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How Do Political Parties Affect Elections

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When the Presidential campaigns and elections in the United States come around, it is a time of excitement that is full of citizens, political parties, and media trying to sway people one way or another. Each of these plays a significant role in determining the outcome of the elections, and also in the road that leads to it. Whether through rallies, slander, 140 character tweets, or revealing newspaper articles, most people have the potential to affect the elections in some way. The main group of people who are clearly involved in campaigns and elections every year are the two political parties in the US – the Democrat and Republican parties. Political parties are responsible for recruiting members who they feel have the potential to represent …show more content…

Many news-related websites have online polls through which people can submit their opinions on different current events. Political parties use their own websites on the internet to provide information regarding their political views, projects they 're working on, and even have links where a person can contribute a digital donation to their cause. Also, the press has a way of digging into the personal lives of potential candidates, often finding and publishing the stories that don 't necessarily show the candidates ' best sides. Another benefit that the news provides is a way to keep up with things we may have missed, such as interviews conducted with candidates. For instance, just today an article was published in The Washington Post involving Ben Carson’s answers to questions regarding religion in the United States. …show more content…

Groups such as pro-life and pro-choice are arguably the most notorious when it comes to convincing candidates to support them. Abortion is one of the biggest issues facing America today, and whether a candidate is pro-choice or pro-life is a major deciding factor for voters. Individual citizens play perhaps the most crucial role since we are the ones who cast the votes. Without the people, our democracy would be unsuccessful. However, without all the other participating factors, we would be equally unsuccessful. Without the media, promoting parties and candidates would be a tedious process. Without interest groups, individuals would not have a way to join together to endorse what they believe in. All of the elements are joined together in a sort of web, each depending on at least one of the others to accomplish their individual

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Today’s political arena is so tremendous that few voters can fully understand it. Policies of jobs, foreign relations and gay marriage are great factors that forge party lines and get out the vote. However, when forced to choose, voters must make sense of their vote by using very limited information and tangles of misperceptions guided by politically biased newscasts . With so many factors beyond comprehension often voters are hindered due to a limited number of sources to receive unbiased information from (Lenz, 2012) .

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The term “pro-choice” has fallen out of favor when the American public. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) recently discovered that the word just does not seem to have the power to motivate the general population in the way it did when it was first coined. And while other pro-abortion groups may continue to use it, Planned Parenthood is attempting to cast a wider net by abandoning it all together. In the modern media culture, the term “pro-choice” has been used for everything from abortion-on-demand to giving parents the option to choosing what kind of school their child can attend throughout their life.

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