, Arab News writes that Palestinians voted for Hamas in defiance of Israel but the administration of George W. Bush made it clear that the U.S. would not accept the outcome of the free election.

In the same speech, however, Bush expressed his hopes for a democratic Iran and a pro-American government there. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Muslim communities largely believed that promoting democracy was used as a pretext by the Bush administration to justify the invasion. 

Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the search for restricted weapons, the United States claimed, was the first priority for the country; though Bush later openly proclaimed regime change as the objective.

The invasion was codenamed "the battle for Iraqi freedom," and American propagandists, according to Mack H Jones, flooded their messaging with homilies about the U.S. desire and intention to liberate the Iraqi people and offer them western-style democracy.

The Bush administration's ostensible desire to provide democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people, while continuing to align itself with several repressive nondemocratic regimes around the world including some Middle Eastern client states, is yet another example of American duplicity, according to Jones.

Weapons of mass destruction:

Al Raya writes that the U.S. attack on Iran over its nuclear program is not met with any Western opposition to Israel and its alleged arsenal of more than 200 nuclear warheads. 

Sokolski and Gilinsky see this as inconsistent with the U.S. nonproliferation policy, adding that every U.S. president since Bill Clinton has pledged, though not publicly, not to press the Jewish state to give up its nuclear weapons as long as it continued to face existential threats in the region.

While everyone on the world who has even a slight interest in the subject is aware of the truth, the U.S. government has enacted a regulation—described in the U.S. Energy Department's Classification Bulletin WPN-136 on Foreign Nuclear Capabilities—that threatens government employees with severe punishment if they acknowledge Israel has nuclear weapons. 

It has also been suggested that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 had little to do with the destruction of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, as officially claimed, but was instead meant to realize the PNAC goal of establishing a permanent U.S. military presence in the region and installing a puppet state in Iraq.

War on terror:

Daryl Glaser suggests that the U.S. war on terrorism has been undermined by its support of the Israeli government, pro-western Arab dictatorships, and authoritarian Islamist groups while invading designated "rogue" states such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Glaser explains the American policies have robbed Arab and Muslim countries of the moral authority they require to effectively combat terrorism. These administrations are unable to explain to their citizens why legitimate grievances (particularly against Israel) should be stifled while the West promotes state and opposition terrorism of its own. Furthermore, Glaser continues, because American policies inflame Arab and Muslim rage, new terrorist groups may emerge from their ranks.

Francis Boyle suggests that the first step towards addressing the terrorism problems created by international terrorist actions directed against American interests around the world, is to implement the Palestinian people's internationally-recognized legal right to self-determination and a state of their own. 

When Abu Nidal organization took sole responsibility for the Rome and Vienna bombings, President Reagan asserted that "these murderers could not carry out their crimes without the sanctuary and support provided by regimes such as Colonel Qaddafi’s in Libya."

Reagan then suspended all commercial transactions between the U.S. and Libya and recalled all Americans living or working in Libya. Boyle, however, notes that U.S. oil companies in Libya were exempted from these Reagan's orders.

See also:







United States Electoral CollegePictured below: What is the Electoral College and why is 270 important? (CNN)
 United States Electoral College (Wikipedia)

​In the United States, the Electoral College is the group of presidential electors required by the Constitution to form every four years for the sole purpose of voting for the president and vice president.

Each state appoints electors under the methods described by its legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation (representatives and senators) totaling 535 electors.

The federal District of Columbia also has 3 electors under an amendment adopted in 1961. Federal office holders, including senators and representatives, cannot be electors.

Of the current 538 electors, a simple majority of 270 or more electoral votes is required to elect the president and vice president. If no candidate achieves a majority there, a contingent election is held by the House of Representatives to elect the president and by the Senate to elect the vice president.

The states and the District of Columbia hold a statewide or districtwide popular vote on Election Day in November to choose electors based upon how they have pledged to vote for president and vice president, with some state laws prohibiting faithless electors.

All states except Maine and Nebraska use a party block voting, or general ticket method, to choose their electors, meaning all their electors go to one winning ticket. Maine and Nebraska choose one elector per congressional district and 2 electors for the ticket with the highest statewide vote. The electors meet and vote in December, and the inauguration of the president and vice president take place in January.

The merits of the electoral college system is a matter of ongoing debate in the United States since its inception at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, becoming more controversial by the latter years of the 19th century, up through to the present day.

More resolutions have been submitted to amend the Electoral College mechanism than any other part of the constitution, with 1969–70 as the closest attempt to reform the Electoral College.
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Supporters argue that it requires presidential candidates to have broad appeal across the country to win, while critics argue that it is not representative of the popular will of the nation. Winner-take-all systems, especially with representation not proportional to population, do not align with the principle of "one person, one vote". 

Critics object to the inequity that, due to the distribution of electors, individual citizens in states with smaller populations have more voting power than those in larger states. This is because the number of electors each state appoints is equal to the size of its congressional delegation, each state is entitled to at least 3 regardless of its population, and the apportionment of the statutorily fixed number of the rest is only roughly proportional.

This allocation has contributed to runners-up of the nationwide popular vote being elected president in the following:  ​
In addition, faithless electors may not vote in accord with their pledge. Further objection is that candidates focus their campaigns on swing states. By the end of the 20th century, Electoral colleges have been abandoned by all other democracies around the world in favor of direct elections for an executive president.

Procedure
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Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution directs each state to appoint a quantity of electors equal to that state's congressional delegation (the number of members of the House of Representatives plus two senators). The same clause empowers each state legislature to determine the manner by which that state's electors are chosen but prohibits federal office holders from being named electors.

Following the national presidential election day on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, each state, and the federal district, selects its electors according to its laws. After a popular election, the states identify and record their appointed electors in a Certificate of Ascertainment, and those appointed electors then meet in their respective jurisdictions and produce a Certificate of Vote for their candidate; both certificates are then sent to Congress to be opened and counted.

In 48 of the 50 states, state laws mandate that the winner of the plurality of the statewide popular vote receive all of that state's electoral votes. 

In Maine and Nebraska, two electoral votes are assigned in this manner, while the remaining electoral votes are allocated based on the plurality of votes in each of their congressional districts. The federal district, Washington, D.C., allocates its 3 electoral votes to the winner of its single district election.

States generally require electors to pledge to vote for that state's winning ticket; to prevent electors from being faithless electors, most states have adopted various laws to enforce the electors' pledge.

The electors of each state meet in their respective state capital on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December (between December 13 and 19) to cast their votes. The results are sent to and counted by the Congress, where they are tabulated in the first week of January before a joint meeting of the Senate and the House of Representatives, presided over by the current vice president, as president of the Senate. 

Should a majority of votes not be cast for a candidate, a contingent election takes place: the House holds a presidential election session, where one vote is cast by each of the fifty states; the Senate is responsible for electing the vice president, with each senator having one vote. 

The elected president and vice president are inaugurated on January 20.

Since 1964, there have been 538 electors. States select 535 of the electors, this number matches the aggregate total of their congressional delegations. The additional three electors come from the Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961, providing that the district established pursuant to Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 as the seat of the federal government (namely, Washington, D.C.) is entitled to the same number of electors as the least populous state. 

In practice, that results in Washington D.C. being entitled to 3 electors.


Background:

The Electoral College was settled-on as the means of electing president towards the end of the Constitutional Convention due to pressure from slave states wanting to increase their voting power (since they could count slaves as 3/5 of a person when allocating electors) and by small states who increased their power due to the minimum of 3 electors per state.

The compromise was reached after other proposals, including to get a direct election for president (as proposed by Hamilton among others), failed to get traction among slave states Levitsky and Ziblatt describe it as "not a product of constitutional theory or farsighted design.

Rather, it was adopted by default, after all other alternatives had been rejected."

​The Constitutional Convention in 1787 used the Virginia Plan as the basis for discussions, as the Virginia proposal was the first. The Virginia Plan called for Congress to elect the president. Delegates from a majority of states agreed to this mode of election.

After being debated, however, delegates came to oppose nomination by Congress for the reason that it could violate the separation of powers. James Wilson then made a motion for electors for the purpose of choosing the president.

Later in the convention, a committee formed to work out various details including the mode of election of the president, including final recommendations for the electors, a group of people apportioned among the states in the same numbers as their representatives in Congress (the formula for which had been resolved in lengthy debates resulting in the Connecticut Compromise and Three-Fifths Compromise), but chosen by each state "in such manner as its Legislature may direct".

Committee member Gouverneur Morris explained the reasons for the change; among others, there were fears of "intrigue" if the president were chosen by a small group of men who met together regularly, as well as concerns for the independence of the president if he were elected by Congress.

However, once the Electoral College had been decided on, several delegates (Mason, Butler, Morris, Wilson, and Madison) openly recognized its ability to protect the election process from cabal, corruption, intrigue, and faction. Some delegates, including James Wilson and James Madison, preferred popular election of the executive.
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Madison acknowledged that while a popular vote would be ideal, it would be difficult to get consensus on the proposal given the prevalence of slavery in the South:

There was one difficulty, however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.

The Convention approved the committee's Electoral College proposal, with minor modifications, on September 6, 1787. Delegates from states with smaller populations or limited land area, such as Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maryland, generally favored the Electoral College with some consideration for states.

At the compromise providing for a runoff among the top five candidates, the small states supposed that the House of Representatives, with each state delegation casting one vote, would decide most elections.

In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. 

Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68, published on March 12, 1788, laid out what he believed were the key advantages to the Electoral College. The electors come directly from the people and them alone, for that purpose only, and for that time only. This avoided a party-run legislature or a permanent body that could be influenced by foreign interests before each election.

Hamilton explained that the election was to take place among all the states, so no corruption in any state could taint "the great body of the people" in their selection. The choice was to be made by a majority of the Electoral College, as majority rule is critical to the principles of republican government.

Hamilton argued that electors meeting in the state capitals were able to have information unavailable to the general public, in a time before telecommunications. Hamilton also argued that since no federal officeholder could be an elector, none of the electors would be beholden to any presidential candidate.

Another consideration was that the decision would be made without "tumult and disorder", as it would be a broad-based one made simultaneously in various locales where the decision makers could deliberate reasonably, not in one place where decision makers could be threatened or intimidated.

If the Electoral College did not achieve a decisive majority, then the House of Representatives was to choose the president from among the top five candidates, ensuring selection of a presiding officer administering the laws would have both ability and good character.

Hamilton was also concerned about somebody unqualified but with a talent for "low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" attaining high office.

Additionally, in the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

A republican government (i.e., representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy) combined with the principles of federalism (with distribution of voter rights and separation of government powers), would countervail against factions. Madison further postulated in the Federalist No. 10 that the greater the population and expanse of the Republic, the more difficulty factions would face in organizing due to such issues as sectionalism.

Although the United States Constitution refers to "Electors" and "electors", neither the phrase "Electoral College" nor any other name is used to describe the electors collectively. It was not until the early 19th century that the name "Electoral College" came into general usage as the collective designation for the electors selected to cast votes for president and vice president.

The phrase was first written into federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. § 4, in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors".


History

Original plan:

Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution provided the original plan by which the electors voted for president. Under the original plan, each elector cast two votes for president; electors did not vote for vice president. Whoever received a majority of votes from the electors would become president, with the person receiving the second most votes becoming vice president.

According to Stanley Chang, the original plan of the Electoral College was based upon several assumptions and anticipations of the Framers of the Constitution:
  1. Choice of the president should reflect the "sense of the people" at a particular time, not the dictates of a faction in a "pre-established body" such as Congress or the State legislatures, and independent of the influence of "foreign powers".
  2. The choice would be made decisively with a "full and fair expression of the public will" but also maintaining "as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder".
  3. Individual electors would be elected by citizens on a district-by-district basis. Voting for president would include the widest electorate allowed in each state.
  4. Each presidential elector would exercise independent judgment when voting, deliberating with the most complete information available in a system that over time, tended to bring about a good administration of the laws passed by Congress.
  5. Candidates would not pair together on the same ticket with assumed placements toward each office of president and vice president.

Election expert, William C. Kimberling, reflected on the original intent as follows:
"The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party."

According to Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, in a dissenting opinion, the original intention of the framers was that the electors would not feel bound to support any particular candidate, but would vote their conscience, free of external pressure.

"No one faithful to our history can deny that the plan originally contemplated, what is implicit in its text, that electors would be free agents, to exercise an independent and nonpartisan judgment as to the men best qualified for the Nation's highest offices."

In support for his view, Justice Jackson cited Federalist No. 68: 'It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any pre-established body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture... It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.'

Dr. Philip J. VanFossen of Purdue University explains that the original purpose of the electors was not to reflect the will of the citizens, but rather to "serve as a check on a public who might be easily misled."

Dr. Randall Calvert, the Eagleton Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, stated, "At the framing the more important consideration was that electors, expected to be more knowledgeable and responsible, would actually do the choosing."

Breakdown and revision:

In spite of Hamilton's assertion that electors were to be chosen by mass election, initially, state legislatures chose the electors in most of the states. States progressively changed to selection by popular election. In 1824, there were six states in which electors were still legislatively appointed. By 1832, only South Carolina had not transitioned. Since 1864, electors in every state have been chosen based on a popular election held on Election Day.

The popular election for electors means the president and vice president are in effect chosen through indirect election by the citizens.

The emergence of parties and campaigns:
The framers of the Constitution did not anticipate political parties. Indeed George Washington's Farewell Address in 1796 included an urgent appeal to avert such parties. Neither did the framers anticipate candidates "running" for president. Within just a few years of the ratification of the Constitution, however, both phenomena became permanent features of the political landscape of the United States.

The emergence of political parties and nationally coordinated election campaigns soon complicated matters in the elections of 1796 and 1800. In 1796, Federalist Party candidate John Adams won the presidential election. Finishing in second place was Democratic-Republican Party candidate Thomas Jefferson, the Federalists' opponent, who became the vice president.

This resulted in the president and vice president being of different political parties.

In 1800, the Democratic-Republican Party again nominated Jefferson for president and also again nominated Aaron Burr for vice president. After the electors voted, Jefferson and Burr were tied with one another with 73 electoral votes each. Since ballots did not distinguish between votes for president and votes for vice president, every ballot cast for Burr technically counted as a vote for him to become president, despite Jefferson clearly being his party's first choice.

Lacking a clear winner by constitutional standards, the election had to be decided by the House of Representatives pursuant to the Constitution's contingency election provision.

Having already lost the presidential contest, Federalist Party representatives in the lame duck House session seized upon the opportunity to embarrass their opposition by attempting to elect Burr over Jefferson. The House deadlocked for 35 ballots as neither candidate received the necessary majority vote of the state delegations in the House (The votes of nine states were needed for a conclusive election.).

On the 36th ballot, Delaware's lone Representative, James A. Bayard, made it known that he intended to break the impasse for fear that failure to do so could endanger the future of the Union. Bayard and other Federalists from South Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont abstained, breaking the deadlock and giving Jefferson a majority.

Responding to the problems from those elections, Congress proposed on December 9, 1803, and three-fourths of the states ratified by June 15, 1804, the Twelfth Amendment. Starting with the 1804 election, the amendment requires electors to cast separate ballots for president and vice president, replacing the system outlined in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3.

Evolution from unpledged to pledged electors:

Some Founding Fathers hoped that each elector would be elected by the citizens of a district, and that elector was to be free to analyze and deliberate regarding who is best suited to be president.

In Federalist No. 68 Alexander Hamilton described the Founding Fathers' view of how electors would be chosen:
  • A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated [tasks]...
  • They [the framers of the constitution] have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men [i.e. Electors pledged to vote one way or another], who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes [i.e., to be told how to vote]; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons [Electors to the Electoral College] for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment.
  • And they have EXCLUDED from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office [in other words, no one can be an Elector who is prejudiced toward the president]...
  • Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias [Electors must not come to the Electoral College with bias].
  • Their transient existence, and their detached [unbiased] situation, already taken notice of, afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so, to the conclusion of it."

However, when electors were pledged to vote for a specific candidate, the slate of electors chosen by the state were no longer free agents, independent thinkers, or deliberative representatives. They became, as Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote, "voluntary party lackeys and intellectual non-entities." 

According to Hamilton, writing in 1788, the selection of the president should be "made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station [of president]."

Hamilton stated that the electors were to analyze the list of potential presidents and select the best one. He also used the term "deliberate." In a 2020 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court additionally cited John Jay's view that the electors' choices would reflect “discretion and discernment.” 

Reflecting on this original intention, a U.S. Senate report in 1826 critiqued the evolution of the system:
  • It was the intention of the Constitution that these electors should be an independent body of men, chosen by the people from among themselves, on account of their superior discernment, virtue, and information;
  • and that this select body should be left to make the election according to their own will, without the slightest control from the body of the people.
  • That this intention has failed of its object in every election, is a fact of such universal notoriety that no one can dispute it.

Electors, therefore, have not answered the design of their institution:
  • They are not the independent body and superior characters which they were intended to be.
  • They are not left to the exercise of their own judgment: on the contrary, they give their vote, or bind themselves to give it, according to the will of their constituents.
  • They have degenerated into mere agents, in a case which requires no agency, and where the agent must be useless...

In 1833, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story detailed how badly from the framers' intention the Electoral Process had been "subverted":
  • In no respect have the views of the framers of the constitution been so completely frustrated as relates to the independence of the electors in the electoral colleges.
  • It is notorious, that the electors are now chosen wholly with reference to particular candidates, and are silently pledged to vote for them.
  • Nay, upon some occasions the electors publicly pledge themselves to vote for a particular person; and thus, in effect, the whole foundation of the system, so elaborately constructed, is subverted.

Story observed that if an elector does what the framers of the Constitution expected him to do, he would be considered immoral:
  • So, that nothing is left to the electors after their choice, but to register votes, which are already pledged;
  • and an exercise of an independent judgment would be treated, as a political usurpation, dishonorable to the individual, and a fraud upon his constituents.

Evolution to the general ticket:

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution states: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

According to Hamilton and Madison, they intended that this would take place district by district.

The district plan was last carried out in Michigan in 1892. For example, in Massachusetts in 1820, the rule stated "the people shall vote by ballot, on which shall be designated who is voted for as an Elector for the district." 

In other words, the name of a candidate for president was not on the ballot. Instead, citizens voted for their local elector.

Some state leaders began to adopt the strategy that the favorite partisan presidential candidate among the people in their state would have a much better chance if all of the electors selected by their state were sure to vote the same way—a "general ticket" of electors pledged to a party candidate. 

Once one state took that strategy, the others felt compelled to follow suit in order to compete for the strongest influence on the election.

When James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, two of the most important architects of the Electoral College, saw this strategy being taken by some states, they protested strongly: 
  • Madison said that when the Constitution was written, all of its authors assumed individual electors would be elected in their districts, and it was inconceivable that a "general ticket" of electors dictated by a state would supplant the concept.
  • Madison wrote to George Hay: The district mode was mostly, if not exclusively in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted; & was exchanged for the general ticket [many years later]. 
  • Each state government was free to have its own plan for selecting its electors, and the Constitution does not explicitly require states to popularly elect their electors. However, Federalist No. 68, insofar as it reflects the intent of the founders, states that Electors will be "selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass," and with regard to choosing Electors, "they [the framers] have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America." Several methods for selecting electors are described below.
  • Madison and Hamilton were so upset by the trend to "general tickets" that they advocated a constitutional amendment to prevent anything other than the district plan. Hamilton drafted an amendment to the Constitution mandating the district plan for selecting electors.
  • However, Hamilton's untimely death in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804 prevented him from advancing his proposed reforms any further. "[T]he election of Presidential Electors by districts, is an amendment very proper to be brought forward,"
  • Madison told George Hay in 1823. Madison also drafted a constitutional amendment that would insure the original "district" plan of the framers.
  • Jefferson agreed with Hamilton and Madison saying, "all agree that an election by districts would be the best." Jefferson explained to Madison's correspondent why he was doubtful of the amendment being ratified: "the states are now so numerous that I despair of ever seeing another amendment of the constitution."

Evolution of selection plans:

In 1789, the at-large popular vote, the winner-take-all method, began with Pennsylvania and Maryland. Massachusetts, Virginia and Delaware used a district plan by popular vote, and state legislatures chose in the five other states participating in the election (Connecticut, Georgia, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and South Carolina).

New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island did not participate in the election. New York's legislature deadlocked and abstained; North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution.

By 1800, Virginia and Rhode Island voted at large; Kentucky, Maryland, and North Carolina voted popularly by district; and eleven states voted by state legislature. Beginning in 1804 there was a definite trend towards the winner-take-all system for statewide popular vote.
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By 1832, only South Carolina legislatively chose its electors, and it abandoned the method after 1860. Maryland was the only state using a district plan, and from 1836 district plans fell out of use until the 20th century, though Michigan used a district plan for 1892 only. States using popular vote by district have included ten states from all regions of the country.

Since 1836, statewide winner-take-all popular voting for electors has been the almost universal practice. Currently, Maine (since 1972) and Nebraska (since 1996) use a district plan, with two at-large electors assigned to support the winner of the statewide popular vote.

Correlation between popular vote and electoral college votes:

Since the mid-19th century, when all electors have been popularly chosen, the Electoral College has elected the candidate who received the most (though not necessarily a majority) popular votes nationwide, except in four elections: 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016.

In 1824, when there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, the true national popular vote is uncertain. The electors in 1824 failed to select a winning candidate, so the matter was decided by the House of Representatives.

Three-fifths clause and the role of slavery:

After the initial estimates agreed to in the original Constitution, Congressional and Electoral College reapportionment was made according to a decennial census to reflect population changes, modified by counting three-fifths of slaves. On this basis after the first census, the Electoral College still gave the free men of slave-owning states (but never slaves) extra power (Electors) based on a count of these disenfranchised people, in the choice of the U.S. president.

At the Constitutional Convention, the college composition, in theory, amounted to 49 votes for northern states (in the process of abolishing slavery) and 42 for slave-holding states (including Delaware).

In the event, the first (i.e. 1788) presidential election lacked votes and electors for unratified Rhode Island (3) and North Carolina (7) and for New York (8) which reported too late; the Northern majority was 38 to 35. 

For the next two decades, the three-fifths clause led to electors of free-soil Northern states numbering 8% and 11% more than Southern states. The latter had, in the compromise, relinquished counting two-fifths of their slaves and, after 1810, were outnumbered by 15.4% to 23.2%.

While House members for Southern states were boosted by an average of 1⁄3, a free-soil majority in the college maintained over this early republic and Antebellum period.

Scholars further conclude that the three-fifths clause had low impact on sectional proportions and factional strength, until denying the North a pronounced supermajority, as to the Northern, federal initiative to abolish slavery. The seats that the South gained from such "slave bonus" were quite evenly distributed between the parties:
  • In the First Party System (1795–1823), the Jefferson Republicans gained 1.1 percent more adherents from the slave bonus, while the Federalists lost the same proportion.
  • At the Second Party System (1823–1837) the emerging Jacksonians gained just 0.7% more seats, versus the opposition loss of 1.6%.

The three-fifths slave-count rule is associated with three or four outcomes, 1792–1860:
  • The clause, having reduced the South's power, led to John Adams's win in 1796 over Thomas Jefferson.
  • In 1800, historian Garry Wills argues, Jefferson's victory over Adams was due to the slave bonus count in the Electoral College as Adams would have won if citizens' votes were used for each state. However, historian Sean Wilentz points out that Jefferson's purported "slave advantage" ignores an offset by electoral manipulation by anti-Jefferson forces in Pennsylvania. Wilentz concludes that it is a myth to say that the Electoral College was a pro-slavery ploy.
  • In 1824, the presidential selection was passed to the House of Representatives, and John Quincy Adams was chosen over Andrew Jackson, who won fewer citizens' votes. Then Jackson won in 1828, but would have lost if the college were citizen-only apportionment. Scholars conclude that in the 1828 race, Jackson benefited materially from the Three-fifths clause by providing his margin of victory.

The first "Jeffersonian" and "Jacksonian" victories were of great importance as they ushered in sustained party majorities of several Congresses and presidential party eras.

Besides the Constitution prohibiting Congress from regulating foreign or domestic slave trade before 1808 and a duty on states to return escaped "persons held to service", legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar argues that the college was originally advocated by slaveholders as a bulwark to prop up slavery.

In the Congressional apportionment provided in the text of the Constitution with its Three-Fifths Compromise estimate, "Virginia emerged as the big winner [with] more than a quarter of the [votes] needed to win an election in the first round [for Washington's first presidential election in 1788]." Following the 1790 United States census, the most populous state was Virginia, with 39.1% slaves, or 292,315 counted three-fifths, to yield a calculated number of 175,389 for congressional apportionment. 

"The "free" state of Pennsylvania had 10% more free persons than Virginia but got 20% fewer electoral votes." Pennsylvania split eight to seven for Jefferson, favoring Jefferson with a majority of 53% in a state with 0.1% slave population. 

Historian Eric Foner agrees the Constitution's Three-Fifths Compromise gave protection to slavery.

Supporters of the College have provided many counterarguments to the charges that it defended slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the president who helped abolish slavery, won a College majority in 1860 despite winning 39.8% of citizen's votes. This, however, was a clear plurality of a popular vote divided among four main candidates.

Benner notes that Jefferson's first margin of victory would have been wider had the entire slave population been counted on a per capita basis. He also notes that some of the most vociferous critics of a national popular vote at the constitutional convention were delegates from free states, including Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, who declared that such a system would lead to a "great evil of cabal and corruption," and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who called a national popular vote "radically vicious". 

Delegates Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, a state which had adopted a gradual emancipation law three years earlier, also criticized a national popular vote. Of like view was Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a member of Adams' Federalist Party, presidential candidate in 1800. He hailed from South Carolina and was a slaveholder.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder from Tennessee, was similarly defeated by John Quincy Adams, a strong critic of slavery.

Fourteenth amendment:

Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state's representation in the House of Representatives to be reduced if the state denies the right to vote to any male citizen aged 21 or older, unless on the basis of "participation in rebellion, or other crime". The reduction is to be proportionate to such people denied a vote.

This amendment refers to "the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States" (among other elections). It is the only part of the Constitution currently alluding to electors being selected by popular vote.

