Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Why are there only two parties in America?
A two-party system is a party system where two major political parties dominate the government. One of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referred to as the "majority" or "governing party" while the other is the "minority" or "opposition party". Around the world, the term has different senses. For example, in the United States, Jamaica, and Malta, the sense of "two-party system" describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to one of the only two major parties, and third parties rarely win any seats in the legislature. In such arrangements, two-party systems are thought to result from various factors like winner-takes-all election rules. In such systems, while chances for third-party candidates winning election to major national office are remote, it is possible for groups within the larger parties, or in opposition to one or both of them, to exert influence on the two major parties. In contrast, in the United Kingdom and Australia and in other parliamentary systems and elsewhere, the term "two-party system" is sometimes used to indicate an arrangement in which two major parties dominate elections but in which there are viable third parties which do win seats in the legislature, and in which the two major parties exert proportionately greater influence than their percentage of votes would suggest.
Each state in the United States has a legislature as part of its form of civil government. Most of the fundamental details of the legislature are specified in the state constitution. 49 state legislatures are bicameral bodies, composed of a lower house (Assembly, General Assembly, State Assembly, House of Delegates, or House of Representatives) and an upper house (Senate). The United States also has one federal district and five non-state territories with local legislative branches, which are also listed below. Among the states, the Nebraska Legislature is the lone unicameral body, although three other areas, that are the District of Columbia, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, also have unicameral bodies.
Both parties began as loose groupings or tendencies, but became quite formal by 1784 with the ascension of Charles James Fox as the leader of a reconstituted Whig Party, arrayed against the governing party of the new Tories under William Pitt the Younger. Both parties were founded on rich politicians more than on popular votes, and there were elections to the House of Commons, but a small number of men controlled most of the voters.
Since then the Conservative and Labour parties have dominated British politics, and have alternated in government ever since. However, the UK is not quite a two-party system as other parties have significant support. The Liberal Democrats were the third largest party until the 2015 general election when they were overtaken by the Scottish National Party in terms of seats and UK political party membership, and by the UK Independence Party in terms of votes.
The three largest and most significant political parties that support the Union are the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative and Unionist Party, all of which organise and stand in elections across Great Britain. The three parties have philosophical differences about what Scotland's status should be, particularly in their support of devolution (historically Home Rule) or federalism. These parties hold representation in both the Scottish and UK Parliaments. Other smaller political parties support the Union, including the UK Independence Party (UKIP), A Better Britain – Unionist Party, Britain First, Britannica Party, the British National Party (BNP), National Front (NF) and the Scottish Unionist Party (SUP).
However, like most Forty-Eighters, his attention became increasingly focused on domestic political issues in the United States, and in particular the issue of abolishing slavery. When the Illinois Republican Party was organized at a convention in 1856, German-American Forty-Eighters were everywhere conspicuous in the proceedings; Hecker and Abraham Lincoln were selected to be the two electors-at-large if John Frémont were to win the state (which he did not). The Republicans attracted a wide array of political perspectives, with often strongly divergent views except for their opposition to slavery, and the interests of the immigrant Forty-Eighters was in conflict with the nativist Know Nothings. The influence of Hecker and the other German-American leaders was critical in keeping the party unified in regard to its most important principles.
Because each state is represented by two senators, regardless of population, each Senate class collectively represents a different number of people than each other Senate class. Since the early 19th century, class 2 senators have cumulatively represented between 50-60% of the population of the United States, while senators from each of the other two classes have cumulatively represented approximately 70-75% of the population of the United States. (Because each state has two senators, the sum total of these figures is 200%, not 100%.) Several currently large states, including California, New York, Florida, and Ohio, all have their senators in classes 1 and 3, helping to create this imbalance.
A 2014 Gallup poll found that a plurality of Americans believe the media is biased to favor liberal politics. According to the poll, 44% of Americans feel that news media are "too liberal" (70% of self-identified conservatives, 35% of self-identified moderates, and 15% of self-identified liberals), while 19% believe them to be "too conservative" (12% of self-identified conservatives, 18% of self-identified moderates, and 33% of self-identified liberals), and 34% "just about right" (49% of self-identified liberals, 44% of self-identified moderates, and 16% of self-identified conservatives). In 2017, Gallup released the results of a poll with a similar question, with it finding that the majority of Americans view the news media favoring a particular political party, with 64% believing it favored the Democratic Party, compared to 22% who believed it favored the Republican Party.
