Political Parties

Someone's political party of their choosing is often influenced by many outside variables. Most often, someone will feel that a party's stance on some issues are correct, so it makes sense to pick that party to identify themselves with. There can be lots of variables that could have an impact on a person's partisan identification. Those variables being someone's gender, religious beliefs, education, ethnicity, and age.

The first variable up for discussion would be the person's gender. Gender plays a huge role in deciding a person's in the way that a person identifies with a political party. Areas of concern that play a major role in a voter's decision include abortion, the military, and equal pay for females. Most females support the Democratic Party, as they are most adamant about the issue listed above. However, both genders who are Christians usually choose to support the Republican party due to its family-orientated beliefs.

Another variable listed that can influence a person's identification is their position on religion. Catholics once were Democrats but changed their views and support to the Republican Party. Protestant Christians, also favor the Republican Party for its stance on family values, homosexuality, and abortion. However, the American Jewish community is still strongly Democratic, but they have been since the last half-century.

Education also plays a role in influencing a person's identification partisan. Extremely educated people tend to have better and high paying jobs, and because of that, better economic status. Middle-class workers usually are Republican, whereas blue-collar, and working-class people tend to be Democrats. This alignment is true for all ethnicities within these economic classifications. However, well-educated conservatives tend to be less conservative than they were before they attended college. Colleges usually allow individuals to question, experiment with new ideas, and experience the world in ways that the person had not done before going to college. In this way, college can also make those even more liberal. This effect can be seen among the intelligentsia class, which consists of very liberal intellectuals who tend to be Democrats. These intellectuals can be found at higher education institutions such as Berkeley and Wisconsin-Madison, both of which are big for liberal thinking.

Another variables is a person's ethnicity. After the Civil War, most African Americans chose the Republican Party. They decided to change to the Democratic Party because of the policies they favored more around the time of the Great Depression. Towards the end of the twentieth century, African and Mexican Americans have leaned more and more to the Democratic Party.

Another factor that can help determine somebody's party identification is age. People that are on the younger side tend to be identified with their parent's chosen party. Even though age is an important variable, it is less important and less impactful than ethnicity, religion, gender, and economics in determining party identification.

This affects how people align themselves with different political parties because everyone has something that is going to draw them to certain parties. Whether that be with someone's age, someone's ethnicity, their religious beliefs, or even their education level. Everyone is influenced in different ways, but that doesn't mean that some are right and some are wrong. Everyone just has their own beliefs.

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