Evolution of political parties in picking candidates and voter mobilization | Khan Academy

In the video on linkage institutions, we talk a lot about political parties and the various roles that they play in the political system.

In particular, we talk about how they are involved in recruiting candidates, and as we will talk about in this video, we'll think about how candidates are actually chosen to represent a political party. We also talk about, in that video on linkage institutions, how political parties are involved in voter mobilization, which is a fancy way of saying, hey, getting people to vote, getting people energized about the election to actually get to the polls. Sometimes going as far as getting buses transporting them to the polling stations and campaign management.

One thing that is really interesting to appreciate and is really the focus of this video is that both of these things have evolved over time.

For example, George Washington, the first president of the United States, he was not affiliated with any party, and our first two presidential elections had no party association. But as soon as we get to the election of 1796, we start to see the development of factions. You have Hamilton on one side, who becomes head of the Federalist Party, and on the other side, headed by Madison, you have the Democratic-Republican Party.

There is a nice irony to this because it was exactly those two gentlemen that not too far before 1796, if we go to the late 1780s, in their attempt to get the Constitution ratified in the Federalist Papers, they argue against faction—how faction can be bad for a government, for a nation. But they were the ones that led the split into factions and the split into parties. From that time, for over a hundred years, all the way until we get to the early 1900s, you have some situations where the party leadership might pick candidates, and some situations where the party members pick candidates in conventions.

So, you have party leadership and members, we could say, handpick candidates. This part of the process was not so broadly democratic. Especially when we get to the second half of the 1800s, you have very strong party leaders, often called party bosses, who almost had the individual power to pick candidates to represent one party or another.

But in the early 1900s, there was a movement to say, hey, you know what? This is not so democratic to handpick the candidates that people have to choose from. And so this is when you start to have the direct primary system. To choose the candidates that represent one party or another, you will hold elections, and those elections could be closed primaries, where you have to be a registered Republican to vote for who represents the Republican Party, or a registered Democrat to see who represents the Democratic Party.

But they also have open primaries, where anyone could vote in the Democratic primary or anyone could vote in the Republican primary. This is happening to this day. Now this change that has happened over roughly the last hundred years, you can imagine this has changed the power dynamic between the parties and the candidates.

For this first over a hundred years, the party is where a lot of the power was, but once you start having the direct primary, it becomes a lot more about candidate-centered campaigns, where things become much more about the position and the personality of the candidate than maybe as much about the party platform. Because of that, it has become more common in the last hundred or so years where, even if someone is a registered Republican, they might vote the other way, or someone is a registered Democrat, they might vote the other way if a candidate is particularly appealing.

For example, John F. Kennedy was the Democratic candidate for president in 1960, but many Republican Irish Catholics voted for him. Similarly, there's a group of folks known as the Reagan Democrats who are famous for despite their party affiliation with the Democrats voted for President Reagan. And that was all around this idea that it was more about the candidate, especially at the presidential level, than it is about the party.

Now, just as how the candidate-picking process has evolved over time, so has the voter mobilization and the campaign management. In the early days, a lot of the voter mobilization, in fact, if we think about the late 1800s, where you have this party boss structure, you had people sometimes going as far as even, you know, giving people things in order to go and vote for one candidate or another, or exerting some type of pressure.

The late 1800s, or the second half of the 1800s, especially in places like Chicago and New York, were sometimes infamous for not the necessarily cleanest elections. But as you get into the 20th century, especially the second half of the 20th century and now the 21st century, things have become much, much more sophisticated.

If we go to the 20th century, you have significant use of mass media. Mass media, and as you go into TV, newspaper, radio, and newspaper has always been a factor in political elections going all the way back to the founding of the United States. As you go into the 21st century, things have gotten a lot more targeted. Obviously, you can have email campaigns, and you can start to leverage social media.

In the 21st century in particular, things like email campaigns and social media have allowed for very specific targeting to voters. What do I mean by targeting? Well, let's say you really care about economic issues, while your cousin who lives across town really cares about social issues. The same candidate, instead of sending both of you the same email, might send you a targeted message that speaks to what you care about.

This has actually become very, very sophisticated in the last few years. I'll leave you there, but the big takeaway here is political parties have been around for a while in the United States, but they have been evolving. In this video, I'm not even talking about how their platforms have evolved and how their associations have evolved, but this is talking about how they have evolved in terms of picking candidates and how that has changed the nature of campaigns.

Also, how primarily through the changes in culture and the changes in technology, how they go about mobilizing and managing campaigns has also changed.