The [[United States Congress]] is the [[Bicameralism|bicameral]] [[legislature]] of the [[Federal government of the United States|federal government]] of the [[United States|United States of America]], consisting of two houses, the [[United States Senate|Senate]] and the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]]. They awarded [[The Jackson 5]] with a "Special Commendation" for positive [[role model]]s in 1972.
The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies or Thirteen American Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America founded in the 17th and 18th centuries. They declared independence in 1776 and formed the United States of America. The Thirteen Colonies had very similar political, constitutional, and legal systems and were dominated by Protestant English-speakers. They were part of Britain's possessions in the New World, which also included colonies in Canada, the Caribbean, and the Floridas.
The American Society of Mexico is currently run by society president Larry Rubin, who although is the primary representative of the US Republican Party in Mexico demonstrates a conduct of empowering bipartisanship in the society by frequently working alongside and welcoming left-wing organizations. Additionally, Rubin]] went on air to publicly withdraw support from (at the time) presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.
The UK political system, while technically a multi-party system, has functioned generally as a two-party (sometimes called a "two-and-a-half party") system; since the 1920s the two largest political parties have been the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. Before the Labour Party rose in British politics the Liberal Party was the other major political party along with the Conservatives. Though coalition and minority governments have been an occasional feature of parliamentary politics, the first-past-the-post electoral system used for general elections tends to maintain the dominance of these two parties, though each has in the past century relied upon a third party to deliver a working majority in Parliament. (A plurality voting system usually leads to a two-party system, a relationship described by Maurice Duverger and known as Duverger's Law.) There are also numerous other parties that hold or have held a number of seats in Parliament.
There are 23 league across the United States, in 22 states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California (NorCal & SoCal), Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Oregon, West Virginia, Maryland, Montana and Wisconsin.
Opposing factions led by Henry Clay helped form the Whig Party. The Democratic Party had a small yet decisive advantage over the Whigs until the 1850s, when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery. In 1854, angry with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, anti-slavery Democrats left the party and joined Northern Whigs to form the Republican Party.
Commonwealth is a designation used by four of the 50 states of the United States in their full official state names: Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Prior to the formation of the United States of America in 1776, all four were part of Great Britain's possessions along the Atlantic coast of North America. As such, they share a strong influence of English common law in some of their laws and institutions.
"The Partisan Sort: How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Became Republicans", is a book on the phenomenon of growing political polarization in the United States. Levendusky finds that while a small number have become more extreme over time, most contemporary Americans maintain relatively similar views to those in previous generations. What has changed is the way people sort themselves into parties. Previously, many liberals identified as Republicans and many conservatives identified as Democrats. More recently, the parties have become more ideologically pure and encouraged people to think of themselves in that way as well. Thus, voters have been "sorting" into Democrats and Republicans and eliminated much of the middle ground that existed in previous generations.
President of the Republic: Martín Alberto Vizcarra Cornejo
In the United States, the president and vice president are elected every four years in indirect (electoral college) presidential elections. The legislative bodies of the United States are the Senate (who serve six year terms) and House of Representatives (2 year terms). The Senate has one-third of its members up for election every two years while the House has all its membership up for election every two years. Regarding elections to the United States Congress, the point of reference is the president's term. There are three classes of United States Senators; each election replaces one class, hence a "midterm election" appears as one-third through the term of one class and two-thirds through the other, while still midway the term of a president. In addition to federal legislative bodies, governors of 36 states and three territories are also up for election during a midterm election.
In the first decade of the 21st century, two populist movements appeared in the US, both in response to the Great Recession: the Occupy movement and the Tea Party movement. The populist approach of the Occupy movement was broader, with its "people" being what it called "the 99%", while the "elite" it challenged was presented as both the economic and political elites. The Tea Party's populism was Producerism, and thus implicitly racialized, while "the elite" it presented was more party partisan than that of Occupy, being defined largely—although not exclusively—as the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama.
The 2016 presidential election saw a wave of populist sentiment in the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, with both candidates running on anti-establishment platforms in the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. Both campaigns criticized free trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump's electoral victory coincided with a similar trend of populism in Europe in 2016.
