In
politics
Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...
, a candidate or party's base or core support refers to the
voters who support them for
elected office
An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless of whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority (either their own or that of th ...
based on core values. On the
left–right political spectrum
The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions, ideologies and political parties, parties, with emphasis placed upon issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the left and on ...
, left-leaning bases tend to be liberal while right-leaning bases tend to be conservative.
In the United States, high-level candidates must hold the same stances on key issues as a party's base in order to gain the party's
nomination
Nomination is part of the process of selecting a candidate for either election to a public office, or the bestowing of an honor or award. A collection of nominees narrowed from the full list of candidates is a short list.
Political office
In ...
and thus be guaranteed
ballot access
Ballot access is rules and procedures regulating the right to candidacy, the conditions under which a candidate, political party, or ballot measure is entitled to appear on voters' ballots in elections in the United States.
The jurisprudence o ...
. In the case of
legislative elections, base voters often prefer to support their party's candidate against an otherwise appealing opponent in order to strengthen their party's chances of gaining a
majority
A majority is more than half of a total; however, the term is commonly used with other meanings, as explained in the "#Related terms, Related terms" section below.
It is a subset of a Set (mathematics), set consisting of more than half of the se ...
in the legislature.
See also
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Split-ticket voting
Split-ticket voting or ticket splitting is when a voter in an election votes for candidates from different political party, political parties when multiple political office, offices are being decided by a single election, as opposed to straight- ...
*
Straight-ticket voting
*
Voting bloc
A voting bloc is a group of voting, voters that are strongly motivated by a specific common concern or group of concerns to the point that such specific concerns tend to dominate their voting patterns, causing them to vote together in elections.
...
References
Base
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