By the People: Election 2004 . Savvy Voter

"Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters."
Abraham Lincoln

Evaluate a Platform

Learn what it takes to evaluate a party platform and track a party's progress.

A party's platform is a formal written statement of its principles, policies, and goals for the next four years. This includes the party's stance and policy considerations for particular issues, as well as commitments to special interests and individuals.

Many people are not concerned with a party's platform since the separation of powers in the U.S. federal government prevents a presidential party platform from ever being fully enacted. The interests and opinions represented by individual Senators and Representatives inevitably differ from those of the President. For this reason many voters are more concerned with what a candidate says about his or her plans and beliefs than what the candidate's party platform says.

Party platforms, though long and full of promises, do however offer vital clues to the future politics of a presidential administration. Careful studies by political scientists have shown that the majority of the winning party's platform is acted upon in some way or another, either through executive order, budgetary and policy proposals, proposed legislation, or successfully enacted legislation.

The percentage of the platform that is put into political play will vary from one administration to the next, but the average percentages are remarkably high. The average "rate of platform fulfillment" for the successful presidential party from 1944 through 1964 was 72%. From 1968 through 1980, the rate was 62%. Figures are not available for 1984 through 1996, but it would be reasonable to assume that the rate of platform fulfillment has been somewhat lower but still robust.

These figures and trends may or may not offer good news.

It is important to look not only at the percentage of a platform that is being implemented but also at what specific items from the platform are being implemented.

Promises to interest groups and big donors may be fulfilled while more important elements of the platform that represent public opinion are being ignored. In such a case the rate of platform fulfillment becomes a measure of the influence of well-financed and well-organized organizations, not the success of the party's goals and ideas.

If, however, platform promises and rates of fulfillment match public opinion, then political parties are fulfilling their basic function of linking the public policy preferences of a majority of Americans to governmental performance. On any view of the matter, party platforms deserve to be taken seriously.

How Do You Evaluate the Platforms?
While examining the party platforms requires a fair amount of work, it can provide a sense of what the political conflict, debate, and action is likely to be over the next four years. It will also help to evaluate whether a party is committed to implementing public opinion or the desires of special interest groups.

The object of performing an analysis of the platforms is to generate "scorecards" to which you can refer in the future as you follow political news.

The following method is recommended.

Create a three-by-two grid for each party platform. The rows are for policy commitments in the party platforms and should be labeled:

Important
Somewhat Important
Trivial

The columns are for commitments which seem to match "Public Opinion" and commitments which seem to be obvious commitments to "Groups or Donors."

Public Opinion
Groups or Donors

Important

Somewhat Important

Trivial

The most important policy commitments for either party are always at the beginning of the platform. The farther you go into the platform the less important the commitments become to the party.

Working your way through the platform, place the ideas, goals, and commitments of the party into one of the six cells in your table. As you fill in the cells, see if you find a pattern.

If the parties are seeking to be responsive to the public, the top left cell should have several entries, while the top right cell should be empty; the middle left cell should have many entries and the middle right cell should have few or no entries; the bottom right cell should be full of promises to groups and donors.

If the pattern shows many promises to groups and donors, the party is not showing commitment to public opinion.

Depending on your level of energy and interest, after the next president is inaugurated you might return to your "platform scorecard."

The best time to do this is in when "end-of-session" wrap-up stories appear at the close of congressional sessions on television or in major national newspapers. This is a standard story that is by now a well-developed and recurring political report.

Another alternative is to track legislation using the congressional Web site, thomas.gov.

To learn whether the president is also achieving platform fulfillment, you can use the web to check for news of presidential proposals or executive orders. One such source is whitehouse.gov.

If you are particularly energetic, you may wish to submit your findings to a local newspaper in the form of an "op-ed" article or contact a local radio or television news reporter and offer to share your results.

Learn More

The Republican National Committee

The Democratic National Committee

This essay was written by Richard M. Valelly, Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College.

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