Britain approached the task of governing its New World territories in a less centralized manner, establishing about twenty distinct colonies in North America and the Caribbean from 1585 onward. Each British colony had its own governor and most would have representative assemblies. Most of the North American Thirteen Colonies that became the United States had strong self-government via popular assemblies that countered the authority of governors with their own assertions of rights via parliamentry and other English sources of authority. Only property owners could vote in British polities, but since so many free men in mainland British Colonial America owned land, a majority could vote and participate in popular politics. The British challenge to the authority of colonial assemblies, especially via taxation, was a major cause of the American Revolution in the 1770s.
White Americans are the majority in 49 of the 50 states, with Hawaii as the exception. "Non-Hispanic Whites" are the majority in 46 states; Hawaii, New Mexico, California, and Texas (and the District of Columbia) are the exceptions. These five jurisdictions have "minority majorities", i.e. minority groups compose the majority of the population.
A so-called "third party" in the United Kingdom are the Liberal Democrats. In the 2010 election, the Liberal Democrats received 23% of the votes but only 9% of the seats in the House of Commons. While electoral results do not necessarily translate into legislative seats, the Liberal Democrats can exert influence if there is a situation such as a hung parliament. In this instance, neither of the two main parties (at present, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party) have sufficient authority to run the government. Accordingly, the Liberal Democrats can in theory exert tremendous influence in such a situation since they can ally with one of the two main parties to form a coalition. This happened in the Coalition government of 2010. Yet in that more than 13% of the seats in the British House of Commons are held in 2011 by representatives of political parties other than the two leading political parties of that nation, contemporary Britain is considered by some to be a multi-party system, and not a two-party system. The two party system in the United Kingdom allows for other parties to exist, although the main two parties tend to dominate politics; in this arrangement, other parties are not excluded and can win seats in Parliament. In contrast, the two party system in the United States has been described as a duopoly or an enforced two-party system, such that politics is almost entirely dominated by either the Republicans or Democrats, and third parties rarely win seats in Congress.
In countries such as Britain, two major parties emerge which have strong influence and tend to elect most of the candidates, but a multitude of lesser parties exist with varying degrees of influence, and sometimes these lesser parties are able to elect officials who participate in the legislature. In political systems based on the Westminster system, which is a particular style of parliamentary democracy based on the British model and found in many commonwealth countries, a majority party will form the government and the minority party will form the opposition, and coalitions of lesser parties are possible; in the rare circumstance in which neither party is the majority, a hung parliament arises. Sometimes these systems are described as "two-party systems" but they are usually referred to as "multi-party" systems. There is not always a sharp boundary between a two-party system and a multi-party system.
In contrast, a voting system that allows only a single winner for each possible legislative seat is sometimes termed a plurality voting system or single-winner voting system and is usually described under the heading of a "winner-takes-all" arrangement. Each voter can cast a single vote for any candidate within any given legislative district, but the candidate with the most votes wins the seat, although variants, such as requiring a majority, are sometimes used. What happens is that in a general election, a party that consistently comes in third in every district is unlikely to win any legislative seats even if there is a significant proportion of the electorate favoring its positions. This arrangement strongly favors large and well–organized political parties that are able to appeal to voters in many districts and hence win many seats, and discourages smaller or regional parties. Politically oriented people consider their only realistic way to capture political power is to run under the auspices of the two dominant parties.
Duverger concluded that "plurality election single-ballot procedures are likely to produce two-party systems, whereas proportional representation and runoff designs encourage multipartyism." He suggested there were two reasons why "winner-takes-all" systems leads to a two-party system. First, the weaker parties are pressured to form an alliance, sometimes called a "fusion", to try to become big enough to challenge a large dominant party and, in so doing, gain political clout in the legislature. Second, voters learn, over time, not to vote for candidates outside of one of the two large parties since their votes for third party candidates are usually ineffectual. As a result, weaker parties are eliminated by voters over time. Duverger pointed to statistics and tactics to suggest that voters tended to gravitate towards one of the two main parties, a phenomenon which he called "polarization", and tend to shun third parties. For example, some analysts suggest that the Electoral College system in the United States, by favoring a system of winner-takes-all in presidential elections, is a structural choice favoring only two major parties.