On May 8, 1866, during a debate on the Fourteenth Amendment, Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, delivered a speech on the amendment's intent. Regarding Section 2, he said: "The second section I consider the most important in the article. It fixes the basis of representation in Congress. If any State shall exclude any of her adult male citizens from the elective franchise, or abridge that right, she shall forfeit her right to representation in the same proportion. The effect of this provision will be either to compel the States to grant universal suffrage or so shear them of their power as to keep them forever in a hopeless minority in the national Government, both legislative and executive."

Federal law (2 U.S.C. § 6) implements Section 2's mandate.

Meeting of electors:
See also: Electoral Count Act

Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the Constitution authorizes Congress to fix the day on which the electors shall vote, which must be the same day throughout the United States. And both Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 and the Twelfth Amendment that replaced it specifies that "the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted."

In 1887, Congress passed the Electoral Count Act, now codified in Title 3, Chapter 1 of the United States Code, establishing specific procedures for the counting of the electoral votes.

The law was passed in response to the disputed 1876 presidential election, in which several states submitted competing slates of electors. Among its provisions, the law established deadlines that the states must meet when selecting their electors, resolving disputes, and when they must cast their electoral votes.

Since 1936, the date fixed by Congress for the meeting of the Electoral College is "on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment".

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, disqualifies all elected and appointed federal officials from being electors. The Office of the Federal Register is charged with administering the Electoral College.

After the vote, each state sends to Congress a certified record of their electoral votes, called the Certificate of Vote. These certificates are opened during a joint session of Congress, held on January 6, unless another date is specified by law, and read aloud by the incumbent vice president, acting in his capacity as president of the Senate.

If any person receives an absolute majority of electoral votes, that person is declared the winner. If there is a tie, or if no candidate for either or both offices receives an absolute majority, then choice falls to Congress in a procedure known as a contingent election.


Modern mechanics

Summary:

Even though the aggregate national popular vote is calculated by state officials, media organizations, and the Federal Election Commission, the people only indirectly elect the president and vice president.

The president and vice president of the United States are elected by the Electoral College, which consists of 538 electors from the fifty states and Washington, D.C. Electors are selected state-by-state, as determined by the laws of each state.

Since the 1824 election, the majority of states have chosen their presidential electors based on winner-take-all results in the statewide popular vote on Election Day. As of 2020, Maine and Nebraska are exceptions as both use the congressional district method, Maine since 1972 and in Nebraska since 1996. 

In most states, the popular vote ballots list the names of the presidential and vice presidential candidates (who run on a ticket). The slate of electors that represent the winning ticket will vote for those two offices. Electors are nominated by the party and, usually, they vote for the ticket to which are promised. 

Many states require an elector to vote for the candidate to which the elector is pledged, but some "faithless electors" have voted for other candidates or refrained from voting. A candidate must receive an absolute majority of electoral votes (currently 270) to win the presidency or the vice presidency.

If no candidate receives a majority in the election for president or vice president, the election is determined via a contingency procedure established by the Twelfth Amendment. In such a situation, the House chooses one of the top three presidential electoral vote winners as the president, while the Senate chooses one of the top two vice presidential electoral vote winners as vice president.


Electors:

Apportionment:
Further information: United States congressional apportionment

A state's number of electors equals the number of representatives plus two electors for the senators the state has in the United States Congress. 

Each state is entitled to at least one representative, the remaining number of representatives per state is apportioned based on their respective populations, determined every ten years by the United States census. In summary, 153 electors are divided equally among the states and the District of Columbia (3 each), and the remaining 385 are assigned by an apportionment among states.

Under the Twenty-third Amendment, Washington, D.C., is allocated as many electors as it would have if it were a state but no more electors than the least populous state. Because the least populous state (Wyoming, according to the 2020 census) has three electors, D.C. cannot have more than three electors.

Even if D.C. were a state, its population would entitle it to only three electors. Based on its population per electoral vote, D.C. has the third highest per capita Electoral College representation, after Wyoming and Vermont.

Currently, there are 538 electors, based on 435 representatives, 100 senators from the fifty states and three electors from Washington, D.C.

The six states with the most electors are: 
The District of Columbia and the six least populous states have three electors each:
Nominations:

The custom of allowing recognized political parties to select a slate of prospective electors developed early. In contemporary practice, each presidential-vice presidential ticket has an associated slate of potential electors. Then on Election Day, the voters select a ticket and thereby select the associated electors.

Candidates for elector are nominated by state chapters of nationally oriented political parties in the months prior to Election Day. In some states, the electors are nominated by voters in primaries the same way other presidential candidates are nominated. In some states, such as Oklahoma, Virginia, and North Carolina, electors are nominated in party conventions.

In Pennsylvania, the campaign committee of each candidate names their respective electoral college candidates (an attempt to discourage faithless electors). Varying by state, electors may also be elected by state legislatures or appointed by the parties themselves.

Selection process:

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution requires each state legislature to determine how electors for the state are to be chosen, but it disqualifies any person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, from being an elector. 

Under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, any person who has sworn an oath to support the United States Constitution in order to hold either a state or federal office, and later rebelled against the United States directly or by giving assistance to those doing so, is disqualified from being an elector. However, Congress may remove this disqualification by a two-thirds vote in each House.

All states currently choose presidential electors by popular vote. As of 2020, eight states name the electors on the ballot. Mostly, the "short ballot" is used; the short ballot displays the names of the candidates for president and vice president, rather than the names of prospective electors. 

Some states support voting for write-in candidates; those that do may require pre-registration of write-in candidacy, with designation of electors being done at that time. Since 1996, all but two states have followed the winner takes all method of allocating electors by which every person named on the slate for the ticket winning the statewide popular vote are named as presidential electors.

Maine and Nebraska are the only states not using this method. In those states, the winner of the popular vote in each of its congressional districts is awarded one elector, and the winner of the statewide vote is then awarded the state's remaining two electors. 

This method has been used in Maine since 1972 and in Nebraska since 1996. The Supreme Court previously upheld the power for a state to choose electors on the basis of congressional districts, holding that states possess plenary power to decide how electors are appointed in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 (1892).

The Tuesday following the first Monday in November has been fixed as the day for holding federal elections, called the Election Day. After the election, each state prepares seven Certificates of Ascertainment, each listing the candidates for president and vice president, their pledged electors, and the total votes each candidacy received.

One certificate is sent, as soon after Election Day as practicable, to the National Archivist in Washington. The Certificates of Ascertainment are mandated to carry the state seal and the signature of the governor (or mayor of D.C.).

Meetings:

​​The Electoral College never meets as one body. Electors meet in their respective state capitals (electors for the District of Columbia meet within the District) on the same day (set by Congress as the Monday after the second Wednesday in December) at which time they cast their electoral votes on separate ballots for president and vice president.

Although procedures in each state vary slightly, the electors generally follow a similar series of steps, and the Congress has constitutional authority to regulate the procedures the states follow. The meeting is opened by the election certification official—often that state's secretary of state or equivalent—who reads the certificate of ascertainment. This document sets forth who was chosen to cast the electoral votes.

The attendance of the electors is taken and any vacancies are noted in writing. The next step is the selection of a president or chairman of the meeting, sometimes also with a vice chairman. The electors sometimes choose a secretary, often not an elector, to take the minutes of the meeting. In many states, political officials give short speeches at this point in the proceedings.

When the time for balloting arrives, the electors choose one or two people to act as tellers. Some states provide for the placing in nomination of a candidate to receive the electoral votes (the candidate for president of the political party of the electors). Each elector submits a written ballot with the name of a candidate for president.

Ballot formats vary between the states: in New Jersey for example, the electors cast ballots by checking the name of the candidate on a pre-printed card; in North Carolina, the electors write the name of the candidate on a blank card. The tellers count the ballots and announce the result. The next step is the casting of the vote for vice president, which follows a similar pattern.

Under the Electoral Count Act (updated and codified in 3 U.S.C. § 9), each state's electors must complete six certificates of vote. Each Certificate of Vote (or Certificate of the Vote) must be signed by all of the electors and a certificate of ascertainment must be attached to each of the certificates of vote.

Each Certificate of Vote must include the names of those who received an electoral vote for either the office of president or of vice president. The electors certify the Certificates of Vote, and copies of the certificates are then sent in the following fashion:
A staff member of the President of the Senate collects the certificates of vote as they arrive and prepares them for the joint session of the Congress. The certificates are arranged—unopened—in alphabetical order and placed in two special mahogany boxes. 

Alabama through Missouri (including the District of Columbia) are placed in one box and Montana through Wyoming are placed in the other box. Before 1950, the Secretary of State's office oversaw the certifications, but since then the Office of Federal Register in the Archivist's office reviews them to make sure the documents sent to the archive and Congress match and that all formalities have been followed, sometimes requiring states to correct the documents.

Faithless electors:
Main article: Faithless elector

An elector votes for each office, but at least one of these votes (president or vice president) must be cast for a person who is not a resident of the same state as that elector. 

A "faithless elector" is one who does not cast an electoral vote for the candidate of the party for whom that elector pledged to vote. Faithless electors are comparatively rare because electors are generally chosen among those who are already personally committed to a party and party's candidate. 

Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have laws against faithless electors, which were first enforced after the 2016 election, where ten electors voted or attempted to vote contrary to their pledges. Faithless electors have never changed the outcome of a U.S. election for president.

Altogether, 23,529 electors have taken part in the Electoral College as of the 2016 election; only 165 electors have cast votes for someone other than their party's nominee. Of that group, 71 did so because the nominee had died – 63 Democratic Party electors in 1872, when presidential nominee Horace Greeley died; and eight Republican Party electors in 1912, when vice presidential nominee James S. Sherman died.

While faithless electors have never changed the outcome of any presidential election, there are two occasions where the vice presidential election has been influenced by faithless electors:
  • In the 1796 election, 18 electors pledged to the Federalist Party ticket cast their first vote as pledged for John Adams, electing him president, but did not cast their second vote for his running mate Thomas Pinckney. As a result, Adams attained 71 electoral votes, Jefferson received 68, and Pinckney received 59, meaning Jefferson, rather than Pinckney, became vice president.
  • In the 1836 election, Virginia's 23 electors, who were pledged to Richard Mentor Johnson, voted instead for former U.S. Senator William Smith, which left Johnson one vote short of the majority needed to be elected. In accordance with the Twelfth Amendment, a contingent election was held in the Senate between the top two receivers of electoral votes, Johnson and Francis Granger, for vice president, with Johnson being elected on the first ballot.

​Some constitutional scholars argued that state restrictions would be struck down if challenged based on Article II and the Twelfth Amendment. However, the United States Supreme Court has consistently ruled that state restrictions are allowed under the Constitution. In Ray v. Blair, 343 U.S. 214 (1952), the Court ruled in favor of state laws requiring electors to pledge to vote for the winning candidate, as well as removing electors who refuse to pledge.

As stated in the ruling, electors are acting as a functionary of the state, not the federal government. In Chiafalo v. Washington, 591 U.S. (2020), and a related case, the Court held that electors must vote in accordance with their state's laws. Faithless electors also may face censure from their political party, as they are usually chosen based on their perceived party loyalty.

Joint session of Congress:
Main articles: Electoral Count Act and Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act

The Twelfth Amendment mandates Congress assemble in joint session to count the electoral votes and declare the winners of the election. The session is ordinarily required to take place on January 6 in the calendar year immediately following the meetings of the presidential electors. 

Since the Twentieth Amendment, the newly elected joint Congress declares the winner of the election; all elections before 1936 were determined by the outgoing House.

The Office of the Federal Register is charged with administering the Electoral College.

The meeting is held at 1 p.m. in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. The sitting vice president is expected to preside, but in several cases the president pro tempore of the Senate has chaired the proceedings.

The vice president and the speaker of the House sit at the podium, with the vice president sitting to the right of the speaker of the House. Senate pages bring in two mahogany boxes containing each state's certified vote and place them on tables in front of the senators and representatives.

Each house appoints two tellers to count the vote (normally one member of each political party). Relevant portions of the certificate of vote are read for each state, in alphabetical order.

Before an amendment to the law in 2022, members of Congress could object to any state's vote count, provided objection is presented in writing and is signed by at least one member of each house of Congress. In 2022, the number of members required to make an objection was raised to one-fifth of each House.

An appropriately made objection is followed by the suspension of the joint session and by separate debates and votes in each House of Congress; after both Houses deliberate on the objection, the joint session is resumed.

A state's certificate of vote can be rejected only if both Houses of Congress vote to accept the objection via a simple majority, meaning the votes from the State in question are not counted. Individual votes can also be rejected, and are also not counted.

If there are no objections or all objections are overruled, the presiding officer simply includes a state's votes, as declared in the certificate of vote, in the official tally.

After the certificates from all states are read and the respective votes are counted, the presiding officer simply announces the final state of the vote. This announcement concludes the joint session and formalizes the recognition of the president-elect and of the vice president-elect. The senators then depart from the House chamber. The final tally is printed in the Senate and House journals.

Historical objections and rejections:

Objections to the electoral vote count are rarely raised, although it has occurred a few times.
  • In 1864, all votes from Louisiana and Tennessee were rejected because of the American Civil War.
  • In 1872, all votes from Arkansas and Louisiana plus three of the eleven electoral votes from Georgia were rejected, due to allegations of electoral fraud, and due to submitting votes for a candidate that had died.
  • After the crises of the 1876 election, where in a few states it was claimed there were two competing state governments, and thus competing slates of electors, Congress adopted the Electoral Count Act to regularize objection procedure.
  • During the vote count in 2001 after the close 2000 presidential election between Governor George W. Bush of Texas and Vice President Al Gore. The election had been controversial, and its outcome was decided by the court case Bush v. Gore. Gore, who as vice president was required to preside over his own Electoral College defeat (by five electoral votes), denied the objections, all of which were raised by representatives and would have favored his candidacy, after no senators would agree to jointly object.
  • Objections were raised in the vote count of the 2004 election, alleging voter suppression and machine irregularities in Ohio, and on that occasion one representative and one senator objected, following protocols mandated by the Electoral Count Act. The joint session was suspended as outlined in these protocols, and the objections were quickly disposed of and rejected by both Houses of Congress.
  • Eleven objections were raised during the vote count for the 2016 election, all by various Democratic representatives. As no senator joined the representatives in any objection, all objections were blocked by Vice President Joe Biden.
  • In the 2020 election, there were two objections, and the proceeding was interrupted by an attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump. Objections to the votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania were each raised by a House member and a senator, and triggered separate debate in each chamber, but were soundly defeated. A few House members raised objections to the votes from Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, but they could not move forward because no senator joined in those objections.


Contingencies:
Further information: Contingent election

Contingent presidential election by House:

If no candidate for president receives an absolute majority of the electoral votes (since 1964, 270 of the 538 electoral votes), then the Twelfth Amendment requires the House of Representatives to go into session immediately to choose a president. In this event, the House of Representatives is limited to choosing from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes for president.

Each state delegation votes en bloc—each delegation having a single vote; the District of Columbia does not get to vote. A candidate must receive an absolute majority of state delegation votes (i.e., from 1959 (which is the last time a new state was admitted to the union), a minimum of 26 votes) in order for that candidate to become the president-elect.

Additionally, delegations from at least two thirds of all the states must be present for voting to take place. The House continues balloting until it elects a president.

The House of Representatives has been required to choose the president only twice: in 1801 under Article II, Section 1, Clause 3; and in 1825 under the Twelfth Amendment.

Contingent vice presidential election by Senate:

If no candidate for vice president receives an absolute majority of electoral votes, then the Senate must go into session to choose a vice president. The Senate is limited to choosing from the two candidates who received the most electoral votes for vice president.

Normally this would mean two candidates, one less than the number of candidates available in the House vote. However, the text is written in such a way that all candidates with the most and second-most electoral votes are eligible for the Senate election—this number could theoretically be larger than two.

The Senate votes in the normal manner in this case (i.e., ballots are individually cast by each senator, not by state delegations). However, two-thirds of the senators must be present for voting to take place.

​Additionally, the Twelfth Amendment states a "majority of the whole number" of senators (currently 51 of 100) is necessary for election. Further, the language requiring an absolute majority of Senate votes precludes the sitting vice president from breaking any tie that might occur, although some academics and journalists have speculated to the contrary.

The only time the Senate chose the vice president was in 1837. In that instance, the Senate adopted an alphabetical roll call and voting aloud. The rules further stated, "[I]f a majority of the number of senators shall vote for either the said Richard M. Johnson or Francis Granger, he shall be declared by the presiding officer of the Senate constitutionally elected Vice President of the United States"; the Senate chose Johnson.

Deadlocked election:

Section 3 of the Twentieth Amendment specifies that if the House of Representatives has not chosen a president-elect in time for the inauguration (noon EST on January 20), then the vice president-elect becomes acting president until the House selects a president.

Section 3 also specifies that Congress may statutorily provide for who will be acting president if there is neither a president-elect nor a vice president-elect in time for the inauguration. Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the Speaker of the House would become acting president until either the House selects a president or the Senate selects a vice president. Neither of these situations has ever arisen.

Continuity of government and peaceful transitions of power:
See also:  ​
In Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton argued that one concern that led the Constitutional Convention to create the Electoral College was to ensure peaceful transitions of power and continuity of government during transitions between presidential administrations. 

While recognizing that the question had not been presented in the case, the U.S. Supreme Court stated in the majority opinion in Chiafalo v. Washington (2020) that "nothing in this opinion should be taken to permit the States to bind electors to a deceased candidate" after noting that more than one-third of the cumulative faithless elector votes in U.S. presidential elections history were cast during the 1872 presidential election when Liberal Republican Party and Democratic Party nominee Horace Greeley died after the polls were held and vote tabulations were completed by the states but before the Electoral College cast its ballots, and acknowledging the petitioners concern about the potential turmoil that the death of a presidential candidate between Election Day and the Electoral College meetings could cause.

In 1872, Greeley had carried the popular vote in 6 states (Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas) and had 66 electoral votes pledged to him, but after his death on November 29, 1872, 63 of the electors pledged to him voted faithlessly while 3 votes (from Georgia) that remained pledged to him were rejected at the Electoral College vote count on February 12, 1873, on the grounds that he had died.

However, Greeley's running mate, B. Gratz Brown, still received the 3 electoral votes from Georgia for vice president that were rejected for Greeley, which brought Brown's number of electoral votes for vice president to 47 since he still received all 28 electoral votes from Maryland, Tennessee, and Texas and 16 other electoral votes from Georgia, Kentucky, and Missouri in total (while the other 19 electors from the latter states voted faithlessly for vice president). 

During the presidential transition following the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln had to arrive in Washington, D.C. in disguise and on an altered train schedule after the Pinkerton National Detective Agency found evidence that suggested a secessionist plot to assassinate Lincoln would be attempted in Baltimore.

During the presidential transition following the 1928 presidential election, an Argentine anarchist group plotted to assassinate Herbert Hoover while Hoover was traveling through Central and South America and crossing the Andes from Chile by train, but were prevented because the plotters were arrested before the attempt was made.

During the presidential transition following the 1932 presidential election, Giuseppe Zangara attempted to assassinate Franklin D. Roosevelt by gunshot while Roosevelt was giving an impromptu speech in a car in Miami, but instead killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak (who was also a passenger in the car) and wounded 5 bystanders. 

During the presidential transition following the 1960 presidential election, Richard Paul Pavlick plotted to assassinate John F. Kennedy while Kennedy was vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida by detonating a dynamite-laden car where Kennedy was staying, but Pavlick delayed his attempt and was subsequently arrested and committed to a mental hospital.

During the presidential transition following the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama was targeted in separate security incidents by an assassination plot and a death threat, after an assassination plot in Denver during the 2008 Democratic National Convention and an assassination plot in Tennessee during the election were prevented.

Ratified in 1933, Section 3 of the 20th Amendment requires that if a President-elect dies before Inauguration Day that the Vice President-elect becomes the President. 

Akhil Amar has noted that the explicit text of the 20th Amendment does not specify when the candidates of the winning presidential ticket officially become the President-elect and Vice President-elect, and that the text of Article II, Section I and the 12th Amendment suggests that candidates for president and vice president are only formally elected upon the Electoral College vote count.

Conversely, a 2020 report issued by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) stated that the balance of scholarly opinion has concluded that the winning presidential ticket is formally elected as soon as the majority of the electoral votes they receive are cast according to the 1932 House committee report on the 20th Amendment.

If a vacancy on a presidential ticket occurs before Election Day, the internal rules of the political parties apply for filling vacancies. —as in: 
If a vacancy on a presidential ticket occurs between Election Day and the Electoral College meetings, the 2020 CRS report notes that most legal commentators have suggested that political parties would still follow their internal rules for filling the vacancies. 

However, in 1872, the Democratic National Committee did not meet to name a replacement for Horace Greeley, and the 2020 CRS report notes that presidential electors may argue that they are permitted to vote faithlessly if a vacancy occurs between Election Day and the Electoral College meetings since they were pledged to vote for a specific candidate.

Under the Presidential Succession Clause of Article II, Section I, Congress is delegated the power to "by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected." 

Pursuant to the Presidential Succession Clause, the 2nd United States Congress passed the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 that required a special election by the Electoral College in the case of a dual vacancy in the Presidency and Vice Presidency.

Despite vacancies in the Vice Presidency from 1792 to 1886, the special election requirement would be repealed with the rest of the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 by the 49th United States Congress in passing the Presidential Succession Act of 1886.

In a special message to the 80th United States Congress calling for revisions to the Presidential Succession Act of 1886, President Harry S. Truman proposed restoring special elections for dual vacancies in the Presidency and Vice Presidency, and while most of Truman's proposal was included in the final version of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the restoration of special elections for dual vacancies was not. 

Along with six other recommendations related to presidential succession, the Continuity of Government Commission recommended restoring special elections for president in the event of a dual vacancy in the Presidency and Vice Presidency due to a catastrophic terrorist attack or nuclear strike in part because all members of the presidential line of succession live and work in Washington, D.C.

Under the 12th Amendment, presidential electors are still required to meet and cast their ballots for president and vice president within their respective states. 

Additionally, the CRS has noted in a separate report released in 2020 that members of the presidential line of succession after vice president only become an acting president under the Presidential Succession Clause and Section 3 of the 20th Amendment rather than fully succeeding to the Presidency.

Pictured below: Currrent Electoral Vote Disribution:
Current electoral vote distribution: Electoral votes (EV) allocations for the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.
Triangular markers () indicate gains or losses following the 2020 census.
​* The Twenty-third Amendment grants DC the same number of electors as the least populous state. This has always been three.
** Maine's four electors and Nebraska's five are distributed using the Congressional district method.


Chronological table
See also: Electoral vote changes between United States presidential elections

Pictured below: Number of presidential electors by state and year (Click on image below to be taken to the original image and its state hyperlinks)
​
Alternative methods of choosing electors:

Before the advent of the "short ballot" in the early 20th century (as described in Selection process) the most common means of electing the presidential electors was through the general ticket. The general ticket is quite similar to the current system and is often confused with it. In the general ticket, voters cast ballots for individuals running for presidential elector (while in the short ballot, voters cast ballots for an entire slate of electors).

In the general ticket, the state canvass would report the number of votes cast for each candidate for elector, a complicated process in states like New York with multiple positions to fill. Both the general ticket and the short ballot are often considered at-large or winner-takes-all voting. The short ballot was adopted by the various states at different times; it was adopted for use by North Carolina and Ohio in 1932. Alabama was still using the general ticket as late as 1960 and was one of the last states to switch to the short ballot.

The question of the extent to which state constitutions may constrain the legislature's choice of a method of choosing electors has been touched on in two U.S. Supreme Court cases:
  1. In McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 (1892), the Court cited Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 which states that a state's electors are selected "in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct" and wrote these words "operat[e] as a limitation upon the state in respect of any attempt to circumscribe the legislative power".
  2. In Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000), a Florida Supreme Court decision was vacated (not reversed) based on McPherson. On the other hand, three dissenting justices in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), wrote: "[N]othing in Article II of the Federal Constitution frees the state legislature from the constraints in the State Constitution that created it." 

Extensive research on alternate methods of electoral allocation have been conducted by Collin Welke, Dylan Shearer, and Riley Wagie in 2019.

Appointment by state legislature:

In the earliest presidential elections, state legislative choice was the most common method of choosing electors. A majority of the state legislatures selected presidential electors in both 1792 (9 of 15) and 1800 (10 of 16), and half of them did so in 1812. 

Even in the 1824 election, a quarter of state legislatures (6 of 24) chose electors. (In that election, Andrew Jackson lost in spite of having a plurality of both the popular vote and the number of electoral votes representing them; yet, as six states did not hold a popular election for their electoral votes, the full expression of the popular vote nationally cannot be known.)

Some state legislatures simply chose electors, while other states used a hybrid method in which state legislatures chose from a group of electors elected by popular vote. By 1828, with the rise of Jacksonian democracy, only Delaware and South Carolina used legislative choice. 

Delaware ended its practice the following election (1832), while South Carolina continued using the method until it seceded from the Union in December 1860. South Carolina used the popular vote for the first time in the 1868 election.

Excluding South Carolina, legislative appointment was used in only four situations after 1832:
  • In 1848, Massachusetts statute awarded the state's electoral votes to the winner of the at-large popular vote, but only if that candidate won an absolute majority. When the vote produced no winner between the Democratic, Free Soil, and Whig parties, the state legislature selected the electors, giving all 12 electoral votes to the Whigs (which had won the plurality of votes in the state).
  • In 1864, Nevada, having joined the Union only a few days prior to Election Day, had no choice but to legislatively appoint.
  • In 1868, the newly reconstructed state of Florida legislatively appointed its electors, having been readmitted too late to hold elections.
  • Finally, in 1876, the legislature of the newly admitted state of Colorado used legislative choice due to a lack of time and money to hold a popular election.

Legislative appointment was brandished as a possibility in the 2000 election. Had the recount continued, the Florida legislature was prepared to appoint the Republican slate of electors to avoid missing the federal safe-harbor deadline for choosing electors.

The Constitution gives each state legislature the power to decide how its state's electors are chosen and it can be easier and cheaper for a state legislature to simply appoint a slate of electors than to create a legislative framework for holding elections to determine the electors.

As noted above, the two situations in which legislative choice has been used since the Civil War have both been because there was not enough time or money to prepare for an election.

However, appointment by state legislature can have negative consequences: bicameral legislatures can deadlock more easily than the electorate. This is precisely what happened to New York in 1789 when the legislature failed to appoint any electors.

