Political Ideologies/public opinion- Political ideology is someones beliefs about how the government or a certain aspect about the government should be run. With the individual idea’s of people comes trends in what most people do or don’t agree with and that’s called public opinion. Even though personal ideologies vary, it’s safe to say that people agree mostly with conservative ideologies or liberal ideologies. Liberals are more for a stronger government economic influence while conservatives believe and stress the term Lasse-faire with economics. Conservatives are more hesitant upon changing things like policies and laws hence the term conservative while liberals are more open and reluctant to change with the times. You could call someone who is a liberal a “left-wing” and a conservative a “right-wing”. How right-wing or left-wing someone is varies greatly. There are many certain ideologies people have but some common topics include abortion, gun laws, same sex-marriage, environment, military, etc. A example of a specific ideology would be if someone was for the discontinuation of off-shore drilling. Public opinion’s of people are usually figured through surveys givin out by the government/companies to figure out what people as a whole’s opinions are on certain things. For instance, a survey would be givin’ out to figure just about how many people like the new healthcare system. Public opinion is what most of the population believes in, such a lower taxes, better healthcare, equality for everyone, etc.

Voting- Voting starts in states at caucuses and nominating conventions. A caucus is a meeting consisting of party members that elect delegates at the local level. There can be many caucuses in the state and are all held in different regions or a state. A nominating convention is a place where everyone can go and listen to see who their favorite might be or is. At the convention, people can choose who they want for candidates. Then there are direct primaries where people of a party can go into a place (of their party) and vote for the candidate that they want to be running. There are closed primaries and open primaries. Open, where everyone can go in a vote for anyone person, closed, where only members of that party can go in and vote. The people who always and only vote for their party would be considered “straight-ticket voters”. The problems with primaries is that some people feel that they last to long, (several months) they also believe that these elections blow the candidates in the vote out of proportion, and people focus on getting their person elected more than the actual issues that should depict who someone votes for. There are trends when