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Summary Of Chapter 7 American Government

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The Chapter 7 Summary Essay – Mitchell LaiFook
Chapter 7 of the “American Government” textbook written by James Q. Wilson, professor at UCLA and Harvard University, and John J. DiIulio Jr., professor at the University of Pennsylvania, teaches about political parties including what they are, the history behind them, the current structure in both the national and state levels, and how they influence elections.
Political parties are a group of people with common goals that are trying to elect some one as a sort of label that shares the groups’ beliefs and will represent their beliefs. In the United States there is a possibility for the election of candidate without a party but in Europe parties elect officials and they must vote with the views …show more content…

There is also the idea of personal following, which is based off one person or a political dynasty and the people that follow the political leaders usually completely agree with their views but this is hard because there are so many candidates and it is difficult for people to get to know the views off of all the candidates. In the United Sates we used a Two Party system where there is two predominant parties along with smaller satellite parties that gather little support. This is pretty rare among many countries. In the national government the two parties are usually even matched and very close to each other in size. In the local and state governments there is a lot of difference between which political party that area chooses. Based on the two-part system and electoral laws, the electorate chooses the candidate that won the popular vote in a state and then all the electoral votes from that state go to the candidate that won the popular vote in that state. It is very hard for the minor parties to attract members because of the way the two-party system is set up. The candidates for president …show more content…

There are six types of voter participation but voting is by far the most common form of political participation. People participate in elections because of their strong sense of civil duty they have but many people tend not to because political parties aren’t as forceful in getting it’s members to vote than in other places. People that vote are usually educated, older, and have a higher income, Throughout the history of the United States o America, many of the citizens have been suppressed in regarding their right to vote. Even though most of the citizens, that are old enough, are eligible to vote there is still low voter turn out. Low voter turnout is most commonly explained by apathy among citizens and problems with registration. Campaigns become more personalistic when they are for primary elections, there is a reliance on the candidate’s image, and there is decline in party identification. There is a lot of strategy involved in political campaigns. The overall strategy should be to appeal to voters in a party for that party’s nomination even if it means becoming more radical so that way you can attract the main group of that party. Once the nomination is secured it is better to have more centrist views to convince those of the opposite party whose votes are wavering, to vote for the candidate. The main reasons that

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