Electoral districts:

Another method used early in U.S. history was to divide the state into electoral districts. By this method, voters in each district would cast their ballots for the electors they supported and the winner in each district would become the elector. This was similar to how states are currently separated into congressional districts.

However, the difference stems from the fact that every state always had two more electoral districts than congressional districts. As with congressional districts, moreover, this method is vulnerable to gerrymandering.

Congressional district method:

There are two versions of the congressional district method: one has been implemented in Maine and Nebraska; another was used in New York in 1828 and proposed for use in Virginia.

Under the implemented method, one electoral vote goes per the plurality of the popular votes of each congressional district (for the U.S. House of Representatives); and two per the statewide popular vote. This may result in greater proportionality. But it can give results similar to the winner-takes-all states, as in 1992, when George H. W. Bush won all five of Nebraska's electoral votes with a clear plurality on 47% of the vote; in a truly proportional system, he would have received three and Bill Clinton and Ross Perot each would have received one.

In 2013, the Virginia proposal was tabled. Like the other congressional district methods, this would have distributed the electoral votes based on the popular vote winner within each of Virginia's 11 congressional districts; the two statewide electoral votes would be awarded based on which candidate won the most congressional districts. 

A similar method was used in New York in 1828: the two at large electors were elected by the electors selected in districts.

A congressional district method is more likely to arise than other alternatives to the winner-takes-whole-state method, in view of the main two parties' resistance to scrap first-past-the-post. State legislation is sufficient to use this method. 

Advocates of the method believe the system encourages higher voter turnout or incentivizes candidates, to visit and appeal to some states deemed safe, overall, for one party. 

Winner-take-all systems ignore thousands of votes; in Democratic California there are Republican districts, in Republican Texas there are Democratic districts. Because candidates have an incentive to campaign in competitive districts, with a district plan, candidates have an incentive to actively campaign in over thirty states versus about seven "swing" states. 

Opponents of the system, however, argue candidates might only spend time in certain battleground districts instead of the entire state and cases of gerrymandering could become exacerbated as political parties attempt to draw as many safe districts as they can.

Unlike simple congressional district comparisons, the district plan popular vote bonus in the 2008 election would have given Obama 56% of the Electoral College versus the 68% he did win; it "would have more closely approximated the percentage of the popular vote won [53%]". 

However, the district plan would have given Obama 49% of the Electoral College in 2012, and would have given Romney a win in the Electoral College even though Obama won the popular vote by nearly 4% (51.1–47.2) over Romney.

Implementation:

Of the 44 multi-district states whose 517 electoral votes are amenable to the method, only Maine (4 EV) and Nebraska (5 EV) apply it. Maine began using the congressional district method in the election of 1972. Nebraska has used the congressional district method since the election of 1992. 

Michigan used the system for the 1892 presidential election, and several other states used various forms of the district plan before 1840:
  • Virginia,
  • Delaware,
  • Maryland,
  • Kentucky,
  • North Carolina,
  • Massachusetts,
  • Illinois,
  • Maine,
  • Missouri,
  • and New York.

The congressional district method allows a state the chance to split its electoral votes between multiple candidates. Prior to 2008, neither Maine nor Nebraska had ever split their electoral votes. Nebraska split its electoral votes for the first time in 2008, giving John McCain its statewide electors and those of two congressional districts, while Barack Obama won the electoral vote of Nebraska's 2nd congressional district. 

Following the 2008 split, some Nebraska Republicans made efforts to discard the congressional district method and return to the winner-takes-all system. In January 2010, a bill was introduced in the Nebraska legislature to revert to a winner-take-all system; the bill died in committee in March 2011. 

Republicans had passed bills in 1995 and 1997 to do the same, which were vetoed by Nebraska Democratic Governor Ben Nelson.

Recent abandoned adoption in other states:

In 2010, Republicans in Pennsylvania, who controlled both houses of the legislature as well as the governorship, put forward a plan to change the state's winner-takes-all system to a congressional district method system. Pennsylvania had voted for the Democratic candidate in the five previous presidential elections, so this was seen an attempt to take away Democratic electoral votes.

Democrat Barack Obama won Pennsylvania in 2008 with 55% of its vote. The district plan would have awarded him 11 of its 21 electoral votes, a 52.4% which was much closer to the popular vote percentage. The plan later lost support. 

Other Republicans, including Michigan state representative Pete Lund, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, have floated similar ideas.

Proportional vote:

In a proportional system, electors would be selected in proportion to the votes cast for their candidate or party, rather than being selected by the statewide plurality vote.


Impacts and reception:

Gary Bugh's research of congressional debates over proposed constitutional amendments to abolish the Electoral College reveals reform opponents have often appeal to tradition and the preference for indirect elections, whereas reform advocates often champion a more egalitarian one person, one vote system. 

Electoral colleges have been scrapped by all other democracies around the world in favor of direct elections for an executive president.

Critics argue that the Electoral College is less democratic than a national direct popular vote and is subject to manipulation because of faithless electors; that the system is antithetical to a democracy that strives for a standard of "one person, one vote"; and there can be elections where one candidate wins the national popular vote but another wins the electoral vote, as in the 2000 and 2016 elections. 

Individual citizens in less populated states with 5% of the Electoral College have proportionately more voting power than those in more populous states, and candidates can win by focusing on just a few "swing states".

Polling ~40%:

21st century polling data shows that a majority of Americans consistently favor having a direct popular vote for presidential elections. The popularity of the Electoral College has hovered between 35% and 44%.

Difference with popular vote:

​Opponents of the Electoral College claim such outcomes do not logically follow the normative concept of how a democratic system should function. One view is the Electoral College violates the principle of political equality, since presidential elections are not decided by the one-person one-vote principle.

While many assume the national popular vote observed under the Electoral College system would reflect the popular vote observed under a National Popular Vote system, supporters contend that's not necessarily the case as each electoral institution produces different incentives for, and strategy choices by, presidential campaigns.

Notable elections:
See also: List of United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote

The elections of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive at least a plurality of the nationwide popular vote. In 1824, there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, so it is uncertain what the national popular vote would have been if all presidential electors had been popularly elected.

When no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in 1824, the election was decided by the House of Representatives and so could be considered distinct from the latter four elections in which all of the states had popular selection of electors. The true national popular vote was also uncertain in the 1960 election, and the plurality for the winner depends on how votes for Alabama electors are allocated.

Elections where the popular vote and electoral college results differed:
  • 1800: Jefferson won with 61.4% of the popular vote; Adams had 38.6%*
  • 1824: Adams won with 30.9% of the popular vote; Jackson had 41.4%*
  • 1836 (only for vice president): Johnson won with 63.5% of the popular vote; Granger had 30.8%*
  • 1876: Tilden (D) received 50.9% of the vote, Hayes (R) received 47.9%
  • 1888: Cleveland (D) received 48.6% of the vote, Harrison (R) received 47.8%
  • 2000: Gore (D) received 48.4% of the vote, Bush (R) received 47.9%
  • 2016: Clinton (D) received 48.2% of the vote, Trump (R) received 46.1%
*These popular vote tallies are partial because several of the states still used their legislature to choose electors not a popular vote. In both elections a tied electoral college threw the contest over to Congress to decide.

Favors largest swing states:
Main article: Swing state

The Electoral College encourages political campaigners to focus on a few so-called swing states while ignoring the rest of the country. Populous states in which pre-election poll results show no clear favorite are inundated with campaign visits, saturation television advertising, get-out-the-vote efforts by party organizers, and debates, while four out of five voters in the national election are "absolutely ignored", according to one assessment. 

Since most states use a winner-takes-all arrangement in which the candidate with the most votes in that state receives all of the state's electoral votes, there is a clear incentive to focus almost exclusively on only a few key undecided states.

Not all votes count the same:

Each state gets a minimum of three electoral votes, regardless of population, which has increasingly given low-population states more electors per voter (or more voting power).

For example, an electoral vote represents nearly four times as many people in California as in Wyoming. On average, voters in the ten least populated states have 2.5 more electors per person compared with voters in the ten most populous states.

In 1968, John F. Banzhaf III developed the Banzhaf power index (BPI) which argued that a voter in the state of New York had, on average, 3.3 times as much voting power in presidential elections as the average voter outside New York.

Mark Livingston used a similar method and estimated that individual voters in the largest state (based on 1990 census) had 3.3 times more individual power to choose a president than voters of Montana. However, others argue that Banzhaf's method ignores the demographic makeup of the states and for treating votes like independent coin-flips.

Critics of Banzhaf's method say empirically based models used to analyze the Electoral College have consistently found that sparsely populated states benefit from having their resident's votes count for more than the votes of those residing in the more populous states.

Lowers turnout:

Except in closely fought swing states, voter turnout does not affect the election results due to entrenched political party domination in most states. The Electoral College decreases the advantage a political party or campaign might gain for encouraging voters to turn out, except in those swing states.

If the presidential election were decided by a national popular vote, in contrast, campaigns and parties would have a strong incentive to work to increase turnout everywhere. Individuals would similarly have a stronger incentive to persuade their friends and neighbors to turn out to vote.

The differences in turnout between swing states and non-swing states under the current electoral college system suggest that replacing the Electoral College with direct election by popular vote would likely increase turnout and participation significantly.

Obscures disenfranchisement within states:

According to this criticism, the electoral college reduces elections to a mere count of electors for a particular state, and, as a result, it obscures any voting problems within a particular state.

For example, if a particular state blocks some groups from voting, perhaps by voter suppression methods such as imposing reading tests, poll taxes, registration requirements, or legally disfranchising specific groups (like women or people of color), then voting inside that state would be reduced, but as the state's electoral count would be the same, disenfranchisement has no effect on its overall electoral power.

Critics contend that such disenfranchisement is not penalized by the Electoral College. A related argument is the Electoral College may have a dampening effect on voter turnout: there is no incentive for states to reach out to more of its citizens to include them in elections because the state's electoral count remains fixed in any event.

According to this view, if elections were by popular vote, then states would be motivated to include more citizens in elections since the state would then have more political clout nationally.

Critics contend the electoral college system insulates states from negative publicity as well as possible federal penalties for disenfranchising subgroups of citizens.

Legal scholars Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar have argued that the original Electoral College compromise was enacted partially because it enabled Southern states to disenfranchise their slave populations. 

It permitted Southern states to disfranchise large numbers of slaves while allowing these states to maintain political clout and prevent Northern dominance within the federation by using the Three-Fifths Compromise. They noted that James Madison believed the question of counting slaves had presented a serious challenge, but that "the substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections."

Akhil and Vikram Amar added: The founders' system also encouraged the continued disfranchisement of women. In a direct national election system, any state that gave women the vote would automatically have doubled its national clout.

Under the Electoral College, however, a state had no such incentive to increase the franchise; as with slaves, what mattered was how many women lived in a state, not how many were empowered ... a state with low voter turnout gets precisely the same number of electoral votes as if it had a high turnout. By contrast, a well-designed direct election system could spur states to get out the vote.

After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, white voters in Southern states benefited from elimination of the Three-Fifths Compromise because with all former slaves counted as one person, instead of 3/5, Southern states increased their share of electors in the Electoral College.

Southern states also enacted laws that restricted access to voting by former slaves, thereby increasing the electoral weight of votes by southern whites.

Minorities tend to be disproportionately located in noncompetitive states, reducing their impact on the overall election and over-representing white voters who have tended to live in the swing states that decide elections.

Americans in U.S. territories cannot vote:
See also: Voting rights in the United States § Overseas and nonresident citizens

Roughly four million Americans in Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam, do not have a vote in presidential elections. 

Only U.S. states (per Article II, Section 1, Clause 2) and Washington, D.C. (per the Twenty-third Amendment) are entitled to electors. Various scholars consequently conclude that the U.S. national-electoral process is not fully democratic. 

Guam has held non-binding straw polls for president since the 1980s to draw attention to this fact. The Democratic and Republican parties, as well as other third parties, have, however, made it possible for people in U.S. territories to vote in party presidential primaries.

Disadvantages third parties:
See also: Duverger's law and Causes of a two-party system

In practice, the winner-take-all manner of allocating a state's electors generally decreases the importance of minor parties.

Federalism and state power:

​​For many years early in the nation's history, up until the Jacksonian Era (1830s), many states appointed their electors by a vote of the state legislature, and proponents argue that, in the end, the election of the president must still come down to the decisions of each state, or the federal nature of the United States will give way to a single massive, centralized government, to the detriment of the States.

In his 2007 book A More Perfect Constitution, Professor Larry Sabato preferred allocating the electoral college (and Senate seats) in stricter proportion to population while keeping the Electoral College for the benefit of lightly populated swing states and to strengthen the role of the states in federalism.

Willamette University College of Law professor Norman R. Williams has argued that the Constitutional Convention delegates chose the Electoral College to choose the President largely in reaction to the experience during the Confederation period where state governors were often chosen by state legislatures and wanting the new federal government to have an executive branch that was effectively independent of the legislative branch. 

For example, Alexander Hamilton argued that the Electoral College would prevent sinister bias, foreign interference and domestic intrigue in presidential elections by not permitting members of Congress or any other officer of the United States to serve as electors.


Efforts to abolish or reform:
More resolutions have been submitted to amend the Electoral College mechanism than any other part of the constitution. Since 1800, over 700 proposals to reform or eliminate the system have been introduced in Congress.

Proponents of these proposals argued that the electoral college system does not provide for direct democratic election, affords less-populous states an advantage, and allows a candidate to win the presidency without winning the most votes.

None of these proposals have received the approval of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states required to amend the Constitution. Ziblatt and Levitsky argue that America has by far the most difficult constitution to amend, which is why has been unable to reform, in their opinion, undemocratic institutions like the electoral college as all other democracies have.

1969-1970: Bayh–Celler amendment:

The closest the United States has come to abolishing the Electoral College occurred during the 91st Congress (1969–1971).[263] The 1968 election resulted in Richard Nixon receiving 301 electoral votes (56% of electors), Hubert Humphrey 191 (35.5%), and George Wallace 46 (8.5%) with 13.5% of the popular vote.

However, Nixon had received only 511,944 more popular votes than Humphrey, 43.5% to 42.9%, less than 1% of the national total.
​
Representative Emanuel Celler (D–New York), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to public concerns over the disparity between the popular vote and electoral vote by introducing House Joint Resolution 681, a proposed Constitutional amendment that would have replaced the Electoral College with a simpler plurality system based on the national popular vote.

With this system, the pair of candidates (running for president and vice-president) who had received the highest number of votes would win the presidency and vice presidency provided they won at least 40% of the national popular vote. If no pair received 40% of the popular vote, a runoff election would be held in which the choice of president and vice president would be made from the two pairs of persons who had received the highest number of votes in the first election.

On April 29, 1969, the House Judiciary Committee voted 28 to 6 to approve the proposal. Debate on the proposal before the full House of Representatives ended on September 11, 1969 and was eventually passed with bipartisan support on September 18, 1969, by a vote of 339 to 70.

On September 30, 1969, President Nixon gave his endorsement for adoption of the proposal, encouraging the Senate to pass its version of the proposal, which had been sponsored as Senate Joint Resolution 1 by Senator Birch Bayh (D–Indiana).

On October 8, 1969, the New York Times reported that 30 state legislatures were "either certain or likely to approve a constitutional amendment embodying the direct election plan if it passes its final Congressional test in the Senate." Ratification of 38 state legislatures would have been needed for adoption. The paper also reported that six other states had yet to state a preference, six were leaning toward opposition, and eight were solidly opposed.

On August 14, 1970, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent its report advocating passage of the proposal to the full Senate. The Judiciary Committee had approved the proposal by a vote of 11 to 6. The six members who opposed the plan, Democratic senators James Eastland of Mississippi, John Little McClellan of Arkansas, and Sam Ervin of North Carolina, along with Republican senators Roman Hruska of Nebraska, Hiram Fong of Hawaii, and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, all argued that although the present system had potential loopholes, it had worked well throughout the years.

Senator Bayh indicated that supporters of the measure were about a dozen votes shy from the 67 needed for the proposal to pass the full Senate. He called upon President Nixon to attempt to persuade undecided Republican senators to support the proposal. 

However, Nixon, while not reneging on his previous endorsement, chose not to make any further personal appeals to back the proposal.

On September 8, 1970, the Senate commenced openly debating the proposal, and the proposal was quickly filibustered. The lead objectors to the proposal were mostly Southern senators and conservatives from small states, both Democrats and Republicans, who argued that abolishing the Electoral College would reduce their states' political influence. 

On September 17, 1970, a motion for cloture, which would have ended the filibuster, received 54 votes to 36 for cloture, failing to receive the then-required two-thirds majority of senators voting. A second motion for cloture on September 29, 1970, also failed, by 53 to 34.

Thereafter, the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana, moved to lay the proposal aside so the Senate could attend to other business. However, the proposal was never considered again and died when the 91st Congress ended on January 3, 1971.

Carter proposal:

On March 22, 1977, President Jimmy Carter wrote a letter of reform to Congress that also included his expression of abolishing the Electoral College. The letter read in part:
  • "My fourth recommendation is that the Congress adopt a Constitutional amendment to provide for direct popular election of the President. Such an amendment, which would abolish the Electoral College, will ensure that the candidate chosen by the voters actually becomes President. Under the Electoral College, it is always possible that the winner of the popular vote will not be elected. This has already happened in three elections, 1824, 1876, and 1888.
  • In the last election, the result could have been changed by a small shift of votes in Ohio and Hawaii, despite a popular vote difference of 1.7 million.
  • I do not recommend a Constitutional amendment lightly. I think the amendment process must be reserved for an issue of overriding governmental significance.
  • But the method by which we elect our President is such an issue. I will not be proposing a specific direct election amendment. I prefer to allow the Congress to proceed with its work without the interruption of a new proposal."

President Carter's proposed program for the reform of the Electoral College was very liberal for a modern president during this time, and in some aspects of the package, it went beyond original expectations. 

Newspapers like The New York Times saw President Carter's proposal at that time as "a modest surprise" because of the indication of Carter that he would be interested in only eliminating the electors but retaining the electoral vote system in a modified form.

Newspaper reaction to Carter's proposal ranged from some editorials praising the proposal to other editorials, like that in the Chicago Tribune, criticizing the president for proposing the end of the Electoral College.

In a letter to The New York Times, Representative Jonathan B. Bingham (D-New York) highlighted the danger of the "flawed, outdated mechanism of the Electoral College" by underscoring how a shift of fewer than 10,000 votes in two key states would have led to President Gerald Ford winning the 1976 election despite Jimmy Carter's nationwide 1.7 million-vote margin.

Recent proposals to abolish:

Since January 3, 2019, joint resolutions have been made proposing constitutional amendments that would replace the Electoral College with the popular election of the president and vice president. 

Unlike the Bayh–Celler amendment, with its 40% threshold for election, these proposals do not require a candidate to achieve a certain percentage of votes to be elected.

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact:
As of May 2023, sixteen states plus the District of Columbia have joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Those joining the compact will, acting together if and when reflecting a majority of electors (at least 270), pledge their electors to the winner of the national popular vote.

The compact applies Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution, which gives each state legislature the plenary power to determine how it chooses electors.

Some scholars have suggested that Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution requires congressional consent before the compact could be enforceable; thus, any attempted implementation of the compact without congressional consent could face court challenges to its constitutionality.

Others have suggested that the compact's legality was strengthened by Chiafalo v. Washington, in which the Supreme Court upheld the power of states to enforce electors' pledges.

The seventeen adherents of the compact have 205 electors, which is 76% of the 270 required for it to take effect, or be considered justiciable.

Litigation based on the 14th amendment:

It has been argued that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution bars the winner-takes-all apportionment of electors by the states; according to this argument, the votes of the losing party are discarded entirely, thereby leading to an unequal position between different voters in the same state. 

Lawsuits have been filed to this end in California, Massachusetts, Texas and South Carolina, though all have been unsuccessful.
​
See also







Political Prisoners

Below, from top-to-bottom, we cover:
  • first, "Political Prisoners" globally;
  • then "Political Prisoners " impacting the United States.

YouTube Videos Follow: 
​Pictured below:
Top Row (L-R): Aung San Suu Kyi; Nelson Mandela
Bottom Row (L-R): Emma Goldman; Mahatma Gandhi
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.

There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although numerous similar definitions have been proposed by various organizations and scholars, and there is a general consensus among scholars that "individuals have been sanctioned by legal systems and imprisoned by political regimes not for their violation of codified laws but for their thoughts and ideas that have fundamentally challenged existing power relations". 

The status of a political prisoner is generally awarded to individuals based on declarations of non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International, on a case-by-case basis.

While such statuses are often widely recognized by international public opinion, they are often rejected by individual governments accused of holding political prisoners, which tend to deny any bias in their judicial systems.

A related term is prisoner of conscience (POC), popularized by Amnesty International. It describes someone who was prosecuted because of their personal beliefs.

Some prisons, known as political prisons, are focused or even dedicated solely to hosting political prisoners.


Definitions:

The concept of a political prisoner, like many concepts in social sciences, sports numerous definitions, and is undefined in international law and human right treaties. 

Helen Taylor Greene and Shaun L. Gabbidon in 2009 that "standard legal definitions have remained elusive", but at the same time, observing that there is a general consensus that "individuals have been sanctioned by legal systems and imprisoned by political regimes not for their violation of codified laws but for their thoughts and ideas that have fundamentally challenged existing power relations".

A number of organizations involved in human rights issues, as well as scholars studying them, have developed their own definitions, some of which are presented below.


Organizations:

Amnesty International:

Amnesty International (AI) campaigns for the release of prisoners of conscience, which include both political prisoners as well as those imprisoned for their religious or philosophical beliefs. To reduce controversy, and as a matter of principle, the organization's policy applies only to prisoners who have not committed or advocated violence.

Thus, there are political prisoners who do not fit the narrower criteria for POCs. The organisation defines the differences as follows:
  • AI uses the term "political prisoner" broadly. It does not use it, as some others do, to imply that all such prisoners have a special status or should be released. It uses the term only to define a category of prisoners for whom AI demands a fair and prompt trial.
  • In AI's usage, the term includes any prisoner whose case has a significant political element: whether the motivation of the prisoner's acts, the acts in themselves, or the motivation of the authorities.
  • "Political" is used by AI to refer to aspects of human relations related to "politics": the mechanisms of society and civil order, the principles, organization, or conduct of government or public affairs, and the relation of all these to questions of language, ethnic origin, sex or religion, status or influence (among other factors).
  • The category of political prisoners embraces the category of prisoners of conscience, the only prisoners who AI demands should be immediately and unconditionally released, as well as people who resort to criminal violence for a political motive.

In AI's use of the term, here are some examples of political prisoners:
  • a person accused or convicted of an ordinary crime carried out for political motives, such as murder or robbery carried out to support the objectives of an opposition group;
  • a person accused or convicted of an ordinary crime committed in a political context, such as at a demonstration by a trade union or a peasants' organization;
  • a member or suspected member of an armed opposition group who has been charged with treason or "subversion".

Governments often say they have no political prisoners, only prisoners held under the normal criminal law. AI however describes cases like the examples given above as "political" and uses the terms "political trial" and "political imprisonment" when referring to them. But by doing so AI does not oppose the imprisonment, except where it further maintains that the prisoner is a prisoner of conscience, or condemn the trial, except where it concludes that it was unfair.

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe:

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has the following definition:

A person deprived of their personal liberty is to be regarded as a 'political prisoner':
  1. if the detention has been imposed in violation of one of the fundamental guarantees set out in the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols, in particular: freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression and information, freedom of assembly and association;
  2. if the detention has been imposed for purely political reasons without connection to any offence;
  3. if, for political motives, the length of the detention or its conditions are clearly out of proportion to the offence the person has been found guilty of or is suspected of;
  4. if, for political motives, he or she is detained in a discriminatory manner as compared to other persons; or,
  5. if the detention is the result of proceedings which were clearly unfair and this appears to be connected with political motives of the authorities.

Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP):

Burmese Assistance Association for Political Prisoners defines a political prisoner as "anyone who is arrested because of [their] perceived or real involvement in or supporting role in opposition movements with peaceful or resistance means".

Congressional-Executive Commission on China:

The US Congressional-Executive Commission on China defines a political prisoner broadly as any individual who is detained for exercising their "human rights under international law, such as peaceable assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of association, free expression including the freedom to advocate peaceable social or political change, and to criticize government policy or government officials.”


Academics:

Steinert (2020):

Christoph Valentin Steinert, who in 2020 reviewed 366 definitions of political prisoners used in (mainly English language) academic literature in 1956 and 2019, argued that any definition of political prisoner needs to avoid focusing on prisoners' individual motivations and the term "should be exclusively reserved for victims of politically biased trials" (in other words, "victims of state repression"), to avoid delegitimizing the term by diluting it with applications to prisoners of any possibly politically motivated action (which on extreme end of spectrum would include, for example: 
He specifically criticizes definitions of political prisoners as "individuals imprisoned for politically motivated actions" or "committing a political offense". He proposed the following definition:

Political prisoners are defined as individuals that are convicted and incarcerated in politically biased trials (or executive decisions in absence of any trials). Trials are deemed politically biased if they are endorsed by the government and:
  1. lack a domestic legal basis,
  2. violate principles of procedural justice,
  3. or violate universal human rights.

Steinert noted that his definition does extend to prisoners "imprisoned for nonpolitical identities such as their religious beliefs or their sexual orientations", as well as individuals engaged in violent actions, arguing that the neutral "classification as a political prisoner neither entails an a priori judgment about the moral legitimacy of prisoners' actions nor does it imply that individuals committed politically motivated crimes".

Other aspects:

The purpose of political prisons and of imprisoning dissidents is to demonstrate the strength of the regime to the dissidents. The regime's opponents are isolated and stigmatised, frequently abused and tortured.

The goal of such treatment is not just punish those opposing the regime, but to frighten those who consider opposing the regime by demonstrating the power of the regime by sending a clear warning that objecting is not tolerated, and that the regime is well prepared and ready to punish the objectors through creation of total institutions dedicated to hosting political prisoners.

The status of a political prisoner is conferred to one only after their detention. Before that, potential political prisoners may be considered "dissidents, revolutionaries, social reformers, or radical thinkers". The nature of the behavior that leads to political imprisonment is hard to define and can be roughly described as any "activity deemed questionable by ruling elites".

