In the United States, politics functions within a framework of a constitutional federal republic. The three distinct branches share powers: the U.S. Congress which forms the legislative branch, a bicameral legislative body comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate; the executive branch, which is headed by the president of the United States, who serves as the country's head of state and government; and the judicial branch, composed of the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and which exercises judicial power.
The Republican Party, also known as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the then-dominant Democratic Party in the 1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since then.
Philip Ernest Converse was an American political scientist. He was a professor in political science and sociology at the University of Michigan who conducted research on public opinion, survey research, and quantitative social science.
Political polarization is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization and affective polarization.
Negative campaigning is the process of deliberately spreading negative information about someone or something to worsen the public image of the described. A colloquial, and somewhat more derogatory, term for the practice is mudslinging.
Bipartisanship, sometimes referred to as nonpartisanship, is a political situation, usually in the context of a two-party system, in which opposing political parties find common ground through compromise. In multi-partisan electoral systems or in situations where multiple parties work together, it is called multipartisanship. Partisanship is the antonym, where an individual or political party adheres only to its interests without compromise.
Dealignment, in political science, is a trend or process whereby a large portion of the electorate abandons its previous partisan affiliation, without developing a new one to replace it. It is contrasted with political realignment.
An independent voter, often also called an unaffiliated voter or non-affiliated voter in the United States, is a voter who does not align themselves with a political party. An independent is variously defined as a voter who votes for candidates on issues rather than on the basis of a political ideology or partisanship; a voter who does not have long-standing loyalty to, or identification with, a political party; a voter who does not usually vote for the same political party from election to election; or a voter who self-describes as an independent.
A partisan is a committed member of a political party. In multi-party systems, the term is used for persons who strongly support their party's policies and are reluctant to compromise with political opponents.
Party identification refers to the political party with which an individual is affiliated with. Party identification is typically determined by the political party that an individual most commonly supports.
Latino Americans have received a growing share of the national vote in the United States due to their increasing population. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, 62.1 million Latinos live in the United States, representing 18.9% of the total U.S. population, a 23% increase since 2010. This racial/ethnic group is the second largest after non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. In 2020, the states with the highest Hispanic or Latino populations were; Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Texas. According to the Brookings Institution, Latinos will become the nation's largest minority by 2045 and the deciding population in future elections.
American political ideologies conventionally align with the left–right political spectrum, with most Americans identifying as conservative, liberal, or moderate. Contemporary American conservatism includes social conservatism and fiscal conservatism. The former ideology developed as a response to communism and the civil rights movement, while the latter developed as a response to the New Deal. Contemporary American liberalism includes social liberalism and progressivism, developing during the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. Besides conservatism and liberalism, the United States has a notable libertarian movement, developing during the mid-20th century as a revival of classical liberalism. Historical political movements in the United States have been shaped by ideologies as varied as republicanism, populism, separatism, fascism, socialism, monarchism, and nationalism.
Alan Ira Abramowitz is an American political scientist and author, known for his research and writings on American politics, elections in the United States, and political parties in the United States.
The Latino vote or refers to the voting trends during elections in the United States by eligible voters of Latino background. This phrase is usually mentioned by the media as a way to label voters of this ethnicity, and to opine that this demographic group could potentially tilt the outcome of an election, and how candidates have developed messaging strategies to this ethnic group.
Voting behavior refers to how people decide how to vote. This decision is shaped by a complex interplay between an individual voter's attitudes as well as social factors. Voter attitudes include characteristics such as ideological predisposition, party identity, degree of satisfaction with the existing government, public policy leanings, and feelings about a candidate's personality traits. Social factors include race, religion and degree of religiosity, social and economic class, educational level, regional characteristics, and gender. The degree to which a person identifies with a political party influences voting behavior, as does social identity. Voter decision-making is not a purely rational endeavor but rather is profoundly influenced by personal and social biases and deeply held beliefs as well as characteristics such as personality, memory, emotions, and other psychological factors. Voting advice applications and avoidance of wasted votes through strategic voting can impact voting behavior.
Partisan sorting is an effect in politics in which voters sort themselves into parties that match their ideology. Partisan sorting is distinct from political polarization, which is where partisans subscribe to increasingly extreme positions. As political scientist Nolan McCarty explains, "party sorting can account for the increased differences across partisans even if the distribution of...attitudes in the population remains unchanged or moves uniformly in one direction or the other." As an example given by McCarty, the gap between the Democratic Party and Republican Party on views towards immigrants strengthening the country with hard work and talents has widened from a 2-point gap in 1994 to a 42-point gap in 2017. A reasonable explanation is that of partisan sorting: those who are pro-immigrant shifted into the Democratic party and immigration-restrictions have shifted towards the Republican party. According to McCarty, this explains the widening gap between the two parties, considering how pro-immigration viewpoints between the two surveys have increased by 35% since 1994.
A feeling thermometer, also known as a thermometer scale, is a type of visual analog scale that allows respondents to rank their views of a given subject on a scale from "cold" to "hot", analogous to the temperature scale of a real thermometer. It is often used in survey and political science research to measure how positively individuals feel about a given group, individual, issue, or organisation, as well as in quality of life research to measure individuals' subjective health status. It typically uses a rating scale with options ranging from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 100. Questions using the feeling thermometer have been included in every year of the American National Election Studies since 1968.
Political cognition refers to the study of how individuals come to understand the political world, and how this understanding leads to political behavior. Some of the processes studied under the umbrella of political cognition include attention, interpretation, judgment, and memory. Most of the advancements in the area have been made by scholars in the fields of social psychology, political science, and communication studies.
Political polarization is a prominent component of politics in the United States. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization and affective polarization, 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.
Michael K. Fauntroy is an American political scientist. He was formerly a professor in the political science department at Howard University, where he has also been the associate chair. In 2018 he became the acting director of the Ronald W. Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center at Howard University. He studies African American politics, interest groups, and American political parties and partisanship. In 2021, he takes on a new role at George Mason University where he previously spent 11 years at prior to Howard. He has published books on the struggle for self-governance in Washington, D.C., and the relationship between African American voters and the Republican Party.
