I have noticed that in many a thread arguments between Americans often boil down to ‘Republican V’s Democrat’ style slanging matches. Now I am fairly intrigued as it seems that a lot of Americans have a much more loyal allegiance to their chosen political candidate than I have ever witnessed in the U.K. Does anyone have any opinions as to why this may be, or even if you feel if it is true or not? Do any other international Dopers get a similar impression or do you feel that your respective country has a similar outlook as the U.S? I have never met anyone in Britain who is as rabidly pro [insert political party of choice] as many of the Americans on this board appear to be. Is this a good or bad thing? Are we headed for political meltdown due to complete apathy and disrespect for any potential candidates?
I apologise, I thought I was in GD - could a Mod kindly move this for me?
Well, since it’s going to GD anyway, I’ll venture a “general yes” – I’m not at all fond of the person I’ll vote for, but I’ll for him or her anyway.
It doesn’t really matter about the person so much as the party’s ideology. That’s why I’ll never vote for the other party.
Also, I seem to think that only misguided people vote for the other party anyway. It’s the closest thing we have to a coalition in this party. My united party against every wacky thing you could possibly think of rolled up into one party.
I don’t think it’s loyalty to the candidate so much as it’s loyalty to the party. The most partisan will vote for whatever candidate their party puts up.
This is a particularly divided era in the U.S. There have been times when moderates slid fluidly between the Democratic and Republican parties, when third parties actually seemed quite viable, and when both parties fielded candidates that both liberals and conservatives could respect, if not vote for. Right now, though, there’s some major hate going down, and I think most people are clinging to their candidates as if they’re the tallest mast on a sinking ship.
It just seems that a lot of the folks in the U.S take criticsm of their party a lot more personally. Although I may vote for who I would consider the lesser of two evils I still would be able to agree that they are still essentially rubbish. Maybe it’s because all our candidates are so crap that I (we) are afforded this luxury. Do you think that the ‘War on Terror’ has added to this divide? Do you think it has deepened the left/right division?
Off to GD.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
(bolding mine)
Nametag, you’re not suggesting the US is a sinking ship are you?
As to the OP, the US has 2 viable parties in Federal elections. Not likely to change anytime soon. The quick answer would be to say, take the Tories and Liberals and exclude all the other parties. In that they (the rest of the parties) would have no chance of making headway to significant power in Parliament. The result is the vitriol you see on these boards among us Americans, as well as never having no confidence votes as some countries see with multi-party bodies of law. It may not be perfect to some, but it is very stable. Chances are you won’t have to deal with a new US admin more than once every 4 years.
Yes; one’s party preferences are often formed early in life so you carry that baggage with you. Since there’s no serious fringe parties, you end up creating and refining your beliefs over the years until it’s a whole way of looking at the world–abortion, the death penalty, gay rights, welfare, all of those core value beliefs have to be invested in one party.
And our campaigns are so much longer than yours–we’ve known Bush is running ever since January 2001! He’s the party’s main public face, as Kerry is now for the Dems. And we have to look at those faces for months if not years.
Overall I would say yes… the party is a more important guideline to voting in the long term than candidates. After all compare Reagan to Bush Jr… and FDR to Gore. Both parties have ups and downs.
Still in this election I think a lot of “clinging” to the party is due to the fact that both candidates kind of suck. In many threads we have seen general responses indicating “anything but Bush” or “kerry stinks and I’d rather stay republican”. So when you don’t see good candidates… and the other parties candidate isn’t much of an attractor… then you vote for you preferred party.
Ross Perot or another a good independent would have a great polling this year.Oh no, if the Dem belief is “Anybody But Bush”, then a third-party candidate would not be a good idea. They tend to be leftist, or at least anti-status-quo, so you’d have the Repubs still voting for Bush and the Dems and fence-sitters splitting their vote. Bush wins.
Besides, Ross Perot is widely considered an embarrassing joke at this point. He’s gone a little crazy and the Reform Party is totally off the tracks.
Anyway…carrying a Bush or Kerry sign indicates a couple of things–that you want that party to win. That means you want the man to win too, by definition, but don’t take it as a line-by-line endorsement of what he believes in. For example, I’m pro-life and am pretty disturbed by Kerry’s seeming casual acceptance of abortion and endorsement of the use of ‘discarded’ unborn for stem cell research. But I look at the big picture and realize that the economic desperation and lack of hope in the future that usually drives women to abortion might be less than under Bush. It’s these constant compromises we all have to make here, and probably in every democracy.
Finally, the signs are shorthand. It gets the message across faster and easier to carry a “Kerry '04!” sign than one saying “I mostly agree with the Democratic party line! Please consider voting for our candidates in November!” 
I highly doubt this is perculiar to American politics. I lived in Budapest from 1998-2003 through two elections. Hungarian politics has more active parties, but it’s quickly being whittled down to basically a two-party system (Fidesz and the Socialists) with two satellite parties (the nationalistic MIEP party, and the Free Democrats.)
During the last elections, Fidesz was in power and in a HUGE upset lost to the Socialist candidate. The weeks and months before the election, the tension in Budapest was similar, if not more pronounced, than what we’d experience in America around election time. The weeks after the election, accusations of vote-rigging and the such were bandied about by Fidesz and its supporters.
People are very passionate about their party allegiances, and a discourse between a Fidesz supporter and a Socialist would be more intense what you might find in the US between a Republican and a Democrat.
Once again, I highly doubt this phenomenon is limited to American politics.
The vast majority of Americans are very loyal to their party, and by extension to their party’s candidates. However, I would venture that it is for quite a different reason than those already presented. It seems to me that the most stringent loyalty to parties/candidates is seen in one of two situations - when the two are extreme opposites from each other, or when there is hardly any differences at all. I think that the American political situation is at the latter stage.
Certainly you can go out and find platforms and ideological tracts from both parties and paint a picture of two distinct and widely seperated parties. Abortion, gun ownership, federal social spending/programs, and “Gay Rights” are just a few examples of the topics that Dems and Reps like to argue back and forth in their debates and public appearances. However, these seeming differences are really just an elaborate illusion.
If you take it to a basic level, and look at the actions of the two parties - that is, what politicians from each actually do - there is much less of a difference. Both parties want to win elections, and they do so by appealing to the same voters. There is far more difference, for example, between Reps (or Dems) from Pennsylvania and members of the same party from California than there are differences between Reps and Dems from the same state or region.
All politicians, especially when they reach federal office, are much more interested in maintaining the status quo than they are in promoting the changes they promised as candidates or working toward their party’s professed platform. However, voters are not satisfied with that, so politicians latch on to meaningless differences, and try to make them into serious reasons to vote accordingly. Kerry will accuse Bush for making war in Iraq, while downplaying (or ignoring) the fact that he voted to authorize the action. Likewise, Bush will attack Kerry on some issue (sorry, I tried to think of an actual example but I have totally tuned out this election) for which he is just as culpapble. These issues get blown out of proportion and people take a position on them from which they will not budge.
So, we have political debates in which the Reps say we should cut governemnt spending and the Dems saying we should increase it, and the Dems say we should end our military interventions and the Reps say we need the intervention for our own defence. We pick a side, vote accordingly, and we end up with Reps who argue vehemetly for an increase in spending of 19.8% instead of 20% and Dems sending us to war in Kosovo or Somalia.
“But it’s not my fault,” says Joe Sixpack. “I voted for the other guy.”