The USA traditionally has a two-party system with the two major parties, Democrats and Republicans. Other parties exist, for example, the Green Party. Still, due to the electoral law, they have not yet succeeded in winning elections at the federal or state level.
In this article of Gazettely, we will talk about the differences between the major political parties in the United States. In general, we will take a look at the political parties in the country. Stay tuned!
Table of Contents
Which role do parties play in the USA?
In comparison to parties in Germany, which are protected even by Article 21 of the Basic Law, U.S. parties are only weakly anchored in the U.S. political system. The US party system is associated with significantly more independence of candidates, members of parliament and members. Parties are more likely to be seen as a sizeable loose association of very different currents. For this reason, the parties are often referred to as electoral associations.
The Tea Party movement, for instance, stands for the neoconservative and deeply religious part of the Republican Party. Still, it cannot claim to represent the opinion of the entire party with its positions. Since, in contrast to the Federal Republic of Germany, U.S. parties are not financed by the state, both they and their candidates must finance their election campaigns through private donations. Thus, parties are more dependent on individuals and companies than in Germany, on the one hand. On the other hand, connections are more likely to be made public.
The USA is governed by a relative majority voting system. In this procedure, the person who has received the most votes is elected. Other votes are forfeited. Unlike proportional representation, only one party can win under the first-past-the-post system in each constituency. This system promotes the formation of two parties with a broad base. In contrast, minor parties have poor chances since their votes are usually forfeited.
In addition, the electoral college system promotes a two-party system in presidential elections. In the Electoral College system, instead of electing the president directly, citizens vote for a slate of “electors” in each state who have pledged allegiance to one or the other presidential candidate.
To be elected president, you need an absolute majority of the votes cast by a total of 538 electoral college men and women from the 50 states. However, the electoral votes of the individual states are awarded according to the “winner takes all” principle.
That means that the candidate who receives the majority of votes in a state is awarded all of the state’s electoral votes. Like the first-past-the-post system, the electoral college puts small parties at a disadvantage because they have little chance of getting a state’s electoral votes, much less than enough electoral votes to be elected president.
Americans* voting behavior highlights the stability of the two-party system. For example, on average, 94.8 percent of the votes cast in presidential elections went to the two major parties in the years following World War II.
In 1787, when the Founders of the American Republic drafted the Constitution of the United States of America, they established a system of government in which parties played no role. In fact, several constitutional provisions, such as separation of powers, checks and balances between Congress and government, federalism, and indirect election of the president by an electoral college, sought to keep political parties and factions out of the new polity.
Despite these intentions of the Founders, in 1800, the United States became the first country in which nationally organized parties emerged and governmental power passed from one political group to another through elections.
The Two Major Parties: The Republicans and the Democrats
Clear programmatic differences between Democrats and Republicans have developed in recent election periods. As a result, today, the two parties can be clearly distinguished from one another in terms of content. This was not always the case.
The greatest difference between Republicans and Democrats lies in the desired relationship between autonomy and centralism. Whereas Democrats tend to give more authority to the federal government in Washington, the Republicans advocate greater self-government for the states.
However, the two parties also have very different economic, social, environmental, and educational policy positions. Democrats advocate a strong state with social safeguards; Republicans prefer market freedom and individual responsibility. Consequently, issues such as tax cuts, national debt, funding for social minorities and job creation programs are hotly contested between the parties.
Democratic Party
Democratic Party is the older and, by membership, the stronger of the two major American parties. It is one of the oldest political associations in the world. 16 of the previous 45 U.S. presidents were Democrats.
1828 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Jackson was derided as a jackass by his political opponents. He used the strong-willed animal to symbolise his campaign and won the election. The donkey appeared again in a cartoon by a caricaturist in 1870. Since then, it has been considered the unofficial heraldic animal of the Democrats. The Democratic party color is blue.
In the early 19th century, Democrats emerged from the Democratic-Republican Party, also called Jefferson-Republicans. Thomas Jefferson had already founded this party in 1792. Democrats dominated American politics in the first decades of the 19th century. However, their attitude toward slavery ended their supremacy.
Southern Democrats favored slavery. A split occurred between the Northern and Southern factions in 1860. The following War of Secession (1861 to 1865) led to the party’s loss of legitimacy for decades, as southern states were disenfranchised during the military occupation. After that, the southern states were the Democrats’ bastion of power for decades in return.
