B) The main rules

PARTIES AND ELECTIONS

Elections

A) The basis of the system

Exactly every fourth year since 1792, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the people have cast their votes to choose a President. The person elected serves for exactly four years, but in case he should die or resign, a Vice-President is elected with him, to take his place for the remainder of the four-year term if necessary. The whole process, with the long campaign which precedes it, is a symbol of the continuity of American democracy, and of its ability to adapt itself, with faults as well as merit, to the changing conditions in which it functions.

Presidential elections are so complex that they are best discussed separately, after elections to the Congress and to state and other offices, which are held at the same time. For all elections, it is useful to note six general principles. First, the candidate with most votes wins; there is no proportionality. Second, with this 'first past the post' system, politics is dominated by two parties, Republican and Democrat. Third, each party is a coalition of disparate interests, without a unified national policy. Fourth, the two parties choose their candidates at public 'primary elections' (where there may be a second ballot). Fifth, elections for many offices, national, state and local, are usually held together, so that on a single visit to a polling booth a voter may choose candidates for twenty or more offices. Sixth, in most states people vote in referendums, on state or local questions, at the same time as they vote for candidates for offices.

b) The main rules

Citizens aged eighteen or more may register as voters in their home towns, but about a quarter of all Americans do not bother to register, and cannot vote. In some states only people who have registered as Democrats may vote in Democratic primary elections; so too with Republicans. At the final elections in November, a voter's registration as a Republican or Democrat is irrelevant. It is perfectly normal for registered Democrats to vote for Republicans for some or all offices if they want to do so. This applies to the election of a President, of a U.S. Representative, of a senator or of state or local officials. Other states have open primaries, so that, with both parties' primaries held simultaneously, any voter may vote in either party's primary.

Thirty-two states elect their governors in the presidential mid-term years (1986, 1990, etc.), also for four years. The other states elect their governors in other years; three of them have two-year terms. Each state also has its own elected legislature. Several other state officials, such as the Treasurer (finance minister) may be individually elected as well, and in some cases judges; each state has its own mixture of election and appointment. At the same election people choose other local officers - though some local elections are held at other times. In most states there may also be yes-no votes on several referendums, which are usually about petitions for which signatures have been collected. For the main offices the opposed candidates are normally Republican and Democrat (sometimes others too). It is usually possible for a voter to vote for all the Democratic candidates together ('a straight ticket'), but each candidate has campaigned individually, and many people vote for Democrats for some offices, Republicans for others. In many states, candidates for some local offices compete as individuals without party labels.

Participation in elections is lower than in most other countries - around sixty per cent of the eligible voting-age population (and rather less than half in the presidential mid-term years, when the main offices up for election are U.S. representatives and state legislators, as well as governors and senators in two-thirds of the states). Participation in voting is particularly low among young people, among those with less than ten years of schooling, and among those of Hispanic origin, but in the past twenty years participation by black people has increased so that it is now equal to that among whites.

The Parties

It has been said that the two great American parties are like two bottles, both empty, one labelled 'Republican', the other 'Democrat'.

And if the bottles do have anything in them, some ingredients change continuously from one to the other; so any attempt to describe either party needs endless and complex qualification.

Around 1850 the two parties were the Whigs and the Democrats. The old Democrats tended to support state autonomy against the central government. In 1854 a northern alliance of people determined to abolish slavery founded a new party, which they called 'Republican' (reviving an old name). It rapidly absorbed the Whigs. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President in 1861-65, and the Republicans were identified with the northern fight in the Civil War for a Union free of slavery. Afterwards they represented the main stream of developing northern industry and free private enterprise. Outside the South the Democrats attracted the support of the groups who felt themselves to be outside the dominant system: around 1900 the less favoured immigrants from Eastern Europe and Ireland, and as time went on other non-insiders too, whether poor or Jewish or intellectuals or Catholic or (very much later) blacks. As labour unions grew up, most of them supported the Democrats.

Since 1933 the Democrats have been the party of the left - outside the South. The 1932 election was fought in the midst of the worst economic depression ever experienced. Probably a quarter of the people were unemployed, without any systematic relief. Franklin Roosevelt won, and led the Democrats with his 'New Deal' programme, involving federal and state intervention in the economy and the beginnings of governmental social services. In the next forty years the Democrats pushed these policies further, particularly during the presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson. Since the beginning of the seventies there has been little real progress in this direction.

The Republicans have, at least since 1900, shown more qualities associated with the right: less government intervention in the economy; little enthusiasm for new social programmes; patriotic language (but in practice until 1980 a cautious foreign policy); much talk about the responsibility of the individual, and about state and local autonomy. They are in general supported by business interests.

Southern politics are different. Because of its origins, the Republican Party could gain no support at all among the dominant southern white population. For many decades there was only one party in the south, the Democrats. All political contests were contests between factions of the Democratic Party - and the most conservative factions usually won. So in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives the southern states were represented always by Democrats, often more conservative than any Republicans from the North. By the 1960s many conservative southerners transferred their allegiance to the Republicans. Since then all the southern states have elected some Republicans as governors and to the U.S. Congress, and have supported some Republicans for the U.S. Presidency - Ronald Reagan in particular. Meanwhile, with blacks and other minorities in the South taking a full part in politics, they in their turn support the Democrats.

In parts of the South the old Democratic party still dominates local politics, with right and left (and other) factions contesting primary elections within the party, while in national politics there is serious rivalry between the Democrats and Republicans, as in most other areas of the nation. Meanwhile the main, or 'liberal' body of the Democratic party now has its most solid basis in the northern cities, and particularly among trade union members and among the black and other ethnic inner-city groups. But these cities do not dominate their states in terms of population. There are more people in the suburbs than in the central cities. To win a majority in the House of Representatives the Democrats need to attract votes on a wide basis. In fact, all through the 1970s and 1980s, with Republicans as Presidents for sixteen years out of twenty, the Democrats had big majorities in the House of Representatives, controlled most state legislatures, and held the governorships of most states (sometimes two-thirds or more). They lost the Senate only in the first six years of Reagan's presidency, and in 1986 regained the majority there that they had enjoyed throughout the 1970s. Such widespread electoral success could not be achieved by a party which Europeans would regard as a party of the left. Although the left is contained within the Democratic party, the party as a whole is based on interests so diverse and scattered that it cannot easily have a coherent party policy. Some of the people elected as Democrats to state and national offices could be considered as being, on a left/right scale, more to the right than their Republican opponents.

The Republicans have always been linked with business large and small, and with the idea that free enterprise is at the foundation of the nation's character. After the disasters of Watergate and the 1976 election, the Republican National Committee began a vigorous campaign to build up a well-funded central party organization through which a coherent party policy might be developed, capable of translating a clear conservative philosophy into ideas for action. The Reagan presidency has not had much success in its pursuit of sound national finance, or in its aim of reducing federal intervention in the social welfare budget, but it has effectively identified the Republican party with the moral and patriotic feelings of the 'silent majority' of the people - though obviously some members of this majority have voted for Democrats for some offices.

Within some states there are big cities, or other areas with substantial populations, where one of the two parties (usually the Democrats) has a virtual monopoly of power and of electoral support. In such places the dominant party's candidates are sure to win, and the real electoral contest is at the dominant party's primary election between rival factions based on ethnic or material interests. Both in these one-party areas and elsewhere there are often five or six rivals for a party's nomination at a primary, and many states provide for a 'run-off' (second ballot) a week or more later, between the two candidates who had most votes at the first.

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