Election

1. The reason why elections are less democratic is because some people say that money is taking away from our well known democracy, but in other instances we have the greatest democracy compared to other countries of our vast magnitude.

2. Throughout the nineteenth century campaigns were ran and geared toward the party.  Instead of voting for a person you were voting for an individual party either federalist or  democratic-republican. Today, in the twentieth century, we vote for the candidate and their true character or what they have to offer us.  To run a successful campaign now-a-days you need money, a good pollster, well organized debate, direct mail, and positive publicity.

3. "Money is the mother's milk of politics" if you don't have you aren't going to go any where.  Campaign money is received part from federal and part from private donors in a presidential election, but congressional elections are all private donors.  Most of the money for a congressional leader comes from individual donors, but they also have political action committees (interest groups) that raise money for their campaign.  Presidential candidates also raise money from individual donors because the federal government will match them dollar for dollar.  Reform has been successful in the fact that it minimizes some fat cat buying his or her own pet politician, but it also takes away from the parties, provides an advantage to wealthy challengers, gives advantages to candidates with high ideological appeal, penalizes those who start late in the campaign, and helps incumbents and hurts challengers.

4. The Democratic Party has more registered voters so logically the democrats should win.  The reasons why they don't always win is because those who are democrats are not firmly stuck with their party like republicans are, republicans also do better with the independent voters, and more republicans actually come out and vote than democrats.

5. Realigning elections are also known as critical elections.  It happens when a major party suffers such a defeat (because of a major issue that comes about and separates the party) that it disappears or it is the shifting of voters between major parties.  There has been three major realigning elections:  1860, 1896, and 1932.  In 1860 it was the slavery issue, in 1896 it dealt with economic issues, and in 1932 it occurred because of an economic depression.  Some people say we are getting ready to have one because of the effects of the New Deal, but others say it won't happen again because party labels have lost their meaning.

6. For any given party to win an election you must retain your old voters, but always gain new ones.  The people usually  targeted are young voters coming of age, immigrants becoming citizens, and blacks that are now eligible to vote.

7. Policy is rarely effected by an election in our government compared to other countries such as Britain.  The reason why is that there are so many offices to be filled that it is to hard for everyone to be united under one policy.  In 1860 a party came to power that was opposed to slavery, in 1980 a party came to power that reversed the direction of policy in the last half-century, and party platforms either pass laws through the House of Reps. or in the Senate.