Every political party has its own platform that comprises a set of its principal goals. The purpose of a political party platform is to appeal to the general public in order to gather its support on elections. So, what platforms help to get more votes?
This is a difficult question to answer, as there are a lot of qualitative factors affecting a platform's appeal. Still, there is one quantitative factor that could be apparently measured. And this is a platform's length in words. Indeed, this is not the key determinant of a platform's relative strength, but it at least could show how easily the platform could be read and understood by the general public and thus supported by it.
As the history of the U.S. presidential elections shows, in 23 out of 43 cases, the nominee from the party with the lengthier platform won the elections. Moreover, there is a slight positive relation between a political party platform's length and the number of electoral votes received by the political party's nominee.
There are two possible explanations to this: either shorter platform does not mean easier to understand or lengthier platforms are considered to be more "clever". And finally, it could be that a platform's length just does not affect its appeal at all and the correlation is a matter of chance.
Anyway, in this year's elections, Republican Party's platform is longer than that of the Democratic Party on 9,409 words. So, if a platform's length really increases (even lightly) a nominee's chances to win the elections, then this is a positive sign to Donald Trump. Yet the results of the latest national polls show that Hillary Clinton is supported by a bigger share of the U.S. citizens - a factor that seems to be more significant than the length of a political party platform.
See also: U.S. Presidential Elections Data Hub | 2016 Presidential Elections: Latest Polls | Campaign Financing | Election Preferences & Presidential Job Approval | Voting History: Popular and Electoral Votes | Gender Differences | Presidential Vetoes | National Conventions
The 58th United States presidential election that is scheduled for November 8, 2016, will determine 45th President and 48th Vice President of the United States. The candidates were selected during the primary elections held between February and June 2016. The Republican Party nominated Donald Trump, a businessman and reality television actor with no experience as an elected political official. The Democratic Party nominated Hillary Clinton, whose former public positions include US Secretary of State, US Senator (NY), and First Lady of the United States. Polls out this week report...
Gender differences in voter turnout, views on presidential performance, party identification, and attitude towards public policy issues fill out the dashboard below to provide you a more nuianced perspective on this US election issue. Explore our US Presidential Elections Data Hub or jump to a specific topic of interest in our US presidential election series:
The presidential election in the United States is an indirect election in which US citizens vote not directly for the President but for a set of electors known as the U.S. Electoral College who, in turn, cast ballots directly for President and Vice President. To win the vote candidate should get the majority of electoral votes. The designation of the electors by citizens is conducted in the manner of the popular vote, which takes place on the Election Day, determined to be on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Thus, current 2016 United States presidential...
Candidate and campaign financing data, including receipts, disbursements, cash on hand, and debts by candidate for the 1860-2016 election years.
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