1. What is a political party and what are its major functions?
Political Parties
What is a political party and what are its major functions?

2. Vocabulary:
political party: an organized group of people who want to influence the government by winning elections
partisanship: strong support of a political party
party platform: a document that describes a party’s views on major issues
majority party: the party with the most elected members in Congress

3. What do political parties do?
Nominate candidates for office
Help candidates win elections
Inspire voters to go to the polls
Educate voters on the issues

4. Which party do your views align with?
Use your smartphone to go to:
Take the quiz! On your paper write down:
Which group do your political views most align with?
Why do you think that is? What kinds of views do you think the group you most aligned with holds?
Do you agree with your result? Why or why not?

5. Political Parties of the United States
(% of votes won in 2016 Presidential election)
Democratic Party - Hillary Clinton, 48%
Republican Party - Donald Trump, 46%
Libertarian Party - Gary Johnson, 3%
Green Party - Jill Stein, 1%

6. Quote Analysis
“Politics is about winning…participating in a presidential campaign full time, as a professional, is very emotional and very draining. You don’t want to put that much effort into a race unless you have a real chance…In the culture of campaigns it’s not ideological. Most of us have a philosophical grounding- we’re working for Republicans only- but in terms of issues the differences between candidates are often pretty small.”
– Mary Matalin, 2000 Election Campaign Supervisor to George Bush
In your own words, what is Mary Matalin saying?

7. Third Parties Listen to the interview with Gary Johnson:
really-dislike-trump-clinton-so-why-arent-third-parties- doing-better
On the paper you have been working on, write down:
3 - things you learned
2 - things you found interesting/want to learn more about
1 - question you still have