Party Platforms and Winning Elections

Political parties mobilize voters to win elections and implement policy goals. Parties use their stated policy goals (i.e., their platforms) as a way to mobilize voter support. Generally, in order to be successful in a two-party system, parties must have policy goals across a broad range of issue areas to appeal to a broad range of voters.

Before writing your initial post, review the assigned resources. To easily access the resources from the Ashford University Library, please see the table located in the Course Materials section.

For this discussion, you will identify one issue area that you want investigate. Use the assigned resources required for this discussion to gather information about the goals and proposals, in that issue area, of three political parties - the Democratic and Republican parties and a third party.

In your initial post of at least 200-250 words, summarize each of the three parties' policy goals in your issue area.  Compare and contrast the parties' goals in that area. Evaluate each party's goals from two perspectives:

• Your own political philosophy, values or ideology.
• How effective each party's goals are likely to be in mobilizing voters to support the party's candidates on the national level. In making your assessment from this perspective, consider what influence the factors which underlie the two-party system have on each party's ability to use its policy proposals to generate voter support.

Justify your conclusions with facts and persuasive reasoning.