political parties and their candidates a
presidential election
is usually run between two main
candidates who have been selected by
their political party
a candidate is a person running for
office in this case
the candidate is running to be the
president of the united states
a political party is an organized group
of people who have the same ideology
or believes toward politics and want the
government to be run
based on those beliefs there's been
several political parties
since the start of the nation but there
are two main political parties today
the republicans and the democrats the
republican symbol is a red elephant
and the democrat symbol is a blue donkey
the reason we have different political
parties is because
people don't always agree on how the
country should be run or
how issues should be handled so
political parties were formed to unite
groups of people
who agree on politics and whose goal is
to win control of the government
how do they do this by winning elections
they elect members from within their own
party to run for office
if those members choose to run for
office and they win
they become elected officials political
parties make it easy for voters
to vote in certain ways they tried to
provide clarity on policy preferences
and issues the party supports and they
encouraged voters to act on those
preferences
by voting for their candidate now not
all candidates have to be represented by
a political party
some are independents who do not
affiliate with any political party
there's also other political parties
other than democrats and republicans
historically though most u.s presidents
have been either republican or
democrat now the process of party
selecting their choice for a candidate
starts well before the election day and
in the next video we'll explain that
process
[Music]
hey if you want to learn more about the
presidential election we have a course
at kid explorer.com that teaches you
all about how elections work there's a
link in the description below
i'll see you over there