Everything about Party Switching totally explained
In
politics, the term
party-switching refers to any change in
party affiliation of a partisan public figure, usually one currently holding
elected office.
In many countries, party-switching takes the form of politicians refusing to support their political parties in
coalition governments. This happens particularly commonly in countries without firmly-established political parties, such as
Vanuatu and
French Polynesia where in
2004, a few members of various parties left the governing coalition, forcing it to collapse. As in the
United States, party switches often occur with the formation of new parties — witness the situation in the
United Kingdom, where some
Liberals moved to the
Labour Party in the early twentieth century. In formerly
communist countries in Europe, de-Sovietisation saw many Communist-Party representatives switch to other parties ranging on the political spectrum from socialist to conservative.
Australia has seen high-profile defections since 1995, including the 1997 move by
Cheryl Kernot (then leader of the
Australian Democrats) to the
Labor Party, the declared independence of former Labor senator
Mal Colston (1996) and the disintegration of the Democrats.
In the United States' political landscape, dominated by its
two-party system, switches generally occur between the
Republican Party and the
Democratic Party, although a number of notable switches to and from
third parties (and even between different third parties) have occurred. Since 2004, in a reversal of a trend that had seen predominantly Democratic office-holders switching labels, a number of Republican elected officials in states throughout the country have opted to become Democrats. One other notable "switch" took place in 2000 when
Senator Jim Jeffords defected from the Republican Party to become a political independent, which placed the Senate in Democratic control. Use of the term
party switch often connotes a transfer of held power from one party to another. The majority of party-switchers in the modern era have switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. This behavior has occurred mostly in the
South, due to the gains of the Republican Party since 1950 and has proven somewhat beneficial to the Democrats overall, resulting in increasing the ideological coherence of the Democratic Party as Southern conservative Democrats left the party.
In
Nicaragua some major party switches occurred between
2002 and
2006 when the two major political parties, the
Constitutional Liberal Party and the
Sandinista National Liberation Front, formed a pact and members of both parties left to form new parties or make alliances with smaller ones.
In some cases, the defectors from an opposition party may choose to support a ruling coalition. In Poland, for example, the exit of the populist
Samoobrona party from the government prompted a number of its members to leave and form a new parliamentary club.
Party switching also occurs quite commonly in
India and the
Philippines.
See also
Further Information
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