Therefore, political prisoners are officially detained and sentenced for multitude of different transgressions, instead of for a single well defined crime. 

Political prisoners are frequently arrested and tried with a veneer of legality where false criminal charges, manufactured evidence, and unfair trials (kangaroo courts, show trials) are used to disguise the fact that an individual is a political prisoner. 

For example, AAPP states that "the motivation behind the arrest of every individual in AAPP's database is political, regardless of the laws they have been sentenced under". This is common in situations which may otherwise be decried nationally and internationally as a human rights violation or suppression of a political dissident, and Steinert notes that "objective evidence about politically biased imprisonments is chronically sparse considering that governments face substantial incentives to hide repressive practices". 

In fact, all governments habitually deny accusations that they imprison any individuals for political activities.

A political prisoner can also be someone that has been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to a prisoner charged with a comparable crime, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary.

Particularly in this latter situation, whether an individual is regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon subjective political perspective or interpretation of the evidence.

Political prisoners can also be imprisoned with no legal veneer by extrajudicial processes or through executive decisions in absence of any trials or even charges. 

Some political prisoners need not be imprisoned at all, as they can be subject to prolonged pre-trial detainment instead. Steinert noted that technically, political detainees should be distinguished from political prisoners, but they are often grouped together, and in practical terms, he recommends treating them as special types of political prisoners. 

Examples of such detainees can include individuals such as the former Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, detained for many years without a trial [see photo above]. 

Likewise, supporters of Tibetan spiritual leader Gedhun Choekyi Nyima in the 11th Panchen Lama controversy have called him a "political prisoner", despite the fact that he is not accused of a political offense. He is held under secluded house arrest.

The status of a political prisoner can be significant, as such inmates can become the subjects of international advocacy and receive aid from various non-governmental organizations.

Criticism from the international public opinion has been shown to facilitate release of political detainees, or reduce their sentences, but is less effective in securing release of already-sentenced individuals. When the status of a prisoner as political is well known, it can be seen as a form of status symbol, some political prisoners purposefully frame themselves as "the imprisoned martyrs and leaders of their movement", and this status can also be seen as "providing a guarantee of their security and of respect for their rights behind the bars".


History:

Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates has been described as perhaps the earliest known political prisoner; imprisoned for allegedly “poisoning” the minds of Grecian youth through his critique of Athenian society and its rulers. Early Christians, including Jesus Christ, and St. Peter, have also been described as such. 

Another famous historical figure described as a political prisoner is the 15th century French heroine, Joan of Arc, whose final charge of heresy was seen as a legal justification for her real crime of "inconveniencing the elites".

Padraic Kenney noted that "the emergence of modern political prisoners coincides with a fifty-year period (1860s–1910s) during which [modern] political movements matured around the world", also defining such movements as having "clearly articulated political and social programs" which forced the governments to develop a specific response to such movements (a response which often involved incarceration rather than dialogue, particularly under the less liberal regimes).

In some places, political prisoners had their own customs, traditions, and semi-formal organizations and privileges; historically, this has been more common up to around the interwar period, as the many political prisoners came from higher social classes (in particular, nobility), and authorities often treated them better than common criminals.

This changed with the emergence of the totalitarian regimes, which attempted to throughout indoctrinate or eliminate any opposition.

​In Poland, the concept and even traditions of political prisoners emerged around the second half of the 19th century in the Russian partition.

While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is not legally binding, it is generally recognized as "a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations".

Of particular relevance to political prisoners are its Articles 5, 6, 9 and 18. The UDHR and the later Helsinki Accords of 1975 have been used by a number of nongovernmental organizations as basis for arguing that some governments are in fact holding political prisoners.

In the United States, the term political prisoner has been used during the mid-20th century civil rights struggle and has been occasionally applied to individuals like Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr., and later used for individuals imprisoned for objecting to US involvement in the Vietnam War.

Political prisoners sometimes write memoirs of their experiences and resulting insights. Some of these memoirs have become important political texts.

For example, King's "Letter From a Birmingham City Jail" has been described as "one of the most important historical documents penned by a modern political prisoner".


Advocacy:

A number of nongovernmental organizations focuses on advocacy for political prisoners. The most prominent of those is Amnesty International, founded in 1961.


Notable political prisoners:

​Groups
Individuals

​Due to the lack of single, internationally recognized legal definition of a political prisoner, nongovernmental organizations like Amnesty International, aided by legal scholars, determine whether prisoners meet their criteria of political prisoners on a case-by-case basis.
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, being accused of being associated with the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
  • Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, African American boxer wrongfully imprisoned for 19 years in the US due to "an appeal to racism rather than reason".
  • Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party of the United States, was imprisoned by the US government for his opposition to the First World War.
  • Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned numerous times by the British both in South Africa and India.
  • Emma Goldman was imprisoned for two years and then deported by the US government for her opposition to the First World War.
  • Antonio Gramsci was a leftist Italian writer and political activist who was jailed and spent 8 years in prison. He was released conditionally due to his health situation and died shortly after.
  • Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist monk arrested during the annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China for protesting, spent 33 years in Chinese prisons and labor camps where he was extensively tortured, serving the longest term of any Tibetan political prisoner.
  • Anwar Ibrahim, was a Malaysian opposition party leader, who was imprisoned twice because of sodomy case.
  • Kim Dae-jung served one term (1976–1979) and in 1980 was exiled to the United States, but returned in 1985 and became President of South Korea in 1998.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. was imprisoned several times, most notoriously in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • Leopoldo López, Venezuelan opposition leader, declared as prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.
  • John Maclean was imprisoned by the British government for his opposition to the First World War.
  • Heinrich Maier was a Roman Catholic priest and leader of one of the most important resistance groups against Nazi Germany.
  • Nelson Mandela was imprisoned from 1963 until 1990 in South Africa due to his anti-apartheid activism and organizing attacks on several government targets. He later became the President of South Africa between 1994 and 1999.
  • Thomas Mapfumo was imprisoned without charges in 1979 by the Rhodesian government in what is now Zimbabwe for his Shona-language music calling for revolution.
  • Carlos Menem, former Argentine president who was a political prisoner under the National Reorganization Process.
  • Antonio Nariño (1765–1823) was a Colombian who translated the Declaration des Droits de L'Homme et du Citoyen into Spanish, and faced multiple terms in prison under charges of translating censored material.
  • Jawaharlal Nehru, political activist, statesman, and first Prime Minister of India (1948–1963) was imprisoned several times for his nationalist activism against the British Raj, serving a total of over 9 years in incarceration.
  • Dilma Rousseff former Brazilian president, was imprisoned by the right-wing military government between 1970 and 1973.
  • Bertrand Russell was imprisoned by the British government for six months for opposing the First World War.
  • Mikis Theodorakis, a composer and lyricist, was imprisoned several times by Greek governments during the years 1947–1970.
  • Leonora Christina Ulfeldt was imprisoned in solitary confinement in a royal dungeon for twenty-one years as the wife and later widow of Count Corfitz Ulfeldt.
  • Ai Weiwei, is a Chinese artist and political dissident from the People's Republic of China.
  • Liu Xiaobo a Chinese pro-democracy activist, was imprisoned multiple times (from the late 1980s to prior to his death in 2017) in China by the Chinese government.
  • Hossein Rajabian is an Iranian filmmaker, writer and photographer who was imprisoned for 3 years as a political prisoner between 2015 up to 2018 on charges related to his filmmaking in Evin prison in Iran.
  • Marat Zhylanbayev is an Kazakhstani athlete and activist who protested Kazakhstan's human rights violations outside European Union's delegation to Kazakhstan; he was arrested and will potentially receive 10 years of imprisonment.


Notable political prisons:

The following prisons have been recognized as incarcerating primarily political prisoners, and have therefore been called "political prisons":
See also: ___________________________________________________________________________


Political prisoners in the United States:

​Throughout its history and into the present, the United States has held political prisoners, people whose detention is based substantially on political motives. Prominent U.S. political prisoners have included: 

History:

"Political prisoner" is an inherently vague term which is most commonly applied to people persecuted for their political beliefs or for their "threat" to the government. 

Imprisonment for mere expression of political beliefs is rare in the United States, because free speech and free expression are well-established in law.

This was not always the case. For example, the Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders incarcerated dozens of Communist Party USA leaders for advocating the overthrow of the United States government, a fact which was only halted by Yates v. United States (1957).

However, several human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have pointed to repeated examples of US federal and state governments targeting people affiliated with dissident movements for "neutralization" by applying much harsher sentences for real or "framed" crimes, such as during COINTELPRO.

The U.S. has recognized conscientious objection to military service since its founding. However, the U.S. only recognizes blanket objection to all wars, and does not recognize stronger forms of the "right to refuse to kill", such as opposition to specific wars. 

Many prisoners have been objectors to specific wars (such as World War I, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, or Iraq War).

Pictured below:
A 1989 pamphlet titled "Face Reality" from Freedom Now! features the faces of 48 alleged political prisoners
(Courtesy of  By Freedom Now - Original publication: Freedom Now pamphlet in 1990Immediate source: https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Freedom_Now/510.face.reality.pdf, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73104943
Scope:

​There are no systematic estimates of the present or past scope of political prisoners in the United States. The number of political prisoners cannot be precisely determined. 

However, Jane Taubner wrote in 1992 that "most of the individuals and organizations investigating the existence of political prisoners in the United States agree that there are a minimum of over 100 political prisoners in America".

During a July 1978 interview with French newspaper Le Matin de Paris, Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young caused controversy when he said: "We still have hundreds of people that I would categorize as political prisoners in our prisons. Maybe even thousands, depending on how you categorize them."

In 1988, Peggy Halsey, a senior member of the United Methodist Church General Board of Global Ministries, wrote about inmates of the High Security Unit in FMC Lexington and claimed that "over 100 other inmates are recognized as political prisoners by their respective movements for social change".

In 1990, various left-wing groups supported the Freedom Now! coalition and organized a "Special International Tribunal" (or "1990 Tribunal") on political prisoners in the US. The 1990 tribunal was inspired by the 1951 We Charge Genocide petition and modeled on the 1966 Russell Tribunal on Vietnam. 

Freedom Now! alleged that there are "more than 100 people locked up in U.S. prisons because of their political actions or beliefs".

The 1990 Tribunal reached the verdict that political people "have been subjected to disproportionately lengthy prison sentences and to torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment within the U.S. prison system."


Early notable alleged political prisoners:

The concepts of "political prisoner" and "prisoner of conscience" were underdeveloped until the post-World War II era, which saw the creation of intergovernmental and international human rights groups like the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (1946) and Amnesty International (1961).

The prisoners below were arrested before or during this era:​
  • Alice Paul (imprisoned 1917), a feminist, was incarcerated for peacefully picketing for women's suffrage. Paul explicitly described herself as a political prisoner in efforts that led to the 19th Amendment.[ Other feminists arrested for picketing for women's suffrage led the 1919 Prison Special train tour.
  • Eugene Debs (imprisoned 1919–1921), an anti-war socialist, was convicted of 10 counts of sedition. On September 18, 1918, he was sentenced to ten years in prison and life disenfranchisement. On April 13, 1919, Debs was imprisoned; protests of his imprisonment lead to the May Day riots of 1919. While in prison, he ran for president in the 1920 election, receiving 919,799 votes (3.4 percent) the highest number of votes for a Socialist Party presidential candidate in the United States.
  • Sacco and Vanzetti (imprisoned 1921–1927), both anarchists, were convicted and executed for murdering two people during an armed robbery. Kathlyn Gay includes them in a list of "political prisoners" and quotes Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis as saying "their trial and appeals were permeated by prejudice against foreigners and hostility toward unorthodox political views".
  • Angelo Herndon (imprisoned 1933–1937), an African-American labor organizer and member of the American Communist Party, was convicted of insurrection after leading a large peaceful demonstration of unemployed black and white workers in Atlanta. The day after the demonstration, Angelo was arrested and was found in possession of communist publications. Fulton County Prosecutor John Hudson charged Angelo with "inciting an insurrection" under an 1861 slave statue that made the possession or distribution of seditious literature punishable by death. Hudson proclaimed that Herndon's trial was also a trial "of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Kerensky, and every white person who believes that black and white should unite for the purpose of setting-up a Nigger Soviet Republic in the Black Belt". An all white jury found Angelo guilty and was sentenced to 18–20 years. Angelo won an appeal and was released on bail in December 1934. The Georgia Supreme Court later upheld the original conviction and he had to return to prison in October 1935. In April 1937, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and ruled in favor of Angelo in a 5–4 decision, striking down the Georgia insurrection for violation of the First Amendment.
  • Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (imprisoned 1951–1953), spies for the Soviet Union, were the first Americans to be executed for espionage. Gay includes them in a list of political prisoners, in part because of their excessive sentence: "No other convicted spy — not even Rudolph Abel, the Soviet Union's chief spymaster in the United States — was executed by the United States during the entire Cold War".
  • Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights activist, was never imprisoned for an extended period of time, but he was arrested 29 times between 1956 and 1964. He is often named as a prisoner of conscience for his nonviolent opposition to racial segregation in the United States.
  • Rosa Parks (arrested 1956), a civil rights activist, is commonly named as a prisoner of conscience for her civil disobedience to Montgomery bus segregation. In the 1970s, Parks organized for the freedom of political prisoners in the United States, particularly cases involving issues of self-defense. She helped found the Detroit chapter of the Joanne Little Defense Committee, supported other prisoner's defense committees, and supported the Wilmington Ten, RNA 11, and Gary Tyler. When Angela Davis was acquitted, Parks introduced her to an audience of 12,000 as a "dear sister who has suffered so much persecution".


Prisoners highlighted by Amnesty International:
Main article: List of Amnesty International-designated prisoners of conscience

Amnesty International is an INGO founded to oppose violations of human rights. Amnesty International has named the following people and groups as prisoners of conscience or political prisoners in the United States:
  • Martin Sostre (imprisoned 1967–1976) was arrested at his bookstore for "narcotics, riot, arson, and assault", later proven to be fabricated as part of COINTELPRO. Amnesty International wrote that Sostre "was falsely implicated because of his political activities". Sostre's bookstore promoted Black nationalism, internationalism, and anarchism.
  • Imari Obadele (imprisoned 1973–1978), as part of the RNA 11, was convicted of conspiracy to assault a federal agent. Amnesty International wrote that it "appears that the real reason for Mr Obadele's imprisonment is his political activity as leader of a black independence movement".
  • The Wilmington Ten  (imprisoned 1976–1980) were convicted of arson and conspiracy for the firebombing of a white-owned business. Amnesty International adopted the Ten because they were "denied a fair trial", because "their prosecutions were politically motivated and that their convictions were the result of false testimony".
  • Charlotte Three (imprisoned 1977–1979) were convicted of arson of a white-owned business. Amnesty International adopted the Three for the same reasons as the Wilmington Ten.
  • U.S. military conscientious objectors to the Gulf War: By September 1991, Amnesty International had adopted 25 prisoners of conscience who conscientiously objected to the Gulf War. In their 1995 report, Amnesty gave the full number as 30 prisoners of conscience. In particular, Amnesty International named George Morse (imprisoned 1991–1992) and Yolanda Huet-Vaughn (imprisoned 1991–1992).

Ehren Watada in uniform, before his OTH discharge for refusing to deploy to Operation Iraqi Freedom Amnesty International has identified multiple American conscientious objectors to the Iraq War who have either been imprisoned or are seeking refuge, notably in Canada, for their resistance. These individuals include:
  • Camilo Mejía (imprisoned 2004–2005)
  • Abdullah William Webster (imprisoned 2004–2005)
  • Kevin Benderman (imprisoned 2005–2006)
  • Mark Wilkerson (imprisoned 2007)
  • Agustin Aguayo (imprisoned 2007)
  • Victor Agosto (imprisoned 2009)
  • Travis Bishop (imprisoned 2009)
  • Kimberly Rivera (imprisoned 2012–2013)
  • Jeremy Hinzman (seeking refuge in Canada)
  • Matthew Lowell (seeking refuge in Canada)
  • James Corey Glass (seeking refuge in Canada)
  • Dean Walcott (seeking refuge in Canada)
  • Ehren Watada (OTH discharged)

Amnesty International has highlighted the following people and groups as recipients of extensive inhumane treatment and/or wrongful or "framed" convictions, who may be considered political prisoners:
  • Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt (imprisoned 1972–1997), a prominent member of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murder (now vacated). In 1995, Amnesty International argued that evidence came to light after the trial that "Pratt had been targeted for 'neutralization' by COINTELPRO and suggested there had been misconduct by the FBI and state police in the prosecution of the case".
  • The Angola Three were convicted of robbery and/or bank robbery, sent to Angola prison. While in prison, the Angola Three became prominent Black Panther Party members. They were later convicted of prison murders and faced near-continuous solitary confinement for decades, in the "longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history".
  • Mumia Abu-Jamal (imprisoned 1981–present): Though Amnesty International concluded that his conviction proceedings violated the "minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty", but they did not describe Abu-Jamal as a political prisoner. In August 1999, when Abu-Jamal began giving radio commentary live on Pacifica Network's Democracy Now! radio news, prison staff severed the connecting wires of his telephone in mid-performance. The World Socialist Web Site described Abu-Jamal as a "political prisoner".
  • Gary Tyler (imprisoned 1975–2016) was convicted of first-degree murder as a sixteen-year old, despite no physical evidence. In 1994, Amnesty International highlighted several major inconsistencies in the police investigation and ineffective assistance of counsel. In 2007, Amnesty International said Tyler's trial was "fundamentally unfair".
  • Food Not Bombs: Amnesty International never formally named Keith McHenry or Robert Kahn as prisoners of conscience. However, in 1994, AI noted that "the law may have been used to harass and arrest these individuals because their activities" of "distributing free food to poor and homeless people and disseminating literature" are "unpopular with the City administration". In 1996, AI suggested that Kahn "may be a prisoner of conscience".
  • Mazen Al-Najjar (imprisoned 1997–2000), on the basis of secret evidence, was detained indefinitely on suspicions of links to Palestinian terrorist groups. If Al-Najjar was "being held purely for his non-violent political sympathies and background, then he would be considered a prisoner of conscience".


Prisoners considered by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention:

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WAGD) is a United Nations body which examines alleged cases of arbitrary imprisonment. Arbitrary imprisonment is substantially broader than political imprisonment, as it also includes all cases where non-arbitrary legal processes failed for non-political reasons. The WAGD has considered the detention of the following individuals to be arbitrary on multiple categories:
  • Leonard Peltier (imprisoned 1977–present) was convicted on two counts of murder of FBI agents during a shootout on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Amnesty International explicitly does not call Peltier a prisoner of conscience, but "believes that political factors may have influenced the way in which the case was prosecuted". In 2005, the WAGD found that the "deprivation of Mr. Leonard Peltier is not arbitrary", but in 2022 reversed that decision and found that Peltier's imprisonment was arbitrary on Category III (unfair trial) and Category V (discrimination) grounds. Peltier was a prominent member of the American Indian Movement.
  • Marcos Antonio Aguilar-Rodríguez (imprisoned 2011–2017) fled El Salvador to the United States in 2001, where he sought asylum. He was arrested for speeding, but was ultimately placed in custody of ICE, who sought to deport him. The WAGD found that Aguilar-Rodríguez's imprisonment was arbitrary on Category II (human rights), Category IV (prolonged custody of migrants), and Category V (discrimination).
  • Fernando Aguirre-Urbina (imprisoned 2012–2019) was brought to the United States as an undocumented minor at age 3. He pled guilty to intent to distribute meth and marijuana, served 8 months, and was released to ICE detention for 7 years. The WAGD found that Aguirre-Urbina's detention was arbitrary under all five categories. ​
  • Steven Donziger (imprisoned 2019–2022): Donziger, who had pursued a series of legal cases against Chevron Corporation, was placed under house arrest for contempt of court. The WAGD found that Donziger's house arrest was arbitrary on Category I (no legal basis), Category III (unfair trial), and Category V (discrimination).
  • The Cuban Five (imprisoned 2001–2014) were convicted of espionage on Cuban-American groups for the government of Cuba. The WAGD found that their imprisonment was arbitrary on Category III (unfair trial), due to extended solitary confinement (17 months), limited access to evidence (under CIPA), and biased jury selection (anti-Cuban-government sentiment in Miami).
  • Benamar Benatta (imprisoned 2001–2006) is a refugee from Algeria whose status was revoked soon after the September 11 attacks. Despite having been cleared of suspicions of terrorist activities by the FBI, Benatta was held in detention for nearly five years. The WAGD said that Benatta's treatment "could be described as torture" and found that his detention was arbitrary on Category I (no legal basis) and Category III (unfair trial).
  • Humberto Álvarez Machaín (imprisoned 1990–1992) was accused of participating in the drug cartel-linked torture of Kiki Camarena and abducted to the United States. Alvarez Machaín was acquitted in 1992. The WAGD found that Alvarez Machaín's imprisonment was arbitrary on Category I (no legal basis). Álvarez Machaín's abduction eventually led to the 1992 Supreme Court decision United States v. Alvarez-Machain.


Later notable alleged political prisoners:

Because the term "political prisoner" is vague, there is disagreement on who should be included by that term. The people below prominently described themselves (or were described by other prominent people) as political prisoners:
  • Fred Hampton (imprisoned 1969), a local chairman of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of assaulting an Good Humor ice cream van driver, stealing $71 worth of ice cream bars, and giving them to kids on the street. In a memoir, Frank B. Wilderson III places this incident in the context of COINTELPRO efforts to disrupt the Black Panthers of Chicago by the "leveling of trumped-up charges". In 1969, Hampton was killed in his sleep by Cook County police officers. Civil rights activists Roy Wilkins and Ramsey Clark, styled as "The Commission of Inquiry into the Black Panthers and the Police", alleged that the Chicago police had killed Hampton without justification or provocation and had violated the Panthers' constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure. "The Commission" further alleged that the Chicago Police Department had imposed a summary punishment on the Panthers.
  • Angela Davis (imprisoned 1970-1972): Davis, a Marxist and activist, assisted the Soledad brothers, three inmates who were accused of killing a prison guard at Soledad Prison, in purchasing several of the firearms they would use in the attack, and was found to have been corresponding with one of the inmates involved.  Since California considers "all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, ... whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense, or aid and abet in its commission, ... are principals in any crime so committed", Davis was charged with "aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley", and Marin County Superior Court Judge Peter Allen Smith issued a warrant for her arrest. On August 18, four days after the warrant was issued, the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover listed Davis on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List. Soon after, Davis became a fugitive and fled California, but FBI Agents found her on October 13, 1970.
  • Richard Wershe Jr. (imprisoned 1987–2021) was an FBI informant who was convicted of possession of over 650 grams of cocaine. The film White Boy describes Wershe as a "political prisoner" who received harsh sentences for informing on several Detroit representatives.
  • Lyndon LaRouche (imprisoned 1988–1994): LaRouche was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. LaRouche's attorney called the conviction politically motivated, while the judge in question said the idea that LaRouche's organization was a sufficient threat to warrant this "just defies human experience." The LaRouche movement, which mixes far-left and far-right rhetoric, and which The New York Times calls "cult-like", has claimed that LaRouche is a political prisoner and appealed to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for relief; the WAGD did not consider his case.


See also:






​
Guantanamo Bay Detention CampPictured below: Various photos of Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp
Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp (Spanish: Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Gitmo, on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. As of April 2023, of the 779 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 30 remained there, and nine had died while in custody.

The camp was established by U.S. President George W. Bush's administration in 2002 during the War on Terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Indefinite detention without trial led the operations of this camp to be considered a major breach of human rights by Amnesty International, and a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution by the Center for Constitutional Rights. There are also testimonies of abuse and torture of prisoners.

Bush's successor, U.S. President Barack Obama, promised that he would close the camp, but met strong bipartisan opposition from the U.S. Congress, which passed laws to prohibit detainees from Guantanamo being transferred to the United States for any reason, including imprisonment or medical care. During the Obama administration, the number of inmates was reduced from about 250 to 41.

In January 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep the detention camp open indefinitely. In May 2018, the Trump administration repatriated a prisoner to Saudi Arabia.

In early February 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden declared his intention to close the facility before he leaves office, though the Biden administration has taken few steps in that direction. Instead, the Department of Defense has continued several million dollars of expansions to military commissions and other Guantanamo Bay facilities, including a second courtroom. 

The Biden administration has released 10 detainees from Guantanamo. As of April 2023, the facility has 30 detainees.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more aout Guantanamo Bay:







Gerrymandering in the United States Pictured below: Partisan control of congressional redistricting after the 2020 elections, with the number of U.S. House seats each state will receive.
Courtesy of By Orser67 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93350171*
​Gerrymandering is the practice of setting boundaries of electoral districts to favor specific political interests within legislative bodies, often resulting in districts with convoluted, winding boundaries rather than compact areas.

The term "gerrymandering" was coined after a review of Massachusetts's redistricting maps of 1812 set by Governor Elbridge Gerry noted that one of the districts looked like a mythical salamander.

In the United States, redistricting takes place in each state about every ten years, after the decennial census. It defines geographical boundaries, with each district within a state being geographically contiguous and having about the same number of state voters.

The resulting map affects the elections of the state's members of the United States House of Representatives and the state legislative bodies. Redistricting has always been regarded as a political exercise and in most states, it is controlled by state legislators and sometimes the governor (in some states the governor has no veto power over redistricting legislation while in some states the veto override threshold is a simple majority).

When one party controls the state's legislative bodies and governor's office, it is in a strong position to gerrymander district boundaries to advantage its side and to disadvantage its political opponents. 

Since 2010, detailed maps and high-speed computing have facilitated gerrymandering by political parties in the redistricting process, in order to gain control of state legislation and congressional representation and potentially to maintain that control over several decades, even against shifting political changes in a state's population. The Supreme Court of the United States has often struggled when partisan gerrymandering occurs such as in Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004) and Gill v. Whitford (2018).

Typical gerrymandering cases in the United States take the form of partisan gerrymandering, which is aimed at favoring one political party while weakening another; bipartisan gerrymandering, which is aimed at protecting incumbents by multiple political parties; and racial gerrymandering, which is aimed at maximizing or minimizing the impact of certain racial groups.