During the 20th century, societal changes resulting from industrialization caused a shift in the party’s political positions. Democrats took up demands from labor and called for government action in the social and economic spheres.
During the 1960s, the Democrats, under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, made their mark as pioneers of the black civil rights movement and the left-liberal welfare state. Economic consequences discredited the party and led to Republican rule in 1980, lasting until 1993. After that, Democrat Bill Clinton was president of the United States until 2001. 2008 the democratic politician Barack Obama could win the presidential election.
Democrats are considered the more liberal party in America. However, the political spectrum within the party extends from left-wing to conservative. In principle, Democrats are in favor of a stronger state and of regulating the economic order. They also view it as the government’s duty to provide social and economic programs for those in need. Welfare issues are the Democrats’ bastion.
Thus, this party stands for the right to abortion and the political enforcement of equal rights for all population groups via quota regulations. President Obama accordingly pushed through the introduction of the first truly universal health insurance during his term in office. Democrats also advocate greater emphasis on environmental and climate protection and broader access to academic education.
Whereas the party voted almost unanimously in favor of military action in Afghanistan in 2001, it was split when it came to voting on the war in Iraq. Since then, the party has been searching for a common position on the issue of terrorism/national security.
Its supporters can be found in all walks of life. The Democratic Party gathers strong forces from the working class and many supporters from ethnic minorities, university graduates and the upper-middle class.
Strongholds of the Democrats are the populous Pacific Coast states, the northeast of the country and the Great Lakes region. In contrast, most smaller inland states are dominated by the Republicans. Because small states are overrepresented in the electoral college, Democratic candidates tend to need more votes to win elections than Republican candidates.
Republican Party
Republican Party is the second-largest party in the United States. Also called the Grand Old Party, the GOP has held 19 of the 45 U.S. presidents.
Another symbol of the Republican Party, an elephant, dates back to a cartoon from 1874. It depicts a horde of startled animals racing away from a donkey dressed as a lion, including an elephant with “the Republican voters” inscription. Republicans have since accepted and grown fond of the elephant as their heraldic animal. Their party color is red.
Founded in 1854, The Republican Party was founded by Abraham Lincoln and other opponents of slavery. Many Northern Democrats, who resented the increasing dominance of the Southern states in their party, joined the newly formed party. Only six years later, Abraham Lincoln was elected the first Republican president in 1860. In doing so, it broke the dominance of the Democrats that had existed for years. By 1865, the Republicans, against Democratic votes, managed to abolish slavery throughout the United States.
For over fifty years after the Civil War, Republicans dominated American politics. During this time, the Republicans and their presidents stood for economic progress. The party of the capitalist middle class drew primarily on the northern industrial states. During both World Wars and from 1945 to 1952, Republicans were the opposition party. They have provided the vast majority of U.S. presidents since their founding. Current President Donald Trump also belongs to the Republican Party.
Today, Republicans are considered economically liberal and conservative. That means they advocate a private-sector social order with as little government regulation as possible and are in favor of tax cuts. In contrast, they are very reluctant or even reject social welfare measures. Republicans are also critical of environmental protection.
Moreover, many Republicans are critical of environmental protection. They question whether climate change is caused by humans and fear that environmental protection will harm the interests of the national economy.
National security has become a major issue in Republican politics since September 11, 2001. For example, so many Republicans advocate preemptive military action to protect the country and voted for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. They also supported stronger border security and a crackdown on illegal immigrants.
There are several currents within the Republican Party: Christian conservatives, neoconservatives, and economic liberals. Recently, the conservative forces have gained influence by forming the arch-conservative Tea Party movement.
Despite certain differences, the Republicans oppose marriage for same-sex couples and abortion on principle. They traditionally support free ownership of guns and harsh penalties for criminals, including capital punishment.
Republicans have their most consistent voters in the white, protestant population groups of small towns and suburbs, among the business bourgeoisie, and among upscale professional groups. Even the more modest rural population tends to vote Republican.
Though the Republican Party grew out of the anti-slavery movement, it has only a few supporters among the black population. It often finds its voters in the slightly older and better-educated population segments. Traditionally, the party’s strong support comes from military members and from voters who identify themselves as active Christian believers.
The most secure states for Republicans in national elections are primarily in the Northwest and South of the country and in the Great Plains area.
