Base (politics)

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studie ...

, the term base refers to a group of

voter Voting is a method by which a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, can engage for the purpose of making a collective decision or expressing an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holde ...

s who always support a single

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or po ...

's candidates for

elected office An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their s ...

. Base voters are very unlikely to vote for the candidate of an opposing party, regardless of the specific views each candidate holds. In the United States, this is typically because high-level candidates must hold the same stances on key issues as a party's base in order to gain the party's

nomination Nomination is part of the process of selecting a candidate for either election to a public office, or the bestowing of an honor or award. A collection of nominees narrowed from the full list of candidates is a short list. Political office In th ...

and thus be guaranteed

ballot access Elections in the United States refers to the rules and procedures regulating the conditions under which a candidate, political party, or ballot measure is entitled to appear on voters' ballots. As the nation's election process is decentralized b ...

. In the case of

legislative elections A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

, base voters often prefer to support their party's candidate against an otherwise appealing opponent in order to strengthen their party's chances of gaining a simple

majority A majority, also called a simple majority or absolute majority to distinguish it from related terms, is more than half of the total.Dictionary definitions of ''majority'' aMerriam-Webster Split-ticket voting Split-ticket voting is when a voter in an election votes for candidates from different political parties when multiple offices are being decided by a single election, as opposed to straight-ticket voting, where a voter chooses candidates from th ...

Straight-ticket voting In American politics, straight-ticket voting or straight-party voting refers to the practice of voting for every candidate that a political party has on a general election ballot. The term can also refer to a straight-ticket voting option, som ...

Voting bloc A voting bloc is a group of voters that are strongly motivated by a specific common concern or group of concerns to the point that such specific concerns tend to dominate their voting patterns, causing them to vote together in elections. For example ...

Base {{Poli-term-stub