In representative electoral systems, gerrymandering is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The manipulation may involve "cracking" or "packing". Gerrymandering can also be used to protect incumbents. Wayne Dawkins, a professor at Morgan State University, describes it as politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.
A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referred to as the majority or governing party while the other is the minority or opposition party. Around the world, the term has different meanings. For example, in the United States, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe, the sense of two-party system describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to either of the two major parties, and third parties rarely win any seats in the legislature. In such arrangements, two-party systems are thought to result from several factors, like "winner takes all" or "first past the post" election systems. The electoral competition is mostly limited to the two major parties.
In the United States, politics functions within a framework of a constitutional federal republic and presidential system, with three distinct branches that 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 Democratic Party in the mid-1850s.
The 1936 United States presidential election was the 38th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1936. In the midst of the Great Depression, incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Governor Alf Landon of Kansas in a landslide. Roosevelt won the highest share of the popular vote (60.8%) and the electoral vote since the largely uncontested 1820 election. The sweeping victory consolidated the New Deal Coalition in control of the Fifth Party System.
Each of the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and territories of the United States holds either primary elections or caucuses to help nominate individual candidates for president of the United States. This process is designed to choose the candidates that will represent their political parties in the general election.
American electoral politics have been dominated by successive pairs of major political parties since shortly after the founding of the republic of the United States. Since the 1850s, the two largest political parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—which together have 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 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.
The American Independent Party (AIP) is a political party in the United States founded in 1968. The party experienced a split in 1976, resulting in the formation of the American Party and the continuation of the American Independent Party. The AIP was affiliated with the national Constitution Party from 1992 to 2008. A leadership dispute occurred within the AIP during the 2008 election cycle following its disaffiliation from the Constitution Party.
The National Party, also known as the Nationalist Party, was a political party in South Africa from 1914 to 1997, which was responsible for the implementation and much of the deconstruction of apartheid rule. The party was an Afrikaner ethnic nationalist party, which initially promoted the interests of Afrikaners but later became a stalwart promoter and enactor of white supremacy, for which it is best known. It first became the governing party of the country in 1924. It merged with its rival, the SAP, during the Great Depression, and a splinter faction became the official opposition during World War II and returned to power. With the National Party governing South Africa from 4 June 1948 until 9 May 1994, the country for the bulk of this time was only a de jure or partial democracy, as from 1958 onwards non-white people were barred from voting. In 1990, it began to style itself as simply a South African civic nationalist party, and after the fall of apartheid in 1994, attempted to become a moderate conservative one. The party's reputation was damaged irreparably by perpetrating apartheid, and it rebranded itself as the New National Party in 1997 before eventually dissolving in 2005.
The Republicans is a national conservative political party in Germany. The primary plank of the programme is opposition to immigration. The party tends to attract protest voters who think that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) are not sufficiently conservative. It was founded in 1983 by former CSU members Franz Handlos and Ekkehard Voigt, and Franz Schönhuber was the party's leader from 1985 to 1994. The party had later been led by Rolf Schlierer, until 2014. The Republicans had seats in the European Parliament between 1989 and 1994, Abgeordnetenhaus of West Berlin in 1989–1990 and in the parliament of the German state of Baden-Württemberg between 1991 and 2001.
Political party strength in U.S. states is the level of representation of the various political parties in the United States in each statewide elective office providing legislators to the state and to the U.S. Congress and electing the executives at the state and national level.
Starting with the 2000 United States presidential election, the terms "red state" and "blue state" have referred to U.S. states whose voters vote predominantly for one party — the Republican Party in red states and the Democratic Party in blue states — in presidential and other statewide elections. By contrast, states where the vote fluctuates between the Democratic and Republican candidates are known as "swing states" or "purple states". Examining patterns within states reveals that the reversal of the two parties' geographic bases has happened at the state level, but it is more complicated locally, with urban-rural divides associated with many of the largest changes.
The 1922 United States House of Representatives elections were elections for the United States House of Representatives to elect members to serve in the 68th United States Congress. They were held for the most part on November 7, 1922, though Maine held its on September 11. They occurred in the middle of President Warren G. Harding's term. Just as voters had expressed their distrust of Wilson in 1920, now voters had a chance to express the widespread feeling that Congress had failed to address economic problems, especially the brief but sharp economic recession of 1921–1922. Most of the seats that Republicans lost had long been held by Democrats, who now returned with an even stronger base in the major cities.
The results of elections in the state of New York have tended to be more Democratic-leaning than in most of the United States, with in recent decades a solid majority of Democratic voters, concentrated in New York City and some of its suburbs, including Westchester County, Rockland County and Long Island's Nassau county, and in the cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, and Ithaca.
Elections in Florida are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November in even-numbered years, as provided for in Article 6 of the Florida Constitution. For state elections, the Governor of Florida, Lieutenant Governor, and the members of the Florida Cabinet, and members of the Florida Senate are elected every four years; members of the Florida House of Representatives are elected every two years. In national elections, Florida plays an important role as the largest bellwether state, occasionally determining the outcome of elections for U.S. President — as it did in 1876 and in 2000.
The 2004 United States Senate election in Arkansas took place on November 2, 2004 alongside other elections to the United States Senate in other states as well as elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
The 1958 United States Senate election in Utah was held on November 4, 1958.
Centrism is a political outlook or position involving acceptance or support of a balance of social equality and a degree of social hierarchy while opposing political changes that would result in a significant shift of society strongly to the left or the right.
On February 25, 2017, voters in the 10th district of the Delaware Senate voted in a special election to fill the seat left vacant by Democrat Bethany Hall-Long, the previous incumbent, who had resigned at the beginning of the year after having been elected lieutenant governor the preceding November. Democrat Stephanie Hansen, an environmental lawyer from Middletown who had in the past served a term as New Castle County Council President, won with 58.1 percent of the vote, defeating Republican opponent John Marino, who finished with 40.8 percent. Libertarian John Lanzendorfer, the only other candidate in the race, claimed the other 1.1 percent.
The 2020 United States presidential election in Montana was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Montana voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump and running mate Vice President Mike Pence, against Democratic Party nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his running mate California Senator Kamala Harris. Montana had three electoral votes in the Electoral College for the 2020 election.