Democrat or Republican?
So what makes someone a Democrat or a Republican? Answer: parents, where they live, their interest in a political career, and their world of ideas. But more than anything, it is a sense of a world to which one belongs.
Kids of Democratic parents will hear more positive things about the role of government, minorities’ politics and emancipation than kids of Republican parents who focus on taxes, the free market and individual responsibility.
And, when it comes to policy, there is nothing either the Republicans or the Democrats can get right, for what is a Democrat and what is a Republican is not defined anywhere. There is no policy statement; it is not certain that the nominee of any party is going to do what is expected by the usual pattern. Plus, they vary over time.
Republicans vs Democrats
For a long time, Lincoln’s party, the Republicans, could count on the support of the (few) blacks who could vote. Democrats were racists or indifferent. A President like Woodrow Wilson didn’t care what happened to blacks in the Deep South (or in his own state of New Jersey). In contrast, Republicans like Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge (yes, that conservative darling) were bold about it.
Franklin Roosevelt changed things, albeit mostly because of his reputation as a savior of the economy, rather than because he did much for civil rights. Nope, this was Lyndon Johnson, who ended segregation with civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965 and was the Democrat who got most blacks to vote Democrat. That’s remarkable because it was the Democrats in the Deep South. They were the most racist and the hardest to convince to support Johnson.
As a result, during the 1970s and 1980s, the South went Republican. Partially out of anger over civil rights laws and partially because conservative Southerners were Democrats only because a hundred years earlier, in the Civil War, The Democratic Party had been the party of the South. Democratic members of Congress were often far more conservative and even reactionary than liberal Republicans from the Midwest or New England. And now, the deep South is Republican territory.
It is, briefly, complicated history. Political parties are first and foremost campaign machines, not fundamental ideological parties. What’s more, voting is about people, not about parties. Some people spend their lives voting for a Republican for mayor, despite being Democrats, simply because they know the man in question.
Register
Civilians must register as voters. They do so in most states as a Democrat, a Republican, or Independent. In some States, registering as a Democrat does not allow you to vote in the Republicans’ primaries. That sometimes leads to strategic registration. Indeed, when your state or district is very Republican, you want to participate in the debate (vote). You register as an Independent or as a Republican. This has nothing to do with opinion. Furthermore, there are no consequences at all.
For a long time, it was the case in Texas that anyone who wanted to do something on the political scene ran as a Democrat because Republicans were not elected to anything anyway. Now it has been reversed. To be a candidate for the Democrats guarantees to lose. Take Phil Gramm, a conservative boss, now Senator for Texas. He started out as a conservative Democratic delegate.
However, in the Reagan revolution, he saw the tide turning and made a wise career move: he moved to the Republicans, who were much closer to him in ideas. He was clever enough to ask his district for another election, and he was elected again, now as a Republican. All of the media attention was enough for him to step up a little later to the Senate seat for Texas, which was now also in Republican hands. He tried again in 1988 to run as a presidential candidate for the Republicans. Unsuccessfully.
Consider. Colin Powell and earlier Dwight Eisenhower, both soldiers and therefore supposedly unpolitical, did not know which party they belonged to. But once their potential as voter pullers became clear, parties fought over it. And it can still be maintained that Colin Powell belongs to the Democratic rather than the Republican Party.
At least in domestic politics, that is true. His speech at the last Republican convention swept his party’s mantle about the ratio of aid given to business to that given to poor children in America. But then, Powell made his career in Republican administrations. He knew those people, and so he turned out to be a Republican after all.
Daisy Eisenhower had both parties going for him. The General was purple Avant la lettre, because he really didn’t care. His administration didn’t turn out to be great Republicans either. Still, the big difference was that he drew on a reservoir of Republican people.
Minority in Congress
The division in Congress is also significant. Up until 1994, it was practically impossible to play a significant role as a Republican congressman. Democrats had already had a majority in the House of Representatives since 1954. Everyone who wanted to play had to be a Democrat.
There are, naturally, those who are convinced that their ideas can only be found at a particular party. Normally, this is nonsense. At the same time, there are very conservative Christians in the South who are Democrats (many black Christians are conservative, not Republicans), though it is certainly true that the Christian right does not feel at home with pro-abortion, gay-friendly Democrats. Similarly, an activist with the Sierra Club is unlikely to find a hearing for his environmental arguments among Republicans.
