1. WARM-UP  From the earliest beginnings of the United States, the country's citizens have helped choose their leaders. This is an important and serious responsibility. In choosing leaders to represent their interests, people look for certain qualities that they believe will help a potential candidate lead their nation. Name three qualities you look for in any leader and tell why you think each is important.

2. Political Parties

3. What Is a Political Party?  Broad Definition - A political party is a group of persons who seek to control government through the winning of elections and the holding of public office.political party  Specific Definition - a group of persons, joined together on the basis of certain common principles, who seek to control government in order to secure the adoption of certain public policies and programs.

4. The two campaign signs in the yard of this home demonstrate that even members of the same family can have different opinions about which political candidate should be elected.

5. Political Parties in the U.S.  The Republican and Democratic parties are not primarily principle- or issue- oriented. They are, instead, election- oriented.  Each of them is an organization made up of three separate but closely related elements, three separate groups of party loyalists.

6. 1. The party organization  Includes its leaders, its other activists, and its many “hangers-on”—all those who give their time, money, and skills to the party.  These are the party “professionals,” those who run the party at the national, State, and local levels.

7. 2. The party in government.  Includes the party’s candidates and officeholders.  Persons who run for or hold elective or appointive offices in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches at the federal, State, and local levels of government.

8. 3. The party in the electorate  The millions of people who call themselves Republicans or Democrats, and who support the party and its candidates through thick and thin.  Many of them cast their votes on the basis of the party label, without regard to candidates or issues in an election.

9. National party conventions provide opportunities to demonstrate party unity, show party support for the endorsed candidates, and create enthusiasm for those candidates among all voters.

10. Ticket-Out  Why would voters cast their votes based solely on a candidates party affiliation?