In the past, federal courts have deemed extreme cases of gerrymandering to be unconstitutional, but have struggled with how to define the types of gerrymandering and the standards that should be used to determine which redistricting maps are unconstitutional. In 1995 the Supreme Court came to a 5–4 decision during Miller v. Johnson that racial gerrymandering is a violation of constitutional rights and upheld decisions against redistricting that is purposely devised based on race.

Racial gerrymandering effectively maximizes or minimizes the impact of racial minority votes in certain districts with the goal of diluting the minority vote. Racial gerrymandering may be created without considerations of party lines but often redraw or reconstruct districts in ways that limit minority voters to smaller or a reduced number of districts.

The effect of the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the rapid improvement of technology and the influx of dark money into redistricting are also possible factors that may impact the voting power of minorities.

A 5–4 decision by the court in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), stated that questions of gerrymandering represented a nonjusticiable  political question which could not be dealt with by the federal court system and ultimately left it back to states and to Congress to develop remedies to challenge and to prevent gerrymandering once again.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Political Gerrymamdering in the United States:







Democratic Party of the United States Pictured below: ​Key Figures of the Democratic Party 
(Top L-R: Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Lyndon B. Johnson and Barack Obama. Bottom L-R: Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, Harry Truman, John F Kennedy and Franklin D Roosevelt)
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Since the 1850s, its main political rival has been the Republican Party (next topic).

The Democratic Party was founded in 1828. Martin Van Buren of New York played the central role in building the coalition of state organizations that formed a new party as a vehicle to elect Andrew Jackson of Tennessee.

The Democratic Party is often called the world's oldest active political party. The party supported expansive presidential power, the interests of slave states, agrarianism, and geographical expansionism, while opposing a national bank and high tariffs. 

It split in 1860 over slavery and won the presidency only twice in the fifty years between 1860 and 1910, although it won the popular vote a total of four times in that period. In the late 19th century, it continued to oppose high tariffs and had fierce internal debates on the gold standard.

In the early 20th century, it supported progressive reforms and opposed imperialism, with Woodrow Wilson winning the White House in 1912 and 1916.

Since Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, the Democratic Party has promoted a social liberal platform that includes support for Social Security and unemployment insurance. The New Deal attracted strong support for the party from recent European immigrants but diminished the party's pro-business wing. 

From late in Roosevelt's administration through the 1950s, a minority in the party's Southern wing joined with conservative Republicans to slow and stop progressive domestic reforms. 

Following the Great Society era of progressive legislation under Lyndon B. Johnson, which was often able to overcome the conservative coalition in the 1960s, the core bases of the parties shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic. 

The party's labor union element has become smaller since the 1970s, and as the American electorate shifted in a more conservative direction following Ronald Reagan's presidency, the election of Bill Clinton marked a move for the party toward the Third Way, moving the party's economic stance towards market-based economic policy. 

Barack Obama oversaw the party's passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. During Joe Biden's presidency, the party has adopted an increasingly progressive economic agenda.

Beginning with the time of the New Deal, the party's traditional coalition consisted of: 
Its philosophy of modern American liberalism blends civil liberty and social equality with support for a mixed capitalist economy. 
In its foreign policy, the party supports liberal internationalism and support for liberal democratic allies, as well as tough stances against China and Russia.

Pictured below: Democratic Party Logo:
History
Main article: History of the Democratic Party (United States)

Democratic Party officials often trace its origins to the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other influential opponents of the conservative Federalists in 1792. That party died out before the modern Democratic Party was organized; the Jeffersonian party also inspired the Whigs and modern Republicans. 

Historians argue that the modern Democratic Party was first organized in the late 1820s with the election of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party. It was predominately built by Martin Van Buren, who assembled a wide cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero Andrew Jackson of Tennessee.

Since the nomination of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, the party has generally positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic issues. Democrats have been more liberal on civil rights since 1948, although conservative factions within the Democratic Party that opposed them persisted in the South until the 1960s.

On foreign policy, both parties have changed positions several times.

Background:

​The Democratic Party evolved from the Jeffersonian Republican or Democratic-Republican Party organized by Jefferson and Madison in opposition to the Federalist Party. The Democratic-Republican Party favored: 
The party opposed a national bank and Great Britain. After the War of 1812, the Federalists virtually disappeared and the only national political party left was the Democratic-Republicans, which was prone to splinter along regional lines. 

The era of one-party rule in the United States, known as the Era of Good Feelings, lasted from 1816 until 1828, when Andrew Jackson became president. Jackson and Martin Van Buren worked with allies in each state to form a new Democratic Party on a national basis. In the 1830s, the Whig Party coalesced into the main rival to the Democrats.

Before 1860, the Democratic Party supported:  while opposing:
19th century:
Further information: Second Party System and Third Party System

The Democratic-Republican Party split over the choice of a successor to President James Monroe. The faction that supported many of the old Jeffersonian principles, led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, became the modern Democratic Party. 

Historian Mary Beth Norton explains the transformation in 1828:

Jacksonians believed the people's will had finally prevailed. Through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president. The Democrats became the nation's first well-organized national party ... and tight party organization became the hallmark of nineteenth-century American politics.

​Behind the platforms issued by state and national parties stood a widely shared political outlook that characterized the Democrats:
  • The Democrats represented a wide range of views but shared a fundamental commitment to the Jeffersonian concept of an agrarian society. They viewed the central government as the enemy of individual liberty.
  • The 1824 "corrupt bargain" had strengthened their suspicion of Washington politics. ... Jacksonians feared the concentration of economic and political power. They believed that government intervention in the economy benefited special-interest groups and created corporate monopolies that favored the rich.
  • They sought to restore the independence of the individual—the artisan and the ordinary farmer—by ending federal support of banks and corporations and restricting the use of paper currency, which they distrusted.
  • Their definition of the proper role of government tended to be negative, and Jackson's political power was largely expressed in negative acts. He exercised the veto more than all previous presidents combined. ... Nor did Jackson share reformers' humanitarian concerns. He had no sympathy for American Indians, initiating the removal of the Cherokees along the Trail of Tears.

Opposing factions led by Henry Clay helped form the Whig Party. The Democratic Party had a small yet decisive advantage over the Whigs until the 1850s when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery. In 1854, angry with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, anti-slavery Democrats left the party and joined Northern Whigs to form the Republican Party.

​The Democrats split over slavery, with Northern and Southern tickets in the election of 1860, in which the Republican Party gained ascendancy. 

The radical pro-slavery Fire-Eaters led walkouts at the two conventions when the delegates would not adopt a resolution supporting the extension of slavery into territories even if the voters of those territories did not want it.

These Southern Democrats nominated the pro-slavery incumbent vice president, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, for president and General Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for vice president. The Northern Democrats nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for president and former Georgia Governor Herschel V. Johnson for vice president. This fracturing of the Democrats led to a Republican victory and Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States.

As the American Civil War broke out, Northern Democrats were divided into War Democrats and Peace Democrats. The Confederate States of America deliberately avoided organized political parties.

Most War Democrats rallied to Republican President Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans' National Union Party in the election of 1864, which featured Andrew Johnson on the Union ticket to attract fellow Democrats. Johnson replaced Lincoln in 1865, but he stayed independent of both parties.

The Democrats benefited from white Southerners' resentment of Reconstruction after the war and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. After Redeemers ended Reconstruction in the 1870s and following the often extremely violent disenfranchisement of African Americans led by such white supremacist Democratic politicians as Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina in the 1880s and 1890s, the South, voting Democratic, became known as the "Solid South".

Although Republicans won all but two presidential elections, the Democrats remained competitive.

The party was dominated by pro-business Bourbon Democrats led by Samuel J. Tilden and Grover Cleveland, who:
  • represented mercantile, banking, and railroad interests;
  • opposed imperialism and overseas expansion;
  • fought for the gold standard;
  • opposed bimetallism;
  • and crusaded against corruption, high taxes and tariffs.

Cleveland was elected to non-consecutive presidential terms in 1884 and 1892.


20th century:
Further information: 
Early 20th century

Agrarian Democrats demanding free silver, drawing on Populist ideas, overthrew the Bourbon Democrats in 1896 and nominated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency (a nomination repeated by Democrats in 1900 and 1908). Bryan waged a vigorous campaign attacking Eastern moneyed interests, but he lost to Republican William McKinley.

The Democrats took control of the House in 1910, and Woodrow Wilson won election as president in 1912 (when the Republicans split) and 1916. Wilson effectively led Congress to put to rest the issues of tariffs, money, and antitrust, which had dominated politics for 40 years, with new progressive laws.

He failed to secure Senate passage of the Versailles Treaty (ending the war with Germany and joining the League of Nations). The weak party was deeply divided by issues such as the KKK and prohibition in the 1920s. However, it did organize new ethnic voters in Northern cities.

After World War I ended and continuing through the Great Depression, the Democratic and Republican Parties both largely believed in American exceptionalism over European monarchies and state socialism that existed elsewhere in the world.

1930s–1960s and the rise of the New Deal coalition:

​The Great Depression in 1929 that began under Republican President Herbert Hoover and the Republican Congress set the stage for a more liberal government as:
  • the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives nearly uninterrupted from 1930 until 1994,
  • the Senate for 44 of 48 years from 1930,
  • and won most presidential elections until 1968. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected to the presidency in 1932, came forth with federal government programs called the New Deal. New Deal liberalism meant the regulation of business (especially finance and banking) and the promotion of labor unions as well as federal spending to aid the unemployed, help distressed farmers and undertake large-scale public works projects.

It marked the start of the American welfare state. The opponents, who stressed opposition to unions, support for business and low taxes, started calling themselves "conservatives".

Until the 1980s, the Democratic Party was a coalition of two parties divided by the Mason–Dixon line: liberal Democrats in the North and culturally conservative voters in the South, who though benefitting from many of the New Deal public works projects, opposed increasing civil rights initiatives advocated by northeastern liberals.

The polarization grew stronger after Roosevelt died. Southern Democrats formed a key part of the bipartisan conservative coalition in an alliance with most of the Midwestern Republicans. The economically activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influenced American liberalism, shaped much of the party's economic agenda after 1932. 

From the 1930s to the mid-1960s, the liberal New Deal coalition usually controlled the presidency while the conservative coalition usually controlled Congress.

1960s–1980s and the collapse of the New Deal coalition
See also: Civil Rights Movement

Issues facing parties and the United States after World War II included the Cold War and the civil rights movement. Republicans attracted conservatives and, after the 1960s, white Southerners from the Democratic coalition with their use of the Southern strategy and resistance to New Deal and Great Society liberalism.

Until the 1950s, African Americans had traditionally supported the Republican Party because of its anti-slavery civil rights policies. Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Southern states became more reliably Republican in presidential politics, while Northeastern states became more reliably Democratic.

Studies show that Southern whites, which were a core constituency in the Democratic Party, shifted to the Republican Party due to racial backlash.

​The election of President John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts in 1960 partially reflected this shift. In the campaign, Kennedy attracted a new generation of younger voters. In his agenda dubbed the New Frontier, Kennedy:
  • introduced a host of social programs and public works projects, along with enhanced support of the space program,
  • proposing a crewed spacecraft trip to the moon by the end of the decade.
  • pushed for civil rights initiatives and proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but with his assassination in November 1963, he was not able to see its passage.

​Kennedy's successor Lyndon B. Johnson was able to persuade the largely conservative Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and with a more progressive Congress in 1965 passed much of the Great Society, including Medicare, which consisted of an array of social programs designed to help the poor, sick, and elderly.

Kennedy and Johnson's advocacy of civil rights further solidified black support for the Democrats but had the effect of alienating Southern whites who would eventually gravitate toward the Republican Party, particularly after the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980.

The United States' involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s was another divisive issue that further fractured the fault lines of the Democrats' coalition. After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, President Johnson committed a large contingency of combat troops to Vietnam, but the escalation failed to drive the Viet Cong from South Vietnam, resulting in an increasing quagmire, which by 1968 had become the subject of widespread anti-war protests in the United States and elsewhere.

With increasing casualties and nightly news reports bringing home troubling images from Vietnam, the costly military engagement became increasingly unpopular, alienating many of the kinds of young voters that the Democrats had attracted in the early 1960s.

The protests that year along with assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy (younger brother of John F. Kennedy) climaxed in turbulence at the hotly-contested Democratic National Convention that summer in Chicago (which amongst the ensuing turmoil inside and outside of the convention hall nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey) in a series of events that proved to mark a significant turning point in the decline of the Democratic Party's broad coalition.

Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon was able to capitalize on the confusion of the Democrats that year, and won the 1968 election to become the 37th president. He won re-election in a landslide in 1972 against Democratic nominee George McGovern, who like Robert F. Kennedy, reached out to the younger anti-war and counterculture voters, but unlike Kennedy, was not able to appeal to the party's more traditional white working-class constituencies.

During Nixon's second term, his presidency was rocked by the Watergate scandal, which forced him to resign in 1974. He was succeeded by vice president Gerald Ford, who served a brief tenure.

Watergate offered the Democrats an opportunity to recoup, and their nominee Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential election. With the initial support of evangelical Christian voters in the South, Carter was temporarily able to reunite the disparate factions within the party, but inflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979–1980 took their toll, resulting in a landslide victory for Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan in 1980, which shifted the political landscape in favor of the Republicans for years to come.

1990s and Third Way centrism:

​With the ascendancy of the Republicans under Ronald Reagan, the Democrats searched for ways to respond yet were unable to succeed by running traditional candidates, such as former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who lost to Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections, respectively.

Many Democrats attached their hopes to the future star of Gary Hart, who had challenged Mondale in the 1984 primaries running on a theme of "New Ideas"; and in the subsequent 1988 primaries became the de facto front-runner and virtual "shoo-in" for the Democratic presidential nomination before a sex scandal ended his campaign.

The party nevertheless began to seek out a younger generation of leaders, who like Hart had been inspired by the pragmatic idealism of John F. Kennedy.

Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was one such figure, who was elected president in 1992 as the Democratic nominee. The Democratic Leadership Council was a campaign organization connected to Clinton that advocated a realignment and triangulation under the re-branded "New Democrat" label.

The party adopted a synthesis of neoliberal economic policies with cultural liberalism, with the voter base after Reagan having shifted considerably to the right. 

In an effort to appeal both to liberals and to fiscal conservatives, Democrats began to advocate for a balanced budget and market economy tempered by government intervention (mixed economy), along with a continued emphasis on social justice and affirmative action.

The economic policy adopted by the Democratic Party, including the former Clinton administration, has been referred to as "Third Way".

The Democrats lost control of Congress in the election of 1994 to the Republican Party. Re-elected in 1996, Clinton was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to two terms. 

Al Gore won the popular vote, but after a controversial election dispute over a Florida recount settled by the U.S. Supreme Court (which ruled 5–4 in favor of Bush) he lost the 2000 United States Presidential Election to Republican opponent George W. Bush in the Electoral College.


21st century

2000s

​In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as well as the growing concern over global warming, some of the party's key issues in the early 21st century have included combating terrorism while preserving human rights, expanding access to health care, labor rights, and environmental protection.

Democrats regained majority control of both the House and the Senate in the 2006 elections. 

Barack Obama won the Democratic Party's nomination and was elected as the first African American president in 2008. Under the Obama presidency, the party moved forward reforms including an economic stimulus package, the Dodd–Frank financial reform act, and the Affordable Care Act.

2010s:

In the 2010 midterm elections, the Democratic Party lost control of the House and lost its majority in state legislatures and state governorships. In the 2012 elections, President Obama was re-elected, but the party remained in the minority in the House of Representatives and lost control of the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections.

After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote, the Democratic Party transitioned into the role of an opposition party and held neither the presidency nor Congress for two years. However, the Democratic Party won back a majority in the House in the 2018 midterm elections under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi.

Democrats were extremely critical of President Trump, particularly his policies on immigration, healthcare, and abortion, as well as his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before the pandemic, Democrats in the House of Representatives impeached Trump for the first time, although Trump was acquitted in the Republican-controlled Senate.

2020s

​In November 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. He began his term with extremely narrow Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was negotiated by Biden, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and other Democrats and is the largest allocation of funds for addressing climate change to date.

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was politically and economically opposed by the Biden Administration, who promptly began an increased arming of Ukraine, with full support from Congressional Democrats and an overwhelming majority of Republicans.

In 2022, Biden appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. However, she was replacing liberal justice Stephen Breyer, so she did not alter the court's 6–3 split between conservatives (the majority) and liberals.

After Dobbs v. Jackson (decided June 24, 2022), which led to abortion bans in much of the country, the Democratic Party rallied behind abortion rights.

In the 2022 midterm elections Democrats dramatically outperformed historical trends, and a widely anticipated red wave did not materialize. Democrats only narrowly lost their majority in the U.S. House, and gained a seat in the U.S. Senate, along with several gains at the state level, including acquiring "trifectas" (control of both legislative houses and governor's seat) in several states.

As of 2024, Democrats hold:
By registered members, the Democratic Party is the largest party in the U.S. and the fourth largest in the world. Including the incumbent, Biden, 16 Democrats have served as president of the United States.


​Name and symbols:

The Democratic-Republican Party splintered in 1824 into the short-lived National Republican Party and the Jacksonian movement which in 1828 became the Democratic Party.

​Under the Jacksonian era, the term "The Democracy" was in use by the party, but the name "Democratic Party" was eventually settled upon and became the official name in 1844. Members of the party are called "Democrats" or "Dems".

The most common mascot symbol for the party has been the donkey, or jackass. Andrew Jackson's enemies twisted his name to "jackass" as a term of ridicule regarding a stupid and stubborn animal. However, the Democrats liked the common-man implications and picked it up too, therefore the image persisted and evolved. Its most lasting impression came from the cartoons of Thomas Nast from 1870 in Harper's Weekly. Cartoonists followed Nast and used the donkey to represent the Democrats and the elephant to represent the Republicans.

In the early 20th century, the traditional symbol of the Democratic Party in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Ohio was the rooster, as opposed to the Republican eagle. The rooster was also adopted as an official symbol of the national Democratic Party. In 1904 the Alabama Democratic Party chose, as the logo to put on its ballots, a rooster with the motto "White supremacy – For the right." The words "White supremacy" were replaced with "Democrats" in 1966. 

In 1996, the Alabama Democratic Party dropped the rooster, citing racist and white supremacist connotations linked with the symbol. The rooster symbol still appears on Oklahoma, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia ballots. In New York, the Democratic ballot symbol is a five-pointed star.

Although both major political parties (and many minor ones) use the traditional American colors of red, white, and blue in their marketing and representations, since election night 2000 blue has become the identifying color for the Democratic Party while red has become the identifying color for the Republican Party.

That night, for the first time all major broadcast television networks used the same color scheme for the electoral map: blue states for Al Gore (Democratic nominee) and red states for George W. Bush (Republican nominee). Since then, the color blue has been widely used by the media to represent the party.

This is contrary to common practice outside of the United States where blue is the traditional color of the right and red the color of the left. For example, in Canada red represents the Liberals while blue represents the Conservatives.

In the United Kingdom, red denotes the Labour Party and blue symbolizes the Conservative Party. Any use of the color blue to denote the Democratic Party prior to 2000 would be historically inaccurate and misleading.

Since 2000, blue has also been used both by party supporters for promotional efforts--ActBlue, BuyBlue and BlueFund as examples—and by the party itself in 2006 both for its "Red to Blue Program", created to support Democratic candidates running against Republican incumbents in the midterm elections that year and on its official website.

In September 2010, the Democratic Party unveiled its new logo, which featured a blue D inside a blue circle. It was the party's first official logo; the donkey logo had been only semi-official.

Jefferson-Jackson Day is the annual fundraising event (dinner) held by Democratic Party organizations across the United States. It is named after Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, whom the party regards as its distinguished early leaders.

The song "Happy Days Are Here Again" is the unofficial song of the Democratic Party. It was used prominently when Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for president at the 1932 Democratic National Convention and remains a sentimental favorite for Democrats today.

For example, Paul Shaffer played the theme on the Late Show with David Letterman after the Democrats won Congress in 2006. "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac was adopted by Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 and has endured as a popular Democratic song.

The emotionally similar song "Beautiful Day" by the band U2 has also become a favorite theme song for Democratic candidates. John Kerry used the song during his 2004 presidential campaign and several Democratic Congressional candidates used it as a celebratory tune in 2006.

As a traditional anthem for its presidential nominating convention, Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" is traditionally performed at the beginning of the Democratic National Convention.


Current structure:

National committee:

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is responsible for promoting Democratic campaign activities. While the DNC is responsible for overseeing the process of writing the Democratic Platform, the DNC is more focused on campaign and organizational strategy than public policy. In presidential elections, it supervises the Democratic National Convention.

The national convention is subject to the charter of the party and the ultimate authority within the Democratic Party when it is in session, with the DNC running the party's organization at other times. The DNC is currently chaired by Jaime Harrison.

State parties:
Main article: List of state parties of the Democratic Party (United States)

Each state also has a state committee, made up of elected committee members as well as ex officio committee members (usually elected officials and representatives of major constituencies), which in turn elects a chair.

County, town, city, and ward committees generally are composed of individuals elected at the local level. State and local committees often coordinate campaign activities within their jurisdiction, oversee local conventions, and in some cases primaries or caucuses, and may have a role in nominating candidates for elected office under state law.

Rarely do they have much funding, but in 2005 DNC Chairman Dean began a program (called the "50 State Strategy") of using DNC national funds to assist all state parties and pay for full-time professional staffers.

Major party committees and groups

​​The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) assists party candidates in House races and its current chair (selected by the party caucus) is Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington.

Similarly, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), chaired by Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, raises funds for Senate races. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), chaired by Majority Leader of the New York State Senate Andrea Stewart-Cousins, is a smaller organization that focuses on state legislative races.

The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) is an organization supporting the candidacies of Democratic gubernatorial nominees and incumbents. Likewise, the mayors of the largest cities and urban centers convene as the National Conference of Democratic Mayors.

The DNC sponsors the College Democrats of America (CDA), a student-outreach organization with the goal of training and engaging a new generation of Democratic activists. Democrats Abroad is the organization for Americans living outside the United States. They work to advance the party's goals and encourage Americans living abroad to support the Democrats.

The Young Democrats of America (YDA) and the High School Democrats of America (HSDA) are young adult and youth-led organizations respectively that attempt to draw in and mobilize young people for Democratic candidates but operates outside of the DNC.


Political positions:
Main article: Political positions of the Democratic Party (United States)

The party's platform blends civil liberty and social equality with support for a mixed capitalist economy. 

On social issues, it advocates for the continued legality of abortion, the legalization of marijuana, and LGBT rights.

On economic issues, it favors the following: 
Economic policy
  • Expand Social Security and safety-net programs.
  • Increase the capital gains tax rate to 39.6% for taxpayers with annual income above $1 million.
  • Cut taxes for the working and middle classes as well as small businesses.
  • Change tax rules to discourage shipping jobs overseas.
  • Increase federal and state minimum wages.
  • Modernize and expand access to public education and provide universal preschool education.
  • Support the goal of universal health care through a public health insurance option or expanding Medicare/Medicaid.
  • Increase investments in infrastructure development as well as scientific and technological research.
  • Offer tax credits to make clean energy more accessible for consumers and increase domestic production of clean energy.
  • Uphold labor protections and the right to unionize.
  • Reform the student loan system and allow for refinancing student loans.Make college more affordable.
  • Mandate equal pay for equal work regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity.

Social policy
Economic issues:

Equal economic opportunity, a social safety net, and strong labor unions have historically been at the heart of Democratic economic policy. The Democratic Party's economic policy positions, as measured by votes in Congress, tend to align with those of middle class.

Democrats support:
They also support infrastructure development and clean energy investments to achieve economic development and job creation. 

Since the 1990s, the party has at times supported centrist economic reforms that cut the size of government and reduced market regulations. The party has generally rejected both laissez-faire economics and market socialism, instead favoring Keynesian economics within a capitalist market-based system.

Fiscal policy:

Democrats support a more progressive tax structure to provide more services and reduce economic inequality by making sure that the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes. Democrats and Republicans traditionally take differing stances on eradicating poverty.

Brady said "Our poverty level is the direct consequence of our weak social policies, which are a direct consequence of weak political actors". 

They oppose the cutting of social services, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, believing it to be harmful to efficiency and social justice.

Democrats believe the benefits of social services in monetary and non-monetary terms are a more productive labor force and cultured population and believe that the benefits of this are greater than any benefits that could be derived from lower taxes, especially on top earners, or cuts to social services.

Furthermore, Democrats see social services as essential toward providing positive freedom, freedom derived from economic opportunity. The Democratic-led House of Representatives reinstated the PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) budget rule at the start of the 110th Congress.

Minimum wage:
See also: Minimum wage in the United States

The Democratic Party favors raising the minimum wage. The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 was an early component of the Democrats' agenda during the 110th Congress. In 2006, the Democrats supported six state-ballot initiatives to increase the minimum wage and all six initiatives passed.

In 2017, Senate Democrats introduced the Raise the Wage Act which would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024. 

In 2021, Democratic president Joe Biden proposed increasing the minimum wage to $15 by 2025. In many states controlled by Democrats, the state minimum wage has been increased to a rate above the federal minimum wage.

Health care:

​Democrats call for "affordable and quality health care" and favor moving toward universal health care in a variety of forms to address rising healthcare costs.

Progressive Democrats politicians favor a single-payer program or Medicare for All, while liberals prefer creating a public health insurance option.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, has been one of the most significant pushes for universal health care. As of December 2019, more than 20 million Americans have gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
​
Education:

Democrats favor improving public education by raising school standards and reforming the Head Start program. They also support universal preschool, expanding access to primary education, including through charter schools, and are generally opposed to school voucher programs.

They call for addressing student loan debt and reforms to reduce college tuition. Other proposals have included tuition-free public universities and reform of standardized testing.

Democrats have the long-term aim of having publicly funded college education with low tuition fees (like in much of Europe and Canada), which would be available to every eligible American student.

Alternatively, they encourage expanding access to post-secondary education by increasing state funding for student financial aid such as Pell Grants and college tuition tax deductions.

Environment:
Main article: Environmental policy of the United States

Democrats believe that the government should protect the environment and have a history of environmentalism. In more recent years, this stance has emphasized renewable energy generation as the basis for an improved economy, greater national security, and general environmental benefits. 

The Democratic Party is substantially more likely than the Republican Party to support environmental regulation and policies that are supportive of renewable energy.

