Agenda

• Today: Political Parties

• Next class: The Texas Legislature

    - Homework begin (50% by class start): Chapter 07 The Legislature - Begin by February 26

Announcemnts

What are political parties?

What are political parties?

What are political parties?

What are political parties?

How do parties decide their interests and rules?

• primary elections
• party committees
• party conventions

Typical party structure in the US

• local party committees elected by primary or caucus
• local party committees elect state party committees and state convention delegates
• state party committees elect national party committee members and national delegates

What are political parties?

What are political parties?

Party conventions

• Held every four years

• Delegates are elected in the state primaries and caucuses

    - Delegates are pledged to support a candidate
    - Delegates select the party’s nominee for president
    - Delegates also draft the party platform
    - Usually a formality
    - In the past, conventions were more important

• Rules set by party National Committees

Democratic Convention Rules

• Superdelegate

    - party leader or elected official who is automatically a delegate
    - not pledged to support a candidate
    - can vote for any candidate
    -  out of total delegates       

• 2020:

    - 771 superdelegates
    - 3,979 pledged delegates
    - 4,750 total delegates

• Superdelegates helped Independent Bernie Sanders in 2016

Republican Convention Rules

• Superdelegates are not used in the Republican Party
• Former Democrat and Reform Party Member Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016

Authorship and License

• Author: Tom Hanna

• Website: tomhanna.me

• License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.