A political party is an organization that unites a group of people under common interests and beliefs and supplies them with a label. In the U.S., our government has consisted of two parties since the 1800s: the Democrats and the Republicans. However, there are several other parties in existence here that do not hold as much power as the main two. A political party can generally be described as strong when it controls the nomination process, gets its candidates elected to office, and has a clear, identifiable set of ideals. Weakness within a party can be a result of variation in opinion among party members, difficulty in recruiting new members and quality candidates into the party, and having a bad reputation.

When a political party's members are united in their beliefs, it focuses their efforts on the important issues and makes the party very powerful. However, when...