The Democratic Party also favors expansion of conservation lands and encourages open space and rail travel to relieve highway and airport congestion and improve air quality and the economy as it "believe[s] that communities, environmental interests, and the government should work together to protect resources while ensuring the vitality of local economies. Once Americans were led to believe they had to make a choice between the economy and the environment. They now know this is a false choice".

The foremost environmental concern of the Democratic Party is climate change. Democrats, most notably former Vice President Al Gore, have pressed for stern regulation of greenhouse gases.

On October 15, 2007, Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to build greater knowledge about man-made climate change and laying the foundations for the measures needed to counteract it.

Renewable energy and fossil fuels:

Democrats have supported increased domestic renewable energy development, including wind and solar power farms, in an effort to reduce carbon pollution. The party's platform calls for an "all of the above" energy policy including clean energy, natural gas and domestic oil, with the desire of becoming energy independent. 

The party has supported higher taxes on oil companies and increased regulations on coal power plants, favoring a policy of reducing long-term reliance on fossil fuels.

Additionally, the party supports stricter fuel emissions standards to prevent air pollution.

Trade agreements:

Like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has taken widely varying views on international trade throughout its history. The Democrats dominated the Second Party System and set low tariffs designed to pay for the government but not protect industry.

Their opponents the Whigs wanted high protective tariffs but usually were outvoted in Congress. Tariffs soon became a major political issue as the Whigs (1832–1852) and (after 1854) the Republicans wanted to protect their mostly northern industries and constituents by voting for higher tariffs and the Southern Democrats, which had very little industry but imported many goods voted for lower tariffs.

After the Second Party System ended in 1854 the Democrats lost control and the new Republican Party had its opportunity to raise rates.

During the Third Party System, Democratic president Grover Cleveland made low tariffs the centerpiece of Democratic Party policies, arguing that high tariffs were an unnecessary and unfair tax on consumers. The South and West generally supported low tariffs, while the industrial North high tariffs. 

During the Fourth Party System, Democratic president Woodrow Wilson made a drastic lowering of tariff rates a major priority for his presidency. The 1913 Underwood Tariff cut rates, and the new revenues generated by the federal income tax made tariffs much less important in terms of economic impact and political rhetoric.

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration and a number of prominent Democrats pushed through a number of agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Since then, the party's shift away from free trade became evident in the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) vote, with 15 House Democrats voting for the agreement and 187 voting against. 

Many Democrats today support fair trade policies when it comes to the issue of international trade agreements, such as the USMCA, the successor to NAFTA.

Social issues
​
The modern Democratic Party emphasizes social equality and equal opportunity. Democrats support voting rights and minority rights, including LGBT rights.

Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial segregation. Carmines and Stimson wrote "the Democratic Party appropriated racial liberalism and assumed federal responsibility for ending racial discrimination."

Ideological social elements in the party include cultural liberalism, civil libertarianism, and feminism. Some Democratic social policies are immigration reform, electoral reform, and women's reproductive rights.

Equal opportunity:

The Democratic Party supports equal opportunity for all Americans regardless of:
The Democratic Party has broad appeal across most socioeconomic and ethnic demographics, as seen in recent exit polls. Many Democrats support affirmative action programs to further this goal.

Democrats also strongly support the Americans with Disabilities Act to prohibit discrimination against people based on physical or mental disability. As such, the Democrats pushed as well the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, a disability rights expansion that became law.

Voting rights:

The party is very supportive of improving voting rights as well as election accuracy and accessibility. They support extensions of voting time, including making election day a holiday. They support reforming the electoral system to eliminate gerrymandering, abolishing the electoral college, as well as passing comprehensive campaign finance reform.

Abortion and reproductive rights:
See also: Abortion in the United States

The Democratic position on abortion has changed significantly over time. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Republicans generally favored legalized abortion more than Democrats, although significant heterogeneity could be found within both parties.

During this time, opposition to abortion tended to be concentrated among the political left in the United States. Liberal Protestants and Catholics — both of which tended to vote for the Democratic Party — opposed while most conservative Protestants supported legal access to abortion services.

The present platform states that all women should have access to birth control and supports public funding of contraception for poor women.

In its national platforms from 1992 to 2004, the Democratic Party has called for abortion to be "safe, legal and rare"—namely, keeping it legal by rejecting laws that allow governmental interference in abortion decisions and reducing the number of abortions by promoting both knowledge of reproduction and contraception and incentives for adoption.

The wording changed in the 2008 platform. When Congress voted on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2003, Congressional Democrats were split, with a minority (including former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) supporting the ban and the majority of Democrats opposing the legislation.

According to the 2020 Democratic Party platform, "Democrats believe every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion."

Immigration:
See also: Immigration to the United States and Illegal immigration to the United States
​
​Like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has taken widely varying views on immigration throughout its history.

Since the 1990s, the Democratic Party has been more supportive overall of immigration than the Republican Party. Many Democratic politicians have called for systematic reform of the immigration system such that residents that have come into the United States illegally have a pathway to legal citizenship.

President Obama remarked in November 2013 that he felt it was "long past time to fix our broken immigration system," particularly to allow "incredibly bright young people" that came over as students to become full citizens. The Public Religion Research Institute found in a late 2013 study that 73% of Democrats supported the pathway concept, compared to 63% of Americans as a whole.

In 2013, Democrats in the Senate passed S. 744, which would reform immigration policy to allow citizenship for illegal immigrants in the United States and improve the lives of all immigrants currently living in the United States. The law failed to pass in the House and was never re-introduced after the 113th Congress.

As of 2023, no major immigration reform legislation has been enacted into law in the 21st century.

LGBT rights
See also: LGBT rights in the United States

The Democratic position on LGBT rights has changed significantly over time.

Before the 2000s, like the Republicans, the Democratic Party often took positions hostile to LGBT rights. Today, both voters and elected representatives within the Democratic Party are overwhelmingly supportive of LGBT rights.

Support for same-sex marriage has steadily increased among the general public, including voters in both major parties, since the start of the 21st century.

An April 2009 ABC News/Washington Post public opinion poll put support among Democrats at 62%. A broad majority of Democrats have supported other LGBT-related laws such as:
A 2006 Pew Research Center poll of Democrats found that 55% supported gays adopting children with 40% opposed while 70% support gays in the military, with only 23% opposed.

Gallup polling from May 2009 stated that 82% of Democrats support open enlistment. A 2023 Gallup public opinion poll found 84% of Democrats support same-sex marriage, compared to 71% support by the general public and 49% support by Republicans.

The 2004 Democratic National Platform stated that marriage should be defined at the state level and it repudiated the Federal Marriage Amendment. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, did not support same-sex marriage.

While not stating support of same-sex marriage, the 2008 platform called for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which banned federal recognition of same-sex marriage and removed the need for interstate recognition, supported antidiscrimination laws and the extension of hate crime laws to LGBT people and opposed "don't ask, don't tell". 

The 2012 platform included support for same-sex marriage and for the repeal of DOMA.

On May 9, 2012, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to say he supports same-sex marriage. Previously, he had opposed restrictions on same-sex marriage such as the Defense of Marriage Act, which he promised to repeal, 

California's Prop 8, and a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage (which Obama opposed saying that "decisions about marriage should be left to the states as they always have been"), but also stated that he personally believed marriage to be between a man and a woman and that he favored civil unions that would "give same-sex couples equal legal rights and privileges as married couples". 

Earlier, when running for the Illinois Senate in 1996 he said, "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages". 

​Other Democrats now supporting the legalization of same-sex marriages include:
President Joe Biden has been in favor of same-sex marriage since 2012, when he became the highest-ranking government official to support it. In 2022, Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act; the law repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, for which Biden had voted during his Senate tenure.

Status of Puerto Rico and D.C.:

The 2016 Democratic Party platform declares, regarding the status of Puerto Rico:
  • "We are committed to addressing the extraordinary challenges faced by our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico. Many stem from the fundamental question of Puerto Rico's political status.
  • Democrats believe that the people of Puerto Rico should determine their ultimate political status from permanent options that do not conflict with the Constitution, laws, and policies of the United States. Democrats are committed to promoting economic opportunity and good-paying jobs for the hardworking people of Puerto Rico.
  • We also believe that Puerto Ricans must be treated equally by Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs that benefit families. Puerto Ricans should be able to vote for the people who make their laws, just as they should be treated equally.
  • All American citizens, no matter where they reside, should have the right to vote for the president of the United States. Finally, we believe that federal officials must respect Puerto Rico's local self-government as laws are implemented and Puerto Rico's budget and debt are restructured so that it can get on a path towards stability and prosperity".
  • Also, it declares that regarding the status of the District of Columbia:
    • "Restoring our democracy also means finally passing statehood for the District of Columbia, so that the American citizens who reside in the nation's capital have full and equal congressional rights as well as the right to have the laws and budget of their local government respected without Congressional interference."

Legal issues:

Gun control

With a stated goal of reducing crime and homicide, the Democratic Party has introduced various gun control measures, most notably the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Brady Bill of 1993 and Crime Control Act of 1994.

In its national platform for 2008, the only statement explicitly favoring gun control was a plan calling for renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

In 2022, Democratic president Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which among other things expanded background checks and provided incentives for states to pass red flag laws.

According to a 2021 Pew Research Center poll, 20% of Democrats personally owned a gun, compared to 30% of the general public and 44% of Republicans.

Death penalty:

The Democratic Party currently opposes the death penalty. Although most Democrats in Congress have never seriously moved to overturn the rarely used federal death penalty, both Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich have introduced such bills with little success.

Democrats have led efforts to overturn state death penalty laws, particularly in New Jersey and in New Mexico. They have also sought to prevent the reinstatement of the death penalty in those states which prohibit it, including Massachusetts, New York, and Delaware.

During the Clinton administration, Democrats led the expansion of the federal death penalty. These efforts resulted in the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, signed into law by President Clinton, which heavily limited appeals in death penalty cases.

In 1972, the Democratic Party platform called for the abolition of capital punishment. In 1992, 1993 and 1995, Democratic Texas Congressman Henry González unsuccessfully introduced the Death Penalty Abolition Amendment which prohibited the use of capital punishment in the United States. Democratic Missouri Congressman William Lacy Clay Sr. cosponsored the amendment in 1993.

During his Illinois Senate career, former President Barack Obama successfully introduced legislation intended to reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions in capital cases, requiring videotaping of confessions.

When campaigning for the presidency, Obama stated that he supports the limited use of the death penalty, including for people who have been convicted of raping a minor under the age of 12, having opposed the Supreme Court's ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana that the death penalty was unconstitutional in which the victim of a crime was not killed. 

Obama has stated that he thinks the "death penalty does little to deter crime" and that it is used too frequently and too inconsistently.

In June 2016, the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee unanimously adopted an amendment to abolish the death penalty.

Torture:

Many Democrats are opposed to the use of torture against individuals apprehended and held prisoner by the United States military, and hold that categorizing such prisoners as unlawful combatants does not release the United States from its obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

Democrats contend that torture is inhumane, damages the United States' moral standing in the world, and produces questionable results. Democrats are largely against waterboarding.
Torture became a divisive issue in the party after Barack Obama was elected president.

Patriot Act:

Many Democrats are opposed to the Patriot Act, but when the law was passed most Democrats were supportive of it and all but two Democrats in the Senate voted for the original Patriot Act legislation in 2001. The lone nay vote was from Russ Feingold of Wisconsin as Mary Landrieu of Louisiana did not vote. 

In the House, the Democrats voted for the Act by 145 yea and 62 nay. Democrats were split on the renewal in 2006. In the Senate, Democrats voted 34 for the 2006 renewal and nine against. In the House, 66 Democrats voted for the renewal and 124 against.

Privacy:

The Democratic Party believes that individuals should have a right to privacy. For example, many Democrats have opposed the NSA warrantless surveillance of American citizens.

Some Democratic officeholders have championed consumer protection laws that limit the sharing of consumer data between corporations.

Democrats have opposed sodomy laws since the 1972 platform which stated that "Americans should be free to make their own choice of life-styles and private habits without being subject to discrimination or prosecution", and believe that government should not regulate consensual noncommercial sexual conduct among adults as a matter of personal privacy.

Foreign policy issues:

The foreign policy of the voters of the two major parties has largely overlapped since the 1990s. A Gallup poll in early 2013 showed broad agreement on the top issues, albeit with some divergence regarding human rights and international cooperation through agencies such as the United Nations.

In June 2014, the Quinnipiac Poll asked Americans which foreign policy they preferred:
  • A) The United States is doing too much in other countries around the world, and it is time to do less around the world and focus more on our own problems here at home.
  • B) The United States must continue to push forward to promote democracy and freedom in other countries worldwide because these efforts make our own country more secure.

Democrats chose A over B by 65% to 32%; Republicans chose A over B by 56% to 39%; and independents chose A over B by 67% to 29%.

Iran sanctions
See also: United States sanctions against Iran

The Democratic Party has been critical of the Iran's nuclear weapon program and supported economic sanctions against the Iranian government.

In 2013, the Democratic-led administration worked to reach a diplomatic agreement with the government of Iran to halt the Iranian nuclear weapon program in exchange for international economic sanction relief. As of 2014, negotiations had been successful and the party called for more cooperation with Iran in the future. 

In 2015, the Obama administration agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which provides sanction relief in exchange for international oversight of the Iranian nuclear program.

In February 2019, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution calling on the United States to re-enter the JCPOA, which President Trump withdrew from in 2018.

Invasion of Afghanistan
See also:
Democrats in the House of Representatives and in the Senate near-unanimously voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists against "those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States" in Afghanistan in 2001, supporting the NATO coalition invasion of the nation.

Most elected Democrats continued to support the Afghanistan conflict for its duration, with some, such as a Democratic National Committee spokesperson, voicing concerns that the Iraq War shifted too many resources away from the presence in Afghanistan.

During the 2008 Presidential Election, then-candidate Barack Obama called for a "surge" of troops into Afghanistan. After winning the presidency, Obama followed through, sending a "surge" force of additional troops to Afghanistan. Troop levels were 94,000 in December 2011 and kept falling, with a target of 68,000 by fall 2012.

Support for the war among the American people diminished over time. Many Democrats changed their opinion over the course of the war, coming to oppose continuation of the conflict. 

In July 2008, Gallup found that 41% of Democrats called the invasion a "mistake" while a 55% majority disagreed. A CNN survey in August 2009 stated that a majority of Democrats opposed the war.

CNN polling director Keating Holland said: "Nearly two thirds of Republicans support the war in Afghanistan. Three quarters of Democrats oppose the war".

During the 2020 Presidential Election, then-candidate Joe Biden promised to "end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East." Biden went on to win the election, and in April 2021, he announced he would withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by September 11 of that year. The last troops left in August, bringing America's 20-year-long military campaign in the country to a close. 

According to a 2023 AP-NORC poll, a majority of Democrats believed that the War in Afghanistan wasn't worth it.

Israel:
See also: Israel–United States relations
​
​Democrats have historically been a stronger supporter of Israel than Republicans. Today, the party continues to maintain its commitment for Zionism. During the 1940s, the party advocated for the cause of an independent Jewish state over the objections of many conservatives in the Old Right, who strongly opposed it. 

In 1948, Democratic President Harry Truman became the first world leader to recognize an independent state of Israel. The 2020 Democratic Party platform acknowledges a "commitment to Israel's security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad" and that "we oppose any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement". 

During the 2023 Israel-Hamas War, the party requested a large-scale military aid package to Israel. A 2023 Fox News poll found that an overwhelming majority of Democrats take the side of Israel "more" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


Demographics:
Main article: Demographics of the Democratic Party (United States)

​Beginning with the time of the New Deal, the party's traditional coalition consisted of: 
The victory of Republican Donald Trump in 2016 brought about a realignment in which many working-class voters voted Republican. 

In the 2020 presidential election, Democrats won the support of:
  • African American, Hispanic, and Asian voters;
  • young voters;
  • women;
  • urban voters;
  • voters with college degrees;
  • and voters with no religious affiliation.

As of 2023, every Democratic president, Democratic vice president, and Democratic presidential nominee has been a Christian. According to the Pew Research Center, 78.4% of Democrats in the 116th United States Congress were Christian.

A critical component of the Party coalition has been organized labor. Labor unions supply a great deal of the money, grass roots political organization, and voters for the party. Democrats are far more likely to be represented by unions than Republican voters are. 

Younger Americans, including millennials and Generation Z, tend to vote mostly for Democratic candidates in recent years. According to exit polling, LGBT Americans typically vote Democratic in national elections.

Support for the civil rights movement in the 1960s by Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson helped increase the Democrats' support within the African American community. African Americans have consistently voted between 85% and 95% Democratic from the 1960s to the 2000s, making African Americans one of the largest of the party's constituencies. 

Geographically, the party is strongest in the Northeastern United States, the Great Lakes region, parts of the Southwestern United States, and the West Coast. The party is also very strong in major cities, regardless of region.


Factions:
Further information: Factions in the Democratic Party (United States)

Upon foundation, the Democratic Party supported agrarianism and the Jacksonian democracy movement of President Andrew Jackson, representing farmers and rural interests and traditional Jeffersonian democrats. 

Since the 1890s, especially in northern states, the party began to favor more liberal positions (the term "liberal" in this sense describes modern liberalism, rather than classical liberalism or economic liberalism). In recent exit polls, the Democratic Party has had broad appeal across most socioeconomic and ethnic demographics. 

Historically, the party has represented farmers, laborers, and religious and ethnic minorities as it has opposed unregulated business and finance and favored progressive income taxes. In foreign policy, internationalism (including interventionism) was a dominant theme from 1913 to the mid-1960s.

In the 1930s, the party began advocating social programs targeted at the poor. The party had a fiscally conservative, pro-business wing, typified by Grover Cleveland and Al Smith, and a Southern conservative wing that shrank after President Lyndon B. Johnson supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The major influences for liberalism were labor unions (which peaked in the 1936–1952 era) and African Americans. Environmentalism has been a major component since the 1970s. The 21st century Democratic Party is predominantly a coalition of centrists, liberals, and progressives, with significant overlap between the three groups. 

Political scientists characterize the Democratic Party as less ideologically cohesive than the Republican Party due to the broader diversity of coalitions that compose the Democratic Party.

Centrists:
See also: New Democrats (United States)

Centrist Democrats, or New Democrats, are an ideologically centrist faction within the Democratic Party that emerged after the victory of Republican George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election as United States populace turned much further to the political right.

They is an economically liberal and "Third Way" faction that dominated the party for around 20 years, until the start of Obama's presidency. They are represented by organizations such as the New Democrat Network and the New Democrat Coalition. The New Democrat Coalition is a pro-growth and fiscally moderate congressional coalition.

One of the most influential centrist groups was the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a nonprofit organization that advocated centrist positions for the party. The DLC hailed President Bill Clinton as proof of the viability of "Third Way" politicians and a DLC success story. The DLC disbanded in 2011 and much of the former DLC is now represented in the think tank Third Way. Some Democratic elected officials have self-declared as being centrists, including:
The New Democrat Network supports socially liberal and fiscally moderate Democratic politicians and is associated with the congressional New Democrat Coalition in the House. Annie Kuster is the chair of the coalition, and former senator and President Barack Obama was self-described as a New Democrat.

Conservatives:
See also: Conservative Democrat and Southern Democrats

​A conservative Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party with conservative political views, or with views relatively conservative with respect to those of the national party.

While such members of the Democratic Party can be found throughout the nation, actual elected officials are disproportionately found within rural regions of the United States, more commonly in the South and the West.

Historically, Southern Democrats were generally much more ideologically conservative than conservative Democrats are now.

Many conservative Southern Democrats defected to the Republican Party, beginning with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the general leftward shift of the party. Exanples of this include: 
The influx of conservative Democrats into the Republican Party is often cited as a reason for the Republican Party's shift further to the right during the late 20th century as well as the shift of its base from the Northeast and Midwest to the South. 

Studies show that White Southerners shifted to the Republican Party due to white backlash and social conservatism.

Split-ticket voting was common among conservative Southern Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s. These voters supported conservative Democrats for local and statewide office while simultaneously voting for Republican presidential candidates. They were sometimes humorously called "Yellow dog Democrats", or "boll weevils" and "Dixiecrats".

In the House after the 1994 Republican Revolution, the Blue Dog Coalition was formed, a caucus of conservatives and centrists willing to broker compromises with the Republican leadership who acted as a unified voting bloc in the past, giving its members some ability to change legislation, depending on their numbers in Congress.

Until the 2010s, the Democratic Party had a conservative element, mostly from the South and Border regions. Their numbers declined sharply as the Republican Party built up its Southern base.

Liberals:
See also: Modern liberalism in the United States

​Social liberals (modern liberals) are a large portion of the Democratic base. According to 2018 exit polls, liberals constituted 27% of the electorate, and 91% of American liberals favored the candidate of the Democratic Party. 

White-collar college-educated professionals were mostly Republican until the 1950s, but they now compose a vital component of the Democratic Party.

A large majority of liberals favor moving toward universal health care, with many supporting an eventual gradual transition to a single-payer system in particular. A majority also favor:
Immigration and cultural diversity are deemed positive as liberals favor cultural pluralism, a system in which immigrants retain their native culture in addition to adopting their new culture.

Most liberals oppose increased military spending and the mixing of church and state. They tend to be divided on free trade agreements such as the USMCA and PNTR with China, with some seeing them as more favorable to corporations than workers. 

The three most significant labor groupings in the Democratic coalition today are the AFL–CIO and Change to Win labor federations as well as the National Education Association, a large, unaffiliated teachers' union.

Important issues for labor unions include:
This ideological group differs from the traditional organized labor base. According to the Pew Research Center, a plurality of 41% resided in mass affluent households and 49% were college graduates, the highest figure of any typographical group. It was also the fastest growing typological group since the late 1990s to the present. 

Liberals include most of academia and large portions of the professional class.

Progressives:

Progressives are the most left-leaning faction in the party and support strong business regulations, social programs, and workers' rights. 

Many progressive Democrats are descendants of the New Left of Democratic presidential candidate Senator George McGovern of South Dakota whereas others were involved in the 2016 presidential candidacy of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Progressives are often considered to have ideas similar to social democracy due to heavy inspiration from the Nordic Model, believing in federal top marginal income taxes ranging from 52% to 70%, rent control, increased collective bargaining power, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, as well as free tuition and Universal Healthcare (typically Medicare for All).

In 2014, progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren set out "Eleven Commandments of Progressivism":
  1. tougher regulation on corporations;
  2. affordable education;
  3. scientific investment and environmentalism; 
  4. net neutrality;
  5. increased wages;
  6. equal pay for women;
  7. collective bargaining rights;
  8. defending social programs; 
  9. same-sex marriage; 
  10. immigration reform;
  11. and unabridged access to reproductive healthcare.

In addition, progressives strongly oppose political corruption and seek to advance electoral reforms such as campaign finance rules and voting rights protections in the For the People Act.

Recently, many progressives have made combating economic inequality their top priority. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is a caucus of progressive Democrats chaired by Pramila Jayapal of Washington. 

Its members have included: ​
The above were members of the caucus when in the House of Representatives. While no Democratic senators currently belong to the CPC, independent Senator Bernie Sanders is a member.


Democratic presidents:
See also: List of presidents of the United States and Republican Party (United States) § Republican presidents

As of 2021, there have been a total of 16 Democratic presidents (Beleow: click anywhere on the image to be taken to the original chart and its links):
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Democratic Party:







Political Ideologies in the United StatesPictured: (L) “Black Lives Matter” Movement; (R) Ku Klux Klan Protest
Political ideologies in the United States refers to the various ideologies and ideological demographics in the United States. Citizens in the U.S. generally classify themselves as adherent to positions along the political spectrum as either liberal, progressive, moderate, or conservative. 

Modern American liberalism aims at the preservation and extension of human, social and civil rights as well as the government guaranteed provision of positive rights. It combines social progressivism and to some extent, ordoliberalism and is highly similar to European social liberalism.

American conservatism commonly refers to a combination of economic liberalism and libertarianism, and to an extent, social conservatism. It aims at protecting the concepts of small government and individual liberty, while promoting traditional values on some social issues.

The ideological position a person or party takes may be explained in terms of social and economic policy. The ideological positions a person assumes on social and economic policy issues may differ in their position on the political spectrum. Milton Friedman, for example, was left-of-center on social issues but right-of-center on fiscal matters and thus is often identified as libertarian. Several ideological demographics may be identified in addition to or as subgroups of liberals and conservatives with nearly every possible ideology being found in the general population.

In the United States, the major parties overlap heavily in terms of ideology, with the Democrats more to the left and the Republicans more to the right. Social scientists Theodore Caplow et al. argue, "the Democratic party, nationally, moved from left-center toward the center in the 1940s and 1950s, then moved further toward the right-center in the 1970s and 1980s." 

Small parties such as the Libertarian Party play a minor role in American politics.

The size of ideological groups varies slightly depending on the poll. Gallup/USA Today polling in June 2010 revealed that 42% of those surveyed identify as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. 

In another polling in June 2010, 40% of American voters identify themselves as conservatives, 36% as moderates and 22% as liberals, with a strong majority of both liberals and conservatives describing themselves as closer to the center than to the extremes. As of 2013, self-identified conservatives stand at 38%, moderates at 34%, and liberals at 23%.

In a 2005 study, the Pew Research Center identified nine typological groups. Three groups were identified as part of each, "the left," "the middle," and "the right." In this categorization system, "the right" roughly represents the Republican base, those on "the left" the Democratic base and those in "the middle" independents.

Within the left are the largely secular and anti-war "Liberals", the socially conservative but economically left "Conservative Democrats", and the economically "Disadvantaged Democrats" who favor extended government assistance to the needy. In "the middle" are the optimistic and upwardly mobile "Upbeats", the discouraged and mistrusting "Disaffecteds," and the disenfranchised "Bystanders."

The right compromises the highly pro-business "Enterprisers," the highly religious "Social Conservatives" (also known as the Christian right), and the "Pro-Government Conservatives" who are largely conservative on social issues but support government intervention to better their economic disposition.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Political Ideologies in the United States:






​
​The Republican Party of the United States, including Factions within the Republican Party Pictured below: From Left: Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump and Mike Johnson.
Chuck Todd -- The party divided will not stand: Analysis: From Congress down to the state level, the institutional Republican Party is riven with an overwhelming number of deep divides.
The Republican Party, also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s.