One by one, a subset is absorbed into one of the parties. The environment with the Democrats, the Christian things with the Republicans. But even that can change. Unions were always supposed to be Democratic, but they switched to the Republicans in Reagan’s day. And when they can get their interests better with the other party, they are gone. Because that is another key to the system: Where are our interests best served?
America have been purple for years
The two parties’ electorates tend to overlap in their ideas, and that is because there is a very large middle group in American society that has the same ideas. It’s only the extremes that are unique to each party. The vast middle is moderately conservative, pro-free market, pro-sane role of government, for sensible foreign policy. Democrats have more union members, whereas big business votes Republican. Still, they both do so to get benefits from the government. They eat from the same trough and with the same greed.
That broad political middle is sometimes populated by one party and the other. Clinton’s great success was that he brought the Democrats back to the center, Bush the Elder’s and 1996 Bob Dole’s failure was that their party appeared to be a bunch of far-right irregulars. Now Bush the Younger is trying to fix that.
Campaigning for office
The essential thing is that party affiliation hardly matters in the United States. Everyone can participate in the debates; nobody asks for your membership card. One candidate wants to be elected and asks for support from Democrats and Republicans.
It’s a whole different story how one ultimately gets to run for office. Both major parties have set up an exclusive system that favors their candidates. Still, Democrats couldn’t do anything about a Ku Klux Klan member, Mr Duke, who ran as a Democrat in the Louisiana primary.
Third parties and smaller third parties – additional parties in the U.S.
Third parties are parties that have influenced the two major parties in their platforms and/or have had notable successes in the past with their own candidates in presidential elections. Third parties include the Green Party, Constitution Party and Libertarian Party.
However, by no means is the party system in the United States limited to just the two major parties or a few others. There are many other small and regional parties called Smaller Third Parties.
In the meantime, a problem for the Third and Small Parties is the tightened regulations for candidacy: The required amount of supporters or members cannot be achieved for the small parties in many states.
Green Party
Founded in 1991, The Green Party of the United States is the Green Party in the United States. Green Party is committed to grassroots democracy and social justice, sustainable development, and gender equity.
In contrast to most other Green parties worldwide, the Green Party of the United States representatives has been successful almost exclusively in local elections. Ralph Nader, a Green Party member, first ran for president in 1996. He received 0.7 percent of the vote. 2020 Howie Hawkins is running in the presidential election for the Green Party.
Constitution Party
Constitution Party is a conservative political party in the United States whose policy positions are to the right of the Republican Party. It was founded in 1991 as the U.S. Taxpayers Party. Constitution Party seeks to limit the role of the central government, state welfare, red tape regulation, and immigration.
Its results in presidential elections are less than one percent; Howard Phillips did best in 1996 and Chuck Baldwin in 2008, each managing 0.19 percent. Don Blankenship is running in the 2020 presidential election for the Constitution Party.
Libertarian Party
Founded in 1971, The Libertarian Party is one of the larger third parties in the United States, with more than 200,000 registered voters* and more than 600 officeholders. The party advocates a libertarian policy and favors a largely free-market economy and a minimum state on the political level.
Individual rights and self-responsibility of the individual citizens are placed at the center. Historically, the results of Libertarian Party candidates in presidential elections have been around one percent. Ed Clark achieved 1.1 percent in 1980. In 2020, Jo Jorgensen ran for the Libertarian Party in the presidential election.
Also Read:
Smaller Third Parties – Active small and regional third parties
A variety of other minor parties exist:
- The American Party
- American Freedom Party (previously American Third Position / A3P)
- America’s Party
- Citizens Party
- Communist Party USA
- Freedom Socialist Party
- Independence Party of America
- Independent American Party
- Modern Whig Party
- Objectivist Party
- Party for Socialism and Liberation
- Prohibition Party
- Reform Party of the United States of America
- Social Democrats USA
- Socialist Equality Party
- Socialist Party USA
- Socialist Workers Party
- United States Pirate Party
- Unity Party of America
- Workers World Party
- Working Families Party
- Other small parties have regional significance:
- Alaskan Independence Party
- Conservative Party of New York State
- Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party
- Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño
- Peace and Freedom Party (California)
- Rent Is Too Damn High Party (New York)
- Vermont Progressive Party
