American Politics For Dummies by Wiley

Author:Wiley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118921128
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-08-30T15:59:59+00:00

Considering a Decline of the American Party System Since the 1960s

Up until the 1960s, the parties were viewed as being very important because they, not the individual candidates, were predominately responsible for fundraising, and the caucuses (party committees) chose presidential candidates. In those earlier years, party identification amongst the electorate was high. Because it wasn’t yet the television era, the party was responsible for organising a politician’s campaigns and making the candidate known to the public.

After the 1960s, the situation changed. Party identification was in decline, and from 1988 through to January 2014 those identifying with Democrats went down from 36 per cent to 31 per cent and Republicans from 31 per cent to 25 per cent whilst those seeing themselves as independents shot up from about 33 per cent to 42 per cent.

Campaigns have become more candidate-centred and issue-centred, the result of which is voters choosing candidates from different parties because they’re voting for the candidate and not party ideology. Federal funding for presidential elections is awarded to candidates not parties (although neither Obama nor Romney accepted fund matching in the 2012 elections – see chapter 10 on the electoral process for further details), and since the rise of primaries after the McGovern-Fraser Commission (1968) parties no longer have control over presidential candidate selection as the electorate choose in primaries. (A few states do still use caucuses).

Television enabled candidates to directly appeal to voters, and since the age of the social media this trend has continued. On the Facebook pages of the 2012 presidential election Obama had over 28 million likes and Romney had 5.5 million. In regards to Twitter, at the national political level, around 90 per cent of Senators and House members, and about 42 governors, have an account.

This confluence of factors had led many to believe that the parties are in decline.

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