The party was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act, an act which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories of Kansas and Nebraska. 

It supported classical liberalism and economic reform while opposing the expansion of slavery into the free territories. The party initially had a very limited presence in the South, but was successful in the North.

By 1858, it had enlisted most former Whigs and former Free Soilers to form majorities in nearly every northern state. White Southerners became alarmed at the threat to slavery. With the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, the deep Southern states seceded from the United States.

Under the leadership of Lincoln and a Republican Congress, the Republican Party led the fight to defeat the Confederate States in the American Civil War, preserving the Union and abolishing slavery.

Afterward, the party largely dominated the national political scene until the Great Depression in the 1930s, when it lost its congressional majorities and the Democrats' New Deal programs proved popular. Dwight D. Eisenhower presided over a period of increased economic prosperity after World War II. Richard Nixon carried 49 states in 1972 with his silent majority.

The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan realigned national politics, bringing together advocates of free-market economics, social conservatives, and Cold War foreign policy hawks under the Republican banner. 

Since 2008, Republicans have faced increased factionalism (see also next section) within the party's ranks. As of 2024, Trumpists are the dominant faction within the GOP.

In the 21st century, the party receives its strongest support from:
On social issues, it advocates for restricting the legality of abortion, prohibiting recreational drug use, loosening gun restrictions, opposing the transgender rights movement, and overturning the legality of same-sex marriage.

On economic issues, the Republican Party supports:  while opposing: 
In foreign policy the party's views range from those who promote more hawkish neoconservative stances, to those who are isolationists and promote non-interventionism.

Click on any of the following blue hypelinks for more about the Republican Party ___________________________________________________________________________

Factions in the Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party in the United States includes several factions, or wings. During the 19th century, Republican factions included the Half-Breeds, who supported civil service reform; the Radical Republicans, who advocated the immediate and total abolition of slavery, and later advocated civil rights for freed slaves during the Reconstruction era; and the Stalwarts, who supported machine politics.

In the 20th century, Republican factions included:
In the 21st century, Republican factions include:
  1. conservatives (represented in Congress by the Republican Study Committee and the Freedom Caucus),
  2. moderates (represented in Congress by the Republican Governance Group 
  3. and by the Republican members of the Problem Solvers Caucus),
  4. and libertarians (represented in Congress by the Republican Liberty Caucus).
  5. During and after the presidency of Donald Trump, Trumpist and anti-Trumpist factions arose within the Republican Party.

21st century factions:

​During the presidency of Barack Obama, the Republican Party experienced internal conflict between its governing class (known as the Republican establishment) and the anti-establishment, small-government Tea Party movement. 

In 2012, The New York Times identified six wings of the Republican Party:
  1. Main Street Voters,
  2. Tea Party Voters,
  3. Christian Conservatives,
  4. Libertarians,
  5. The Disaffected,
  6. and The Endangered Or Vanished. 

In 2014, the Pew Research Center split Republican-leaning voters into three groups:
  1. Steadfast Conservatives,
  2. Business Conservatives,
  3. and Young Outsiders.

In 2019, during the presidency of Donald Trump, Perry Bacon Jr. of FiveThirtyEight.com asserted that there were five groups of Republicans:
  1. Trumpists,
  2. Pro-Trumpers,
  3. Trump-Skeptical Conservatives,
  4. Trump-Skeptical Moderates,
  5. and Anti-Trumpers.

In February 2021, following Trump's 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Philip Bump of The Washington Post posited that the Republican Party in the U.S. House of Representatives consisted of three factions:
Also in February 2021, Carl Leubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News asserted that there were three groups of Republicans:
  1. Never Trumpers (including Bill Kristol, Sen. Mitt Romney, and governors Charlie Baker and Larry Hogan),
  2. Sometimes Trumpers (including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley),
  3. and Always Trumpers (including Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley).

In March 2021, one survey indicated that five factions of Republican voters had emerged following Trump's presidency:
  1. Never Trump,
  2. Post-Trump G.O.P. (voters who liked Trump but did not want him to run for president again),
  3. Trump Boosters (voters who approved of Trump, but identified more closely with the Republican Party than with Trump),
  4. Die-hard Trumpers,
  5. and Infowars G.O.P. (voters who subscribe to conspiracy theories). 

In November 2021, Pew Research Center identified four Republican-aligned groups of Americans:
  1. Faith and Flag Conservatives,
  2. Committed Conservatives,
  3. the Populist Right,
  4. and the Ambivalent Right.

As of 2023, congressional Republicans refer to the various House Republican factions as the Five Families. Derived from The Godfather, the term refers to Mafia crime families. The Five Families consist of
  1. the right-wing House Freedom Caucus,
  2. the conservative Republican Study Committee,
  3. the business-minded Main Street Caucus,
  4. the mainstream Republican Governance Group,
  5. and the Republican members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

The House Republican factions overlap with one another.

Conservatives:
Main article: Conservatism in the United States
See also: 
​​The conservative wing grew out of the 1950s and 1960s, with its initial leaders being Senator Robert A. Taft, Russell Kirk, and William F. Buckley Jr. Its central tenets include the promotion of individual liberty and free-market economics and opposition to labor unions, high taxes, and government regulation.

In economic policy, conservatives call for a large reduction in government spending, less regulation of the economy, and privatization or changes to Social Security. Supporters of supply-side economics and neoliberalism predominate, but there are fiscal conservatives, deficit hawks and protectionists within the party as well.

Before 1930, the Northeastern pro-manufacturing faction of the GOP was strongly committed to high tariffs, a political stance that returned to popularity in many conservative circles during the Trump presidency. 

The conservative wing typically supports socially conservative positions, such as supporting gun rights and restrictions on abortion, though there is a wide range of views on such issues within the party.

Conservatives generally oppose affirmative action, support increased military spending, and are opposed to gun control. On the issue of school vouchers, conservative Republicans split between supporters who believe that "big government education" is a failure and opponents who fear greater government control over private and church schools.

Parts of the conservative wing have been criticized for being anti-environmentalist and promoting climate change denial in opposition to the general scientific consensus, making them unique even among other worldwide conservative parties.
​
Long-term shifts in conservative thinking following the election of Trump have been described as a "new fusionism" of traditional conservative ideology and right-wing populist themes. These have resulted in shifts towards greater support of national conservatism, protectionism, cultural conservatism, a more realist foreign policy, a repudiation of neoconservatism, reduced efforts to roll back entitlement programs, and a disdain for traditional checks and balances.

Christian right:
Main article: Christian right
See also: 
:​​The Christian right is a conservative Christian political faction characterized by strong support of socially conservative and Christian nationalist policies. Christian conservatives seek to use the teachings of Christianity to influence law and public policy.

In the United States, the Christian right is an informal coalition formed around a core of evangelical Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics, as well as a large number of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

The movement has its roots in American politics going back as far as the 1940s and has been especially influential since the 1970s. In the late 20th century, the Christian right became strongly connected to the Republican Party 

Republican politicians associated with the Christian right in the 21st century include former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Senator Rick Santorum. 

Many within the Christian right have also identified as social conservatives, which sociologist Harry F. Dahms has described as Christian doctrinal conservatives (anti-abortion, anti-LGBT rights) and gun-rights conservatives (pro-NRA) as the two domains of ideology within social conservatism. 

Christian nationalists generally seek to declare the U.S. a Christian nation, enforce Christian values, and overturn the separation of church and state.

Libertarians:
Main article: Libertarian Republican

​See also: 
​Libertarians make up a relatively small faction of the Republican Party. In the 1950s and 60s, fusionism—the combination of traditionalist and social conservatism with political and economic right-libertarianism—was essential to the movement's growth. 

This philosophy is most closely associated with Frank Meyer. Barry Goldwater also had a substantial impact on the conservative-libertarian movement of the 1960s.

Libertarian conservatives in the 21st century favor cutting taxes and regulations, repealing the Affordable Care Act, and protecting gun rights. On social issues, they favor privacy, oppose the USA Patriot Act, and oppose the War on Drugs. On foreign policy, libertarian conservatives favor non-interventionism.

The Republican Liberty Caucus, which describes itself as "the oldest continuously operating organization in the Liberty Republican movement with state charters nationwide", was founded in 1991. The House Liberty Caucus is a congressional caucus formed by former Representative Justin Amash, a former Republican of Michigan who is now a member of the Libertarian Party.

Prominent libertarian conservatives within the Republican Party include:
The libertarian conservative wing of the party had significant cross-over with the Tea Party movement.

Neoconservatives:
Main article: Neoconservatism
See also: 
​Neoconservatives promote an interventionist foreign policy to promote democracy or American interests abroad. Many neoconservatives were in earlier days identified as liberals or were affiliated with the Democrats. Neoconservatives have been credited with importing into the Republican Party a more active international policy.

Neoconservatives are amenable to unilateral military action when they believe it serves a morally valid purpose (such as the spread of democracy). Many of its adherents became politically famous during the Republican presidential administrations of the late 20th century, and neoconservatism peaked in influence during the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Prominent neoconservatives in the Bush-Cheney administration included: 
During and after Donald Trump's presidency, neoconservatism has declined and non-interventionism and isolationism has grown among elected federal Republican officeholders.

Republican members of the 118th Congress with neoconservative stances include Senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham


Moderates:
See also:  ​
Moderate Republicans tend to be conservative-to-moderate on fiscal issues and moderate-to-liberal on social issues, and usually represent swing states or blue states.

While they sometimes share the economic views of other Republicans (i.e. lower taxes, deregulation, and welfare reform), moderate Republicans differ in that some are also for: 
In the 21st century, some former Republican moderates have switched to the Democratic Party.

Prominent 21st century moderate Republicans include Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins,  Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Phil Scott of Vermont Another moderate Republican is incumbent governor of Nevada Joe Lombardo, who was previously the Sheriff of Clark County.

One of the most high-ranking moderate Republicans in recent history was Colin Powell as Secretary of State in the first term of the George W. Bush administration (Powell left the Republican Party in January 2021 following the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, and had endorsed every Democrat for president in the general election since 2008).

The Republican Governance Group is a caucus of moderate Republicans within the House of Representatives.

Ideologically, such Republicans resemble the conservative liberals of Europe.


Trumpists:
Main article: Trumpism
See also: 
As of 2023, the dominant faction in the Republican Party consists of Trumpism – a movement associated with the political base of former president Donald Trump. It has been described as consisting of a range of right-wing ideologies including but not limited to right-wing populism, national conservatism, neo-nationalism, and Trumpism.

They have been described as the American political variant of the far-right. Despite producing no manifesto, the Trumpist faction supports cuts to spending 

In international relations, Trumpists support U.S. aid to Israel but not to Ukraine, are generally supportive towards Russia, and favor an isolationist "America First" foreign policy agenda. They generally reject compromise within the party and with the Democrats, and are willing to oust fellow Republican office holders they deem to be too moderate 

Compared to other Republicans, the Trumpist faction is more likely to oppose the following:
The Republican Party's populist and far-right movements emerged in occurrence with a global increase in populist movements in the 2010s and 2020's, coupled with entrenchment and increased partisanship within the party since 2010, fueled by the rise of the Tea Party movement which has also been described as far-right. 

The election of Trump in 2016 split the party into pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions.

When conservative columnist George Will advised voters of all ideologies to vote for Democratic candidates in the Senate and House elections of November 2018, political writer Dan McLaughlin at the National Review responded that doing so would make the Trumpist faction even more powerful within the Republican party. 

Anticipating Trump's likely defeat in the U.S. presidential election held on November 3, 2020, Peter Feaver wrote in Foreign Policy magazine: "With victory having been so close, the Trumpist faction in the party will be empowered and in no mood to compromise or reform. 

A poll conducted in February 2021 indicated that a plurality of Republicans (46%-27%) would leave the Republican Party to join a new party if Trump chose to create it.
​
Nick Beauchamp, assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University, says he sees the country as divided into four parties, with two factions representing each of the Democratic and Republican parties: "For the GOP, there's the Trump faction—which is the larger group—and the non-Trump faction".

Lilliana Mason, associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, states that Donald Trump solidified the trend among Southern white conservative Democrats since the 1960s of leaving the Democratic Party and joining the Republican Party:

"Trump basically worked as a lightning rod to finalize that process of creating the Republican Party as a single entity for defending the high status of white, Christian, rural Americans. It's not a huge percentage of Americans that holds these beliefs, and it's not even the entire Republican Party; it's just about half of it. But the party itself is controlled by this intolerant, very strongly pro-Trump faction."

Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, describes it as an authoritarian, antidemocratic movement that has successfully weaponized cultural issues, and that cultivates a narrative placing white people, Christians, and men at the top of a status hierarchy as its response to the so-called "Great Replacement" theory, a claim that minorities, immigrants, and women, enabled by Democrats, Jews, and elites, are displacing white people, Christians, and men from their rightful positions in American society.

In 2022, a faction emerged of Trump loyalists within the Freedom Caucus known as the 'MAGA Squad', including: 
While "not a formal caucus", it was described as more radical than the mainstream Freedom Caucus, and supportive of primary challenges against incumbent Republicans during the 2022 United States House of Representatives elections.

In a speech he gave on November 2, 2022, at Washington's Union Station near the U.S. Capitol, President Biden asserted that "the pro-Trump faction" of the Republican Party is trying to undermine the U.S. electoral system and suppress voting rights.


Anti-Trump faction:
Main article: Never Trump movement
​A divide has formed in the party between those who remain loyal to Donald Trump and those who oppose him. A recent survey concluded that the Republican Party was divided between pro-Trump (the "Trump Boosters," "Die-hard Trumpers," and "Infowars G.O.P." wings) and anti-Trump factions (the "Never Trump" and "Post-Trump G.O.P." wings). 

Senator John McCain was an early leading critic of Trumpism within the Republican Party, refusing to support the then-Republican presidential nominee in the 2016 presidential election.

Several critics of the Trump faction have faced various forms of retaliation:

Representative Liz Cheney was removed from her position as Republican conference chair in the House of Representatives, which was widely perceived as retaliation for her criticism of Trump; in 2022, she was defeated by a pro-Trump primary challenger. 

Representative Adam Kinzinger decided to retire at the end of his term, while Murkowski faced a pro-Trump primary challenger in 2022 against Kelly Tshibaka whom she defeated. 

A primary challenge to Romney had been suggested by Jason Chaffetz, who has criticized his opponents within the Republican Party as "Trump haters".

Representative Anthony Gonzalez, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol riot, called him "a cancer" while announcing his retirement. 

Former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie, who was running against Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries, called him "a lonely, self-consumed, self-serving, mirror hog" in his presidential announcement.

Indiana senator Todd Young is one of few elected Republican senators that has pledged to not support Trump's 2024 campaign.

Organizations associated with this faction include: 

Political caucuses​
​Historical factions:
Half-Breeds:
Main article: Half-Breeds (politics)
Further information: Mugwumps

The Half-Breeds were a reformist faction of the 1870s and 1880s. The name, which originated with rivals claiming they were only "half" Republicans, came to encompass a wide array of figures who did not all get along with each other. Generally speaking, politicians labeled Half-Breeds were moderates or progressives who opposed the machine politics of the Stalwarts and advanced civil service reforms.

Progressive Republicans:
See also: Progressive Era

Historically, the Republican Party included a progressive wing that advocated using government to improve the problems of modern society. 

Theodore Roosevelt, an early leader of the progressive movement, advanced a "Square Deal" domestic program as president (1901–09) that was built on the goals of controlling corporations, protecting consumers, and conserving natural resources. 

After splitting with his successor, William Howard Taft, in the aftermath of the Pinchot–Ballinger controversy, Roosevelt sought to block Taft's re-election, first by challenging him for the 1912 Republican presidential nomination, and then when that failed, by entering the 1912 presidential contest as a third party candidate, running on the Progressive ticket.

He succeeded in depriving Taft of a second term, but came in second behind Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

After Roosevelt's 1912 defeat, the progressive wing of the party went into decline.

Progressive Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives held a "last stand" protest in December 1923, at the start of the 68th Congress, when they refused to support the Republican Conference nominee for Speaker of the House, Frederick H. Gillett, voting instead for two other candidates.

After eight ballots spanning two days, they agreed to support Gillett in exchange for a seat on the House Rules Committee and pledges that subsequent rules changes would be considered.

On the ninth ballot, Gillett received 215 votes, a majority of the 414 votes cast, to win the election.

In addition to Theodore Roosevelt, leading early progressive Republicans included: 
Radical Republicans:
Main article: Radical Republicans
Further information: Butlerism

The Radical Republicans were a major factor of the party from its inception in 1854 until the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877. The Radicals strongly opposed slavery, were hard-line abolitionists, and later advocated equal rights for the freedmen and women. They were often at odds with the moderate and conservative factions of the party.

During the American Civil War, Radical Republicans pressed for abolition as a major war aim and they opposed the moderate Reconstruction plans of Abraham Lincoln as too lenient on the Confederates. After the war's end and Lincoln's assassination, the Radicals clashed with Andrew Johnson over Reconstruction policy.

After winning major victories in the 1866 congressional elections, the Radicals took over Reconstruction, pushing through new legislation protecting the civil rights of African Americans. John C. Frémont of Michigan, the party's first nominee for president in 1856, was a Radical Republican.

Upset with Lincoln's politics, the faction split from the Republican Party to form the short-lived Radical Democracy Party in 1864 and again nominated Frémont for president. They supported Ulysses S. Grant for president in 1868 and 1872.

As Southern Democrats retook control in the South and enthusiasm for continued Reconstruction declined in the North, their influence within the GOP waned.

Reagan coalition:
​Main article: Reagan coalition

According to historian George H. Nash, the Reagan coalition in the Republican Party, which centered around Ronald Reagan and his administration throughout all of the 1980s (continuing in the late 1980s with the George H. W. Bush administration), originally consisted of five factions: '
  1. the libertarians,
  2. the traditionalists,
  3. the anti-communists,
  4. the neoconservatives,
  5. and the religious right ​(which consisted of Protestants, Catholics, and some Jewish Republicans).

Rockefeller Republicans:
Main article: Rockefeller Republican

Moderate or liberal Republicans in the 20th century, particularly those from the Northeast and West Coast, were referred to as "The Eastern Establishment" or "Rockefeller Republicans", after Nelson Rockefeller.

With their power decreasing in the final decades of the 20th century, many Rockefeller-style Republicans were replaced by conservative and moderate Democrats, such as those from the Blue Dog or New Democrat coalitions.

Writer and academic Michael Lind contended that by the mid-1990s, the liberalism of Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Third Way movement were in many ways to the right of Dwight Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and John Lindsay, the Republican mayor of New York City in the late 1960s.

Stalwarts:
Main article: Stalwarts (politics)
Further information: Blaine faction

The Stalwarts were a traditionalist faction that existed from the 1860s through the 1880s. They represented "traditional" Republicans who favored machine politics and opposed the civil service reforms of Rutherford B. Hayes and the more progressive Half-Breeds.

They declined following the elections of Hayes and James A. Garfield. After Garfield's assassination by Charles J. Guiteau, his Stalwart Vice President Chester A. Arthur assumed the presidency. However, rather than pursuing Stalwart goals he took up the reformist cause, which curbed the faction's influence.

Birchers:
Main article: John Birch Society
Further information: Far-right politics

Members of the John Birch Society, known as Birchers, were an influential faction from the 1960s to the 1980s, associated with the radical right, anti-communism, and ultraconservatism 


The John Birch Society was founded in 1958 by businessman Robert W. Welch Jr., and is controversial for its promotion of conspiracy theories.

Tea Party movement:
Main article: Tea Party movement
See also: List of politicians affiliated with the Tea Party movement

​The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2009 following the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. 

Members of the movement have called for lower taxes, and for a reduction of the national debt of the United States and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending. 

The movement supports small-government principles and opposes government-sponsored universal healthcare. It has been described as a popular constitutional movement.

On matters of foreign policy, the movement largely supports avoiding being drawn into unnecessary conflicts and opposes "liberal internationalism". Its name refers to the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, a watershed event in the launch of the American Revolution. 

By 2016, Politico said that the modern Tea Party movement was "pretty much dead now"; however, the article noted that it seemed to die in part because some of its ideas had been "co-opted" by the mainstream Republican Party.

Politicians associated with the Tea Party include:
Although there has never been any one clear founder or leader of the movement, Palin scored highest in a 2010 Washington Post poll asking Tea Party organizers "which national figure best represents your groups?". 

Ron Paul was described in a 2011 Atlantic article as its "intellectual godfather". Both Paul and Palin, although ideologically different in many ways, had a major influence on the emergence of the movement due to their separate 2008 presidential primary and vice presidential general election runs respectively.

Several political organizations were created in response to the movement's growing popularity in the late 2000s and into the early 2010s, including the: 
See also:







Criticism of the Foreign Policy of the United States, including Use of  Sanctions Pictured below: Ranked: Top 10 Foreign Policy Concerns of Americans
​[Your WebHost: this Wikipedia article paints a very negative picture of some American foreign policy decisions, to the point it can be further challenged by other experts.]

Criticism of United States foreign policy encompasses a wide range of opinions and views on the perceived failures and shortcomings of American foreign policy and actions.

Some Americans view the country as qualitatively different from other nations and believe it cannot be judged by the same standards as other countries; this belief is sometimes termed American exceptionalism.

This belief  wasparticularly prevalent in the 20th century. This belief became less dominant in the 21st century as the country has become more divided politically and has made highly controversial foreign policy decisions such as the Iraq War.

Nevertheless, the United States is an extremely powerful country from an economic, military, and political point-of-view, and it has sometimes disregarded international norms, rules, and laws in its foreign policy.


American exceptionalism and isolationism:
Main articles: 
Critics of American exceptionalism drew parallels with such historic doctrines as civilizing mission and white man's burden which were employed by European Great Powers to justify their colonial conquests.

In his World Policy Journal review of Bill Kauffman's 1995 book America First! Its History, Culture, and Politics, Benjamin Schwarz described America's isolationism as a "tragedy" and being rooted in Puritan thinking.


Historical foreign policy:

18th and 19th centuries:

From its founding, many of the leaders of the young American government had hoped for a non-interventionist foreign policy that promoted "commerce with all nations, alliance with none".

However, this goal quickly became increasingly difficult to pursue, with growing implicit threats and non-military pressure faced from several powers, most notably Great Britain.

The United States government was drawn into several foreign affairs from its founding and has been criticized throughout history for many of its actions, although in many of these examples it has also been praised.

Revolutionary France:

After the American Revolution, the United States immediately began juggling its foreign policy between many different views under the George Washington cabinet. Most notably, the rivalry between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton arose due to their opposing views on how the United States should align itself with Revolutionary France in its war against Great Britain in 1793. 

Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party, who viewed the French revolution as similar to the previous American revolution, believed the United States should declare war on the Kingdom of Great Britain as an ally of France, citing the 1778 Franco-American alliance which was still technically in effect.

However, Hamilton and the Federalist Party desired favorable terms with the Bank of England in the hopes of establishing enough credit with the Crown to establish an American national banking system. Hamilton's camp would take the day and influenced Washington to remain neutral during the conflict, destroying relations with France.

Under the presidency of John Adams an undeclared naval war broke out from 1798 until 1799 against France, often called the Quasi War, in part because of the soured relations between the two nations. In addition, the United States would come under the influence of British banking power and regulations, heightening tensions between Democratic-Republicans and Federalists.

Relations with Native Americans:
See also: Manifest destiny

While U.S. relations with the many Native American nations changed routinely throughout history, the U.S. has been criticized in general for its historical treatment of Native Americans. For example, the treatment of the Cherokee people in the Trail of Tears in which hundreds of Native Americans died in a forced evacuation from their homes in the southeastern area, along with massacres, displacement of lands, swindles, and breaking treaties.

After a long period of respect for sovereignty, United States policy for Native American territories shifted significantly again after the American Civil War. Previously, the pro-State Rights government believed in the legitimacy of Native American Nations' sovereignty.

After the conclusion of the Civil War, conversely, views on the sovereignty of Native American nations diminished, as the United States government vested greater powers within the federal government. Over time, the U.S. government found more and more justifications for revoking Native American lands, greatly reducing the size of sovereign native territory.

Mexican–American War:

It has been criticized for the war with Mexico in the 1840s which some  see as a theft of land.

20th century:

​Generally during the 19th century, and in early parts of the 20th century, the U.S. pursued a policy of isolationism and generally avoided entanglements with European powers.

Middle East:
Main articles: United States foreign policy in the Middle East and War on terror

While it may be the case that the Middle East is a difficult region with no easy solutions to avoiding conflict, since this volatile region is at the junction of three continents; still, many analysts think U.S. policy could have been improved substantially. The U.S. waffled; there was no vision; presidents kept changing policy. Public opinion in different regions of the world thinks that, to some extent, the 9/11 attacks were an outgrowth of substandard U.S. policy towards the region.

Korea:

Candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower centered his 1952 presidential campaign on foreign policy, criticizing President Harry S Truman for mishandling the Korean War. 

Vietnam:
​The Vietnam War has been called a decade-long mistake by many, both inside and outside the U.S.

Kosovo:
Main articles: Political status of Kosovo and Kosovo–United States relations

The U.S. supported action against the rump state known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (also known as Serbia and Montenegro) in 1999 and the secession of Kosovo from Serbia in 2008. The U.S. has continued to support its independence since then.

Critics claim this policy breaks international treaties but they have been dismissed by the U.S. These critics say the Kosovo policy has given encouragement to secessionist uprisings in Spain, Belgium, Georgia, Ukraine, China, and others. They also claim that it gives precedent for other lawful successions that would be otherwise illegal because they represent a breach of UN Security Council Resolutions and treaties guaranteeing territorial integrity.

However, the U.S. has dismissed any similarities between those secessionist movements and Kosovo as most other secessionist movements are not facing multiple civil wars involving ethnic cleansing and genocide campaigns that require international intervention. Additionally, some do not accept that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the only legitimate successor state to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) after its breakup. The SFRY was the actual party guaranteed territorial integrity under the treaties, not just Serbia and Montenegro.


​Issues:

Lack of control over foreign policy:

During the early 19th century, general Andrew Jackson exceeded his authority on numerous times and attacked American Indian tribes as well as invaded the Spanish territory of Florida without official government permission. Jackson was not reprimanded or punished for exceeding his authority.

