(iPoster) The Keys to Competition: Appraising the Parts of Party

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Public Administration & Political Organizations and Parties
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Organizations and Parties

Abstract

On the national stage the two major American political parties are narrowly divided; yet most states see little if any meaningful party competition. This paper develops and compares measures of V.O. Key’s three parts of party to evaluate the competitiveness of the major parties in each of the fifty states. This effort combines a novel measure of party-in-organization focused on bureaucratization, candidate recruitment, and programmatic capacity; a state-centered measure of party-in-government which includes the considerations of Conditional Party Government; and a party-ID based measure of the party-in-the-electorate constructed from a large array of surveys from 2020 to 2025. Conjointly these measures provide a fuller view of state-level party competition than is accessible with existing measures.

Author

• Robert Louis Durbin, Northern Illinois University