For 2305 students as you prep for the final. Have some familiarity with ideological terminology, as well as the two step electoral process. The chart above provides information about both - in addition to a list of many of the current candidates for the 2016 presidency, as well as information related to the 114th Congress most notably the degree of polarization between Democratic and Republican members.
- Click here for the accompanying article.
Ideology can be measured in many different ways, The author of the article uses Twitter followership, which allows for a dynamic measurement because people can follow and unfollow people regularly.
What stick out to me is the lack of candidates in the middle. Each is more likely to adopt positions that correspond to those of party identifiers. This makes sense since each candidate is running for their party's nomination for the presidency, not the presidency itself. The eventual nominees will concern themselves with the nominees in the few months between their nomination and the election in November 2016.
For purposes of the final, think of these topics in relationship to this material.
- ideology
- party polarization
- political parties
- primary elections
- party identification
- general elections