Some accounts blame newspaper journalism called yellow journalism for whipping up virulent pro-war sentiment to help instigate the Spanish–American War. This was not the only undeclared war the U.S. has fought. There have been hundreds of "imperfect wars" fought without proper declarations in a tradition that began with President George Washington.

Some critics suggest foreign policy is manipulated by lobbies, such as the pro-Israel lobby or the Arab one, although there is disagreement about the influence of such lobbies. Nevertheless, Zbigniew Brzezinski argues for stricter anti-lobbying laws.

Financial interests and foreign policy:
Main article: Foreign policy of the United States

​Some historians, including Andrew Bacevich, suggest that U.S. foreign policy is directed by "wealthy individuals and institutions". In 1893, a decision to back a plot to overthrow the Kingdom of Hawaii by President Benjamin Harrison was clearly motivated by business interests; it was an effort to prevent a proposed tariff increase on sugar. As a result, Hawaii became a U.S. state. 

There were allegations that the Spanish–American War in 1898 was motivated mainly by business interests in Cuba.

During the first half of the 20th century the United States became engaged in a series of localconflicts in Latin America, which went into history as banana wars. The main purpose of these wars were to defend American commercial interests in the region.

Later, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler famously wrote, "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

Some critics assert the U.S. decision to support the separatists in Colombia in 1903 was motivated largely by business interests centered on Panama Canal despite declarations that it aimed to "spread democracy" and "end oppression". 

One can say that U.S. foreign policy does reflect the will of the people, however people might have a consumerist mentality, which justifies wars in their minds.

There are allegations that decisions to go to war in Iraq were motivated at least partially by oil interests; for example, British newspaper The Independent reported that the "Bush administration is heavily involved in writing Iraq's oil law" which would "allow Western oil companies contracts to pump oil out of Iraq up to 30 years, and the profits would be tax-free." 

Whether motivated by it or not, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East appears to much of the world as to be motivated by an oil rationale.

Allegations of imperialism:
Main article: American imperialism

There is a growing consensus among American historians and political scientists that the United States during the American Century grew into an empire resembling in many ways Ancient Rome. 

Currently, there is a debate over implications of imperial tendencies of U.S. foreign policy on democracy and social order.

In 2002, conservative political commentator Charles Krauthammer declared cultural, economical, technological and military superiority of the U.S. in the world a given fact. In his opinion, people were "coming out of the closet on the word empire". 

More prominently, the New York Times Magazine cover for January 5, 2003, featured a slogan "American Empire: Get Used To It". Inside, a Canadian author Michael Ignatieff characterized the American imperial power as an empire lite.

According to Newsweek reporter Fareed Zakaria, the Washington establishment has "gotten comfortable with the exercise of American hegemony and treats compromise as treason and negotiations as appeasement", and added, "This is not foreign policy; it's imperial policy."

Emily Eakin reflecting the intellectual trends of the time, summarized in The New York Times that, "America is no mere superpower or hegemon but a full-blown empire in the Roman and British sense. That, at any rate, is the consensus of some of the nation's most notable commentators and scholars."

Many allies of the U.S. were critical of a new, unilateral sensibility tone in its foreign policy, and showed displeasure by voting, for example, against the U.S. in the United Nations in 2001.

Allegations of hypocrisy:
See also: Political hypocrisy

The U.S. has been criticized for making statements supporting peace and respecting national sovereignty while carrying out military actions such as in Grenada, fomenting a civil war in Colombia to break off Panama, and Iraq.

The U.S. has been criticized for advocating free trade while protecting local industries with import tariffs on foreign goods such as lumber and agricultural products. The U.S. has also been criticized for advocating concern for human rights while refusing to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The U.S. has publicly stated that it is opposed to torture, but has been criticized for condoning it in the School of the Americas. The U.S. has advocated a respect for national sovereignty but has supported internal guerrilla movements and paramilitary organizations, such as the Contras in Nicaragua.

They have also supported the unilateral independence of Kosovo (see here) while also condemning other countries for unilateral independence, citing territorial integrity (Abkhazia, Crimea).

The U.S. has been criticized for voicing concern about narcotics production in countries such as Bolivia and Venezuela but does not follow through on cutting certain bilateral aid programs. 

The U.S. has been criticized for not maintaining a consistent policy; it has been accused of denouncing alleged rights violations in China while supporting alleged human rights abuses by Israel.

However, some defenders argue that a policy of rhetoric while doing things counter to the rhetoric was necessary in the sense of realpolitik and helped secure victory against the dangers of tyranny and totalitarianism.

Support of dictatorships and state terrorism:
See also: 
​The U.S. has been criticized for supporting dictatorships with economic assistance and military hardware. Particular dictatorships have included:
Ruth J Blakeley and Vincent Bevins posit that the United States and its allies sponsored and facilitated state terrorism and mass killings on a significant scale during the Cold War. The justification given for this was to contain Communism, but Blakeley says it was also a means by which to buttress the interests of US business elites and to promote the expansion of capitalism and neoliberalism in the Global South.

J. Patrice McSherry, a professor of political science at Long Island University, states that "hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans were tortured, abducted or killed by right-wing military regimes as part of the US-led anti-communist crusade", which included US support for Operation Condor and the Guatemalan military during the Guatemalan Civil War.

According to Latin Americanist John Henry Coatsworth, the number of repression victims in Latin America alone far surpassed that of the Soviet Union and its East European satellites during the period 1960 to 1990. Mark Aarons asserts that the atrocities carried out by Western-backed dictatorships rival those of the communist world.

Contemporary research and declassified documents demonstrate that the US and some of its Western allies directly facilitated and encouraged the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of suspected Communists in Indonesia during the mid-1960s. 

Bradley Simpson, Director of the Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, says "Washington did everything in its power to encourage and facilitate the army-led massacre of alleged Communist Party of Indonesia members, and U.S. officials worried only that the killing of the party's unarmed supporters might not go far enough, permitting Sukarno to return to power and frustrate the [Johnson] Administration's emerging plans for a post-Sukarno Indonesia." 

According to Simpson, the terror in Indonesia was an "essential building block of the quasi neo-liberal policies the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia in the years to come" 

Historian John Roosa, commenting on documents released from the US embassy in Jakarta in 2017, says they confirm that "the U.S. was part and parcel of the operation, strategizing with the Indonesian army and encouraging them to go after the PKI."

Geoffrey B. Robinson, historian at UCLA, argues that without the support of the U.S. and other powerful Western states, the Indonesian Army's program of mass killings would not have occurred. 

Vincent Bevins writes the mass killings in Indonesia served as the apex of a loose network of US-backed anti-communist mass killing campaigns in the Global South during the Cold War.

​According to journalist Glenn Greenwald, the strategic rationale for U.S. support of brutal and even genocidal dictatorships around the globe has been consistent since the end of World War II: "In a world where anti-American sentiment is prevalent, democracy often produces leaders who impede rather than serve U.S. interests ... None of this is remotely controversial or even debatable. U.S. support for tyrants has largely been conducted out in the open, and has been expressly defended and affirmed for decades by the most mainstream and influential U.S. policy experts and media outlets."

The U.S. has been accused of complicity in war crimes for backing the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, which has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe, including a cholera outbreak and millions facing starvation. Many of Saudi Arabia's airstrikes on Yemen have relied on U.S. support.

Sanctions:
See also: United States sanctions § Perceptions

Numerous US unilateral sanctions against various countries around the world have been criticized by different commentators. Since 1998 the United States has imposed economic sanctions on more than 20 countries.

These sanctions, according to Daniel T. Griswold, failed to change the behavior of sanctioned countries; but they have barred American companies from economic opportunities, and harmed the poorest people in the countries under sanctions. 

Secondary sanctions, according to Rawi Abdelal, often separate the United States and Europe because they reflect US interference in the affairs and interests of the European Union. 

Since Trump became the president of the United States, Abdelal believes, sanctions have been seen not only as an expression of Washington's preferences and whims, but also as a tool for US economic warfare that has angered historical allies such as the European Union.

Interference in internal affairs:
Main article: United States involvement in regime change

​The United States was criticized for manipulating the internal affairs of foreign nations, including: 
One study indicated that the country most often intervening in foreign elections is the United States with 81 interventions from 1946 to 2000.

Promotion of democracy:
See also: Democracy promotion by the United States

Some critics argue that America's policy of advocating democracy may be ineffective and even counterproductive. Zbigniew Brzezinski declared that "[t]he coming to power of Hamas is a very good example of excessive pressure for democratization" and argued that George W. Bush's attempts to use democracy as an instrument against terrorism were risky and dangerous.

Analyst Jessica Tuchman Mathews of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace agreed that imposing democracy "from scratch" was unwise, and did not work. 

Realist critics such as George F. Kennan argued U.S. responsibility is only to protect its own citizens and that Washington should deal with other governments on that basis alone; they criticize president Woodrow Wilson's emphasis on democratization and nation-building although it was not mentioned in Wilson's Fourteen Points, and the failure of the League of Nations to enforce international will regarding Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in the 1930s.

​Realist critics attacked the idealism of Wilson as being ill-suited for weak states created at the Paris Peace Conference. Others, however, criticize the U.S. Senate's decision not to join the League of Nations which was based on isolationist public sentiment as being one cause for the organization's ineffectiveness.

According to The Huffington Post, "The 45 nations and territories with little or no democratic rule represent more than half of the roughly 80 countries now hosting U.S. bases. ... Research by political scientist Kent Calder confirms what's come to be known as the 'dictatorship hypothesis': The United States tends to support dictators [and other undemocratic regimes] in nations where it enjoys basing facilities."

Human rights problems:
Main article: Human rights in the United States

President George W. Bush has been criticized for neglecting democracy and human rights by focusing exclusively on an effort to fight terrorism. The U.S. was criticized for alleged prisoner abuse at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe, according to Amnesty International. In response, the U.S. government claimed incidents of abuse were isolated incidents which did not reflect U.S. policy.

In May 2023, The New York Times reported that declassified documents confirm that, regarding irregular warfare, US Special Operations forces "are not required to vet for past human rights violations by the foreign troops they arm and train as surrogates."

The report notes that while there is no vetting of these foreign troops for crimes including "rape, torture or extrajudicial killings," potential candidates are vetted for political views that might make them a threat to U.S. forces, with "phone call logs, travel histories, social media posts, and social contacts" being thoroughly screened.

Militarism:
Main article: United States Militarism

President Barack Obama speaking on the military intervention in Libya at the National Defense University, March 2011: "In the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. criticized excessive U.S. spending on military projects, and suggested a linkage between its foreign policy abroad and racism at home." 

In 1971, a Time essayist noted 375 major and 3,000 lesser U.S. military facilities worldwide and concluded that "there is no question that the U.S. today has too many troops scattered about in too many places."

Expenditures to fight the War on Terror are vast. The Iraq war, lasting from 2003 to 2011, was especially costly. In a 2010 defense report, Anthony Cordesman criticized out-of-control military spending. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan have, from their beginning in 2001 through the end of the 2019 fiscal year, cost American taxpayers $6.4 trillion.

Andrew Bacevich argues that the U.S. has a tendency to resort to military means to try to solve diplomatic problems. The U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was a $111 billion, decade-long military engagement which ended in a military victory but strategic defeat due to the public's loss of support for the war.

Violation of international law:
See also: 
The U.S. does not always follow international law. For example, some critics assert the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was not a proper response to an imminent threat, but an act of aggression which violated international law. 

For example, Benjamin Ferencz, a chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein for starting aggressive wars—Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Critics point out that the United Nations Charter, ratified by the U.S., prohibits members from using force against fellow members except against imminent attack or pursuant to an explicit Security Council authorization. 

A professor of international law asserted there was no authorization from the UN Security Council which made the invasion "a crime against the peace". However, U.S. defenders argue there was such an authorization according to UN Security Council Resolution 1441.

The U.S. has also supported Kosovo's independence even though it is strictly written in UN Security Council Resolution 1244 that Kosovo cannot be independent and it is stated as a Serbian province. However the International Court of Justice ruled the declaration of independence was legal because the Security Council Resolution did not specify the final status of Kosovo.

The U.S. has actively supported and pressured other countries to recognize Kosovo's independence.

Manipulation of U.S. foreign policy:

Some political scientists maintained that setting economic interdependence as a foreign policy goal may have exposed the United States to manipulation. As a result, the U.S. trading partners gained an ability to influence the U.S. foreign policy decision-making process by manipulating, for example, the currency exchange rate, or restricting the flow of goods and raw materials.

In addition, more than 40% of the U.S. foreign debt is currently owned by the big institutional investors from overseas, who continue to accumulate the Treasury bonds.

A reporter for The Washington Post wrote that "several less-than-democratic African leaders have skillfully played the anti-terrorism card to earn a relationship with the United States that has helped keep them in power", and suggested, in effect, that therefore foreign dictators could manipulate U.S. foreign policy for their own benefit. 

It is also possible for foreign governments to channel money through political action committees to buy influence in Congress.

Commitment to foreign aid:
Main article: U.S. foreign aid

Some critics charge that U.S. government aid should be higher given the high levels of gross domestic product. They claim other countries give more money on a per capita basis, including both government and charitable contributions.

By one index which ranked charitable giving as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. ranked 21 of 22 OECD countries by giving 0.17% of GDP to overseas aid, and compared the U.S. to Sweden which gave 1.03% of its GDP, according to different estimates. 

The U.S. pledged 0.7% of GDP at a global conference in Mexico. According to one estimate, U.S. overseas aid fell 16% from 2005 to 2006.

However, since the U.S. grants tax breaks to nonprofits, it subsidizes relief efforts abroad, although other nations also subsidize charitable activity abroad. Most foreign aid (79%) came not from government sources but from:
  • private foundations,
  • corporations,
  • voluntary organizations,
  • universities,
  • religious organizations
  • and individuals.

According to the Index of Global Philanthropy, the United States is the top donor in absolute amounts.

Environmental policy:
Main article: Environmental policy of the United States

The U.S. has been criticized for failure to support the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The Holocaust:
See also:  ​
There has been sharp criticism about the U.S. response to the Holocaust: That it failed to admit Jews fleeing persecution from Europe at the beginning of World War II, and that it did not act decisively enough to prevent or stop the Holocaust. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was the President at the time, was well-informed about the Hitler regime and its anti-Jewish policies, but the U.S. State Department policies made it very difficult for Jewish refugees to obtain entry visas.

Roosevelt similarly took no action on the Wagner–Rogers Bill, which could have saved 20,000 Jewish refugee children, following the arrival of 936 Jewish refugees on the MS St. Louis, who were denied asylum and were not allowed into the United States because of strict laws passed by Congress.

During the era, the American press did not always publicize reports of Nazi atrocities in full or with prominent placement. By 1942, after newspapers began to report details of the Holocaust, articles were extremely short and were buried deep in the newspaper.

These reports were either denied or unconfirmed by the United States government. When it did receive irrefutable evidence that the reports were true (and photographs of mass graves and murder in Birkenau camp in 1943, with victims moving into the gas chambers), U.S. officials suppressed the information and classified it as secret. 

It is possible lives of European Jews could have been saved.

Alienation of allies:

There is evidence that many U.S. allies have been alienated by a unilateral approach. Allies signaled dissatisfaction with U.S. policy in a vote at the U.N.

Ineffective public relations:
See also: Public Diplomacy (U.S.)

One report suggests that news source Al-jazeera routinely paints the U.S. as evil throughout the Middle East. Other critics have faulted the U.S. public relations effort. As a result of faulty policy and lackluster public relations, the U.S. has a severe image problem in the Middle East, according to Anthony Cordesman.

Analyst Jessica Tuchman Mathews writes that it appears to much of the Arab world that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, regardless of the accuracy of that motive. In a 2007 poll by BBC News asking which countries are seen as having a "negative influence in the world", the survey found that Iran, United States and North Korea had the most negative influence, while nations such as Canada, Japan and those in the European Union had the most positive influence. 

The U.S. has been accused by some U.N. officials of condoning actions by Israel against Palestinians. On the other hand, others have accused the U.S. of being too supportive of the Palestinians.

Ineffective prosecution of war:

One estimate is that the second Iraq War along with the so-called War on Terror cost $551 billion, or $597 billion in 2009 dollars. Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich has criticized American profligacy and squandering its wealth.

There have been criticisms of U.S. warmaking failures. In the War of 1812, the U.S. was unable to conquer British North America (modern-day Canada) despite several attempts.

Ineffective strategy to fight terrorism:

Critic Cordesman criticized U.S. strategy to combat terrorism as not having enough emphasis on getting Islamic republics to fight terrorism themselves. Sometimes visitors have been misidentified as "terrorists".

Mathews suggests the risk of nuclear terrorism remains unprevented. In 1999 during the Kosovo War, the U.S. supported the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), though it had been recognised as a terrorist organisation by the U.S. some years prior.

Right before the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia took place, the U.S. took down the KLA from the list of internationally recognized terrorist organizations in order to justify their aid and help to the KLA.

Small role of Congress in foreign policy:
See also: 
Critic Robert McMahon thinks Congress has been excluded from foreign policy decision making, and that this is detrimental. 

Other writers suggest a need for greater Congressional participation. 

Jim Webb, former Democratic senator from Virginia and former Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, believes that Congress has an ever-decreasing role in U.S. foreign policy making. September 11, 2001, precipitated this change, where "powers quickly shifted quickly to the Presidency as the call went up for centralized decision making in a traumatized nation where, quick, decisive action was considered necessary. It was considered politically dangerous and even unpatriotic to question this shift, lest one be accused of impeding national safety during a time of war." 

Since that time, Webb thinks Congress has become largely irrelevant in shaping and executing of U.S. foreign policy. He cites the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA), the U.S.–Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement, and the 2011 military intervention in Libya as examples of growing legislative irrelevance.

Regarding the SFA, "Congress was not consulted in any meaningful way. Once the document was finalized, Congress was not given the opportunity to debate the merits of the agreement, which was specifically designed to shape the structure of our long-term relations in Iraq. Congress did not debate or vote on this agreement, which set U.S. policy toward an unstable regime in an unstable region of the world." 

The Iraqi Parliament, by contrast, voted on the measure twice. The U.S.–Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement is described by the Obama Administration has had a "legally binding executive agreement" that outlines the future of U.S.–Afghan relations and designated Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally. "It is difficult to understand how any international agreement negotiated, signed, and authored only by our executive branch of government can be construed as legally binding in our constitutional system", Webb argues.

Finally, Webb identifies the U.S. intervention in Libya as a troubling historical precedent. "The issue in play in Libya was not simply whether the president should ask Congress for a declaration of war. Nor was it wholly about whether Obama violated the edicts of the War Powers Act, which in this writer's view he clearly did. The issue that remains to be resolved is whether a president can unilaterally begin, and continue, a military campaign for reasons that he alone defines as meeting the demanding standards of a vital national interest worth of risking American lives and expending billions of dollars of taxpayer money." 

When the military campaign lasted months, President Barack Obama did not seek approval of Congress to continue military activity.

​Lack of vision:

The short-term election cycle coupled with the inability to stay focused on long-term objectives motivates American presidents to lean towards actions that would appease the citizenry, and, as a rule, avoid complicated international issues and difficult choices. Thus, Zbigniew Brzezinski criticized the Clinton presidency as having a foreign policy which lacked "discipline and passion" and subjected the U.S. to "eight years of drift".

In comparison, the next, Bush presidency was criticized for many impulsive decisions that harmed the international standing of the U.S. in the world. 

Former director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold commented that, "There's a broad naïvete in the political class about America's obligations in foreign policy issues, and scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve".

Allegations of arrogance:
Main article: Global arrogance

Some commentators have thought the United States became arrogant, particularly after its victory in World War II. Critics such as Andrew Bacevich call on America to have a foreign policy "rooted in humility and realism". 

Foreign policy experts such as Zbigniew Brzezinski counsel a policy of self-restraint and not pressing every advantage, and listening to other nations. A government official called the U.S. policy in Iraq "arrogant and stupid", according to one report.

Problem areas festering:

Critics point to a list of countries or regions where continuing foreign policy problems continue to present problems. These areas include: 
There are difficulties in other regions too. In addition, there are problems not confined to particular regions, but regarding new technologies. Cyberspace is a constantly changing technological area with foreign policy repercussions.

See also:






​
2024 United States presidential election
2024 United States presidential election

​Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 5, 2024. The Republican Party's ticket--Donald Trump, who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and JD Vance, the junior U.S. senator from Ohio—defeated the Democratic Party's ticket--Kamala Harris, the incumbent vice president, and Tim Walz, the 41st governor of Minnesota. Trump and Vance were inaugurated as the 47th president and the 50th vice president on January 20, 2025.

The incumbent president, Joe Biden of the Democratic Party, initially ran for re-election as the party's presumptive nominee, facing little opposition and easily defeating Representative Dean Phillips during the Democratic primaries: however, what was broadly considered a poor debate performance in June 2024 intensified concerns about his age and health, and led to calls within his party for him to leave the race. 

After initially declining to do so, Biden withdrew on July 21, becoming the first eligible incumbent president to withdraw since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. Biden endorsed Harris, who was voted the party's nominee by the delegates on August 5, 2024.

Harris selected Walz as her running mate. This was the first time since 2000 in which an incumbent vice president ran for president.

Trump, who lost in 2020 to Biden, ran for re-election again. He was nominated during the 2024 Republican National Convention along with his running mate, Vance, after winning the Republican primaries by easily defeating former Governor Nikki Haley.

The Trump campaign was noted for making many false and misleading statements, including the claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, engaging in anti-immigrant fearmongering, and promoting conspiracy theories.

Trump's political movement was described by several historians and former Trump administration officials as authoritarian, featuring parallels to fascism, and using dehumanizing rhetoric toward his political opponents.

Trump achieved victory in the Electoral College, winning 312 electoral votes to Harris' 226. Trump won every swing state, including the first win of Nevada by Republicans since 2004, in addition to holding on to all of the states that he won in 2020. 

Trump won the national popular vote with a plurality of 49.8%, making him the first Republican to do so since George W. Bush in 2004 but with what was the third smallest popular vote margin since 1888. Relative to the 2020 election, he improved his vote share among working class voters, particularly among young men, those without college degrees, and Hispanic voters. 

Trump became the first president since Grover Cleveland in 1892 to be elected to non-consecutive terms.

According to polls, the most important issues for voters were: 
Polled voters consistently cited the economy, particularly inflation, as the most important issue in the election. Analysts attributed Harris' loss to:

Background
​
Procedure
Main article: United States presidential election § Procedure

Article Two of the Constitution of United States states that for a person to serve as president, the individual must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least 35 years of age, and have been a United States resident for at least 14 years.

The Twenty-second Amendment forbids any person from being elected president more than twice. Major party candidates seek the nomination through a series of primary elections that select the delegates who choose the candidate at the party's national convention.

Each party's national convention chooses a vice presidential running mate to form that party's ticket. The nominee for president usually picks the running mate, who is then ratified by the delegates at the party's convention.

If no candidate wins a majority of their party's delegates' votes, or (in this election) a party's presumptive nominee drops out of the race between the primaries and the convention, a brokered convention may be held: the delegates are then "released" and are free to switch their allegiance to a different candidate.

The general election in November is an indirect election, in which voters cast ballots for a slate of members of the Electoral College; these electors then directly elect the president and vice president. Election offices are dealing with increased workloads and public scrutiny.

Officials in many states have sought additional funding to hire more personnel, improve security, and extend training. Numerous election offices are dealing with an increase in retirements and are overwhelmed with public records requests, owing in part to the electoral mistrust planted by former President Trump's loss in the 2020 election.

Trump is the first president in American history to be impeached twice, and the first to run again after impeachment.
  1. Trump was first impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in December 2019 for "abuse of power and obstruction of Congress" due to his attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, by withholding military aid. 
  2. Trump's second impeachment by the House occurred on January 13, 2021, for "incitement of insurrection" owing to his role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack.

As Trump was acquitted by the Senate in both cases, he was not barred from seeking reelection to the presidency in 2024.

​This is the first presidential election to occur after the reapportionment of votes in the Electoral College following the 2020 United States census and redistricting cycle.

Swing states
Further information: Red states and blue states and Swing state.

Most states are not electorally competitive and are usually certain to vote for a particular party. Because of the winner-take-all selection of electors used by 48 states and Washington DC, this means that a limited number of swing states—competitive states that do not clearly lean towards one party over the other—are vital to winning the presidency.

The U.S. states considered as such change over time. The seven swing states in the 2024 election were:
Trump secured victory in all seven states. The three Midwestern swing states had historically been part of the "blue wall" ever since Bill Clinton's win in 1992, but broke for Trump in 2016, when he had previously faced a female Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Election interference
Main article: Election interference

Further information: 
Several state courts and officials, including the Colorado Supreme Court. a state Circuit Court in Illinois, and the Secretary of State of Maine, ruled that Trump was ineligible to hold office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for his role in the January 6 Capitol attack, and thus attempted to disqualify him from appearing on the ballot. 

These attempts were unsuccessful, and on March 4, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Trump v. Anderson that states cannot determine eligibility for a national election under Section 3, and only Congress has the authority to disqualify candidates, or to pass legislation that allows courts to do so.

Donald Trump's false claims of interference

Further information: 
Trump made false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, and continued denying the election results. Election security experts warned that officials who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election may attempt to impede the voting process, or refuse to certify the 2024 results. 

In July 2024, The New York Times reported that "the Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system", by restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of Election Day and preparing to mount "legally dubious" challenges against the certification process if Trump were to lose.

In the lead up to the 2024 election, the Republican Party made false claims of massive "noncitizen voting" by immigrants in an attempt to delegitimize the election in the event of a Trump defeat. The claims were made as part of larger Republican Party efforts to disrupt the 2024 election and election denial movement. 

Trump continued spreading his "big lie" of a stolen election and predicted without evidence that the 2024 election would be rigged against him. Trump also falsely accused Biden of "weaponizing" the Justice Department to target him in relation to his criminal trials. 

Trump and several Republicans stated they would not accept the results of the 2024 election if they believe they are "unfair".

Trump's previous comments suggesting:
All of the above raised concerns over the state of democracy in the United States. 

Trump's political operation said that it planned to deploy more than 100,000 attorneys and volunteers to polling places across battleground states, with an "election integrity hotline" for poll watchers and voters to report alleged voting irregularities.

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