This is a relatively simply policy question. The Republican Party is the correct answer. On the whole, Republicans tend to be less enthusiastic about economic and environmental regulations, and more enthusiastic about moral or social regulations. In other words, Republicans are unlikely to support things like higher taxes, expansive government, or large social entitlements. They are, on the other hand, more likely to support things like abortion bans, or to disapprove of gay marriage.

This, like the prior question, is a policy question. The Democratic Party is the correct answer. On the whole, Democrats tend to be very supportive of legal abortion, gay marriage, ‘fairness’ and equality, and greater regulation of businesses, along with higher taxes.

Blue Dog Democrats are Democrats who loyally vote with their party on most issues, except for economic ones. When it comes to financial matters, they tend to be more conservative (meaning they want the government to spend less money) than their fellow Democrats. So when a spending or funding bill arises, perhaps in the House of Representatives, Blue Dog Democrats are known to cross over and vote with the Republican opposition instead, denying their own party their support.

While the European party system does indeed function in a multi-party climate, the US system only has two parties – the Democrats and the Republicans – who are able to exercise any form of influential political control. This is most likely due to the very disorganized nature of the US system, where candidates are able to dictate to party leaders and where parties are often scattered across state and local lines. In Europe, a very strict structural party hierarchy exists, with party leadership wielding iron-clad control over their members. Europe also utilizes proportional representation when it comes to awarding votes and/or delegates to parties, while in the US, whichever candidate wins a plurality (or majority) of votes wins the entire area and/or delegates in question, with the opposition gaining nothing.

As more and more voters engage in ticket splitting, divided government has increasingly resulted, especially ever since the 1970s. Divided government occurs when one party controls the Executive Branch while the opposite party controls one or both houses of Congress, so that neither party is able to achieve dominance. In tandem with ticket splitting, more voters have begun to draw away from membership in either the Democratic or the Republican parties, choosing to identify as Independents instead, which is a further rejection of main party domination. The Southern states in particular have experienced great changes; where once many Southerners faithfully voted for Democrat candidates, the Republican Party has recently stolen increasing numbers of these voters away. As for female citizens, women are very much an active force in political life, with ever more women rising to prominent party leadership positions and the overall female voter turnout rate eclipsing that of their male counterparts.

In the decades after the Civil War, the Republican Party was the party of liberals and the North, whereas the Democratic Party was dominant in the South. Over the last century, particularly the last thirty years, there has been a shift and reversal of this trend. The Democratic Party is now primarily supported in the Northeast and on the West coast. Whereas the Republican Party has its greatest success in the Deep South.

The Republican Party emerged in the 1850s, solidifying in 1854, in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the extension of slavery into the territories. By the election of 1858, the Party contained former Whigs, Free-Soilers, and many Northern Democrats, and it carried the majority in every Northern state. It was led by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

The Second Party System in America evolved during the highly contentious elections of 1824 and 1828. The Jacksonian Democrats, led by Andrew Jackson, were pitted against the Whigs, who were for the most part led by Henry Clay. The Second Party System followed the Era of Good Feelings, in which only the Democratic-Republicans existed as a major party. The Second Party System ended in the 1850s, as the party split heavily over the issue of slavery.

The First Party System in American political history witnessed the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, pitted against the Democratic-Republicans. The Federalists favored a strong central government and close ties with Britain, whereas the Democratic-Republicans (usually considered to be led by Thomas Jefferson) favored more power in the hands of the States. The First Party System endured until the end of the War of 1812, when the Federalists refusal to support the war effort effectively looked like cowardice and treason in the face of America’s favorable emergence from the war.

The Presidential election of 1980 was the election that ushered Ronald Reagan into the White House on the back of a landslide victory over incumbent Jimmy Carter. It witnessed a dramatic shift in the American voting public towards conservatism, which has not really abated in the thirty years since. It showed that the general public had completed its turning away from the New Deal ideology of Roosevelt and the 1930s Democratic Party and now desired lower taxes and less government intervention in the economy, not to mention a much larger military.