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===Party organization=== <!-- This section is linked from [[Libertarian Party (United States)]] --> {{See also|Political party strength in U.S. states}} [[File:Combined--Control of the U.S. House of Representatives - Control of the U.S. Senate.png|thumb|right|400px|Control of the Senate, Presidency, and House since 1855, with blue for Democrats and red for Republicans. Any column where all three sections show the same color is a [[government trifecta]]; the other periods are [[Divided government in the United States|divided government]].]] Unlike in many other countries, the major political parties in America have no strong central organization that determines party positions and policies, rewards loyal members and officials, or expels rebels. A party committee or convention may endorse a candidate for office, but deciding who will be the party's candidate in the general election is usually done in primaries open to voters who register as Democrats or Republicans. Furthermore, elected officials who fail to "toe the party line" because of constituent opposition said line and "cross the aisle" to vote with the opposition have (relatively) little to fear from their party. Parties have state or federal committees that act as hubs for fundraising and campaigning (see [[Democratic National Committee]] and [[Republican National Committee]]) and separate campaign committees that work to elect candidates at a specific level but do not direct candidates or their campaigns. In presidential elections, the party's candidate serves as the de facto party leader, whose popularity or lack thereof helps or hinders candidates further down the ballot. Midterm elections are usually considered a referendum on the sitting president's performance.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/07/AR2006110701697.html |title=A Voter Rebuke For Bush, the War And the Right |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=2006-11-08 |quote=Bush and senior adviser Karl Rove tried to replicate that strategy this fall, hoping to keep the election from becoming a referendum on the president's leadership. |first1=Peter |last1=Baker |first2=Jim |last2=VandeHei |access-date=2010-05-26}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/11/04/impeachment/ |title=Election '98 Lewinsky factor never materialized |publisher=CNN |date=1998-11-04 |quote=Americans shunned the opportunity to turn Tuesday's midterm elections into a referendum on President Bill Clinton's behavior, dashing Republican hopes of gaining seats in the House and Senate.}}</ref> Some (e.g., [[Lee Drutman]] and Daniel J. Hopkins before 2018) argue that, in the 21st century, along with becoming [[Political polarization in the United States|overtly partisan]], American politics has become overly focused on national issues and "nationalized" that even local offices, formerly dealing with local matters, now often mention the presidential election.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized |author= Daniel J. Hopkins|publisher=University of Chicago Press|date=2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/polyarchy/2018/5/31/17406590/local-national-political-institutions-polarization-federalism |title=America has local political institutions but nationalized politics. This is a problem |date=May 31, 2018 |access-date=September 27, 2022 |author=Lee Drutman |archive-date=September 27, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220927120850/https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/polyarchy/2018/5/31/17406590/local-national-political-institutions-polarization-federalism |url-status=dead }}</ref> ====Two-party system==== {{See also|Two-party system#Causes of a two-party system|l1=Causes of a two-party system}} "Third" political parties have appeared from time to time in American history but seldom lasted more than a decade. They have sometimes been the vehicle of an individual ([[Theodore Roosevelt]]'s [[Progressive Party (United States, 1912)|"Bull Moose" party]], [[Ross Perot]]'s [[Reform Party of the United States of America|Reform Party]]); had considerable strength in particular regions ([[Socialist Party of America|Socialist Party]], the [[Farmer-Labor Party]], [[Wisconsin Progressive Party]], [[Conservative Party of New York State]],{{NoteTag|In 1970 a candidate of the [[Conservative Party of New York State]] ([[James L. Buckley]]) [[James L. Buckley#Elections|defeated]] the Democratic and Republican party candidates for U.S. Senate.}} and the [[Populist Party (United States)|Populist Party]]); or continued to run candidates for office to publicize some issue despite seldom winning even local elections ([[Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian Party]], [[Natural Law Party (United States)|Natural Law Party]], [[Peace and Freedom Party]]). Factors reinforcing the two-party system include: * The traditional American electoral format of single-member districts where the candidate with the most votes wins (known as the "[[First Past the Post electoral system|first-past-the-post]]" system), which according to [[Duverger's law]] favors the [[two-party system]]. This is in contrast to [[Multiwinner voting|multi-seat electoral districts]]{{NoteTag|not to be confused with the American systems of having two senators representing each state, since the senator's elections in each state are staggered and do not run at the same time.}} and [[proportional representation]] found in some other democracies. * The 19th-century innovation of printing "party tickets" to pass out to prospective voters to cast in ballot boxes (originally, voters went to the polls and publicly stated which candidate they supported) "consolidated the power of the major parties".<ref name="Lepore-NYer-2008"/> * Printed party "tickets" (ballots) were eventually replaced by uniform ballots provided by the state when states began to adopt the [[secret ballot|Australian Secret Ballot Method]]. This gave state legislatures—dominated by Democrats and Republicans—the opportunity to hinder new rising parties with [[ballot access]] laws requiring a large number of petition signatures from citizens and giving the petitioners a short amount of time to gather the signatures.
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