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The United States is one of the world's only developed countries where all additional parties have minimal or nonexistent influence and almost no representation at the national and state level. Causes for this mainly focus on the plurality -based first-past-the-post voting system , used in most elections, which encourages strategic voting and ...
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) [a] is the common government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, comprising 50 states, five major self-governing territories, several island possessions, and the federal district (national capital) of Washington, D.C ...
The United States Constitution of 1787 is the oldest surviving, still active, governmental codified constitution. The Constitution provided for an elected government and protected civil rights and liberties, but did not end slavery nor extend voting rights in the United States, instead leaving the issue of suffrage to the individual states. [103]
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. [3] It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the frame of the federal government.
The era of one-party rule in the United States, known as the Era of Good Feelings, lasted from 1816 until 1828, when Andrew Jackson became president. Jackson and Martin Van Buren worked with allies in each state to form a new Democratic Party on a national basis.
American electoral politics have been dominated by successive pairs of major political parties since shortly after the founding of the republic of the United States. Since the 1850s, the two largest political parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—which together have won every United States presidential election since 1852 and controlled the United States Congress ...
On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the first African American president of the United States. On January 20, 2009, Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States in a ceremony attended by nearly 2 million people, the largest congregation of spectators ever to witness the inauguration of a new president. [153]
The national government was forced to cooperate with all levels of government to implement the New Deal policies; local government earned an equal standing with the other layers, as the federal government relied on political machines at a city level to bypass state legislatures. The formerly distinct division of responsibilities between state ...