How Important Are Interest Groups In Politics

1677 Words7 Pages

1) Interest groups have become a big factor in today’s politics. Interest groups can help a candidate gain an advantage in the race through many resources that they have, resources like relationships, coalition solidarity, information, status, expertise, and I think the most important one money. These are the resources that can help a candidate gain an edge in a race. With money specifically if a candidate is in support of an interest groups agenda and that interest group supplies them with money that can fund their campaign, this will leave that candidate with more resources to use that can help them win their race. Imagine a candidate who is self-funding their whole campaign and using their own money to buy air time for ads on TV, …show more content…

So seeing all that and taking into count that republicans control congress, you can see that interest groups can help a candidate tremendously. Another way interest groups can really help a candidate is with their status. The NRA is one interest group who are really present in congress (they basically own republicans) there are multiple politicians who are supported by the NRA. The NRA is one of the interest groups out there that can attract all kinds of members to their group, specifically celebrities. So the NRA can use this resource of having famous members that are apart of their group to help a candidate sway voters, for example imagine a candidate who is supported by the NRA and he or she is able to get Ted Nugent to one of their rallies, imagine the attention and popularity this candidate may gain from a certain group of the country that may be big ted nugget fans or just rock fans in general. It’s kind of like a bandwagon effect, once people who idolize Ted Nugent see that he is supporting a candidate they may say , hey if Teds Supporting him I might as well