1. What is the purpose of political parties in elections for Congress and the Presidency?
- Reading Quiz: Ch 08 - Political Parties
- Download Flipboard (if you haven't yet)
- Send at least one tweet to the Twitter conversation at the class hashtag
- Blog: Read and Comment on Interest Group Posts
- Subscribe to 2nd Period bundle or 4th Period bundle in Google Reader
- Open Flipboard
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- Summarize: EQ#1 - Purpose of Parties in Elections
- How do parties narrow down the field?
- Use primaries to nominate a candidate for Congress (i.e. Four 2012 North Carolina Primary Ballots and 2012 North Carolina Primary Results)
- Use primaries and caucuses to nominate a candidate for President (i.e. 2012 Republican Delegate Tracker and 2012 Republican Convention Roll Call)
- FYI: State parties prefer a closed primary, California recently adopted an open primary
- FYI: Iowa is famous for its first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses; Barack Obama used them to gain momentum against Hillary Clinton in 2008
- How do parties unify the electorate?
- Build a big tent with different demographic groups (i.e. Democrats and Republicans)
- Host national party conventions with primetime speeches
- Approve vague policy platforms (i.e. 2012 Republican Platform and 2012 Democratic Platform)
- How do parties help the candidate win elections?
- Party campaign committees (i.e. RNC, NRSC, NRCC, DNC, DSCC, DCCC)?
- State parties and local parties help with voter registration, phone-banking, and Get-Out-the-Vote
- Other?
- Prediction and Analysis: Party Demographics of Registered Voters
- Look at this data from Pew Research
- What can we learn about the following demographic groups?
- Gender
- Age
- Race
- Education
- Income
- Marital Status
- Parent/Non-Parent
- Homeowner
- Employed
- Union
- Region
- Urban/Surburban/Rural
- Ideology
- Religion
- Based on the data, which party typically gets better voter turnout?
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