Political Party Paper

Political Science 3120, Political Parties

Spring 2026

Paper / Presentation Assignment (100 points)

Individual paper option

Length: Approximately 8-10 pages, Times New Roman 12 point font, double-spaced with standard 1″ margins, no extra spacing before or after paragraphs, and left justification only.

Congratulations! As a soon to be Utah graduate, you have just been hired by a prestigious political consulting firm. The first job your new firm has given you is to write a report for a client outlining possible options and recommending a strategy for future success. The client is a political party [Democratic / Republican / Libertarian / Green / or other; choose one party as your client]. With the 2026 midterm elections approaching and the 2028 presidential elections starting soon, the party wants to take stock of where it stands currently and consider how it can best position itself for success in future elections. Party leaders are seeking advice from your highly-regarded political consulting firm and have asked your firm to prepare a strategy paper for their party.

Using your knowledge of political parties and contemporary American politics, your task is to write a strategy paper for the party to help it strengthen the party as an organization while simultaneously helping the party to achieve its paramount goal of electing its candidates to office. Your strategy paper should accomplish three tasks: first, provide a realistic assessment of where the party stands now; second, based on that assessment, identify a clear path to future electoral success for the party; and three, summarize a set of actionable recommendations for party leaders to achieve electoral success. Be sure that your recommendations are politically feasible, practical, and well supported.

As you think about how to advise your client, consider the following questions:

What is the situation of your political party in the United States today and why? Is your party effective at rallying voters in support of candidates? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your party given the circumstances in contemporary American politics?

How has the party done in recent elections? Is the party doing well at the presidential level, the congressional level, and the state level? Is the party competitive in all states? What is the party doing well to attract support for its candidates? What is the party doing that may lose voters? What can or should the party do to improve nationally or in specific states?

Are there specific actions the party could take to improve its electoral chances? Are there specific issues that your party should seek to solve, prolong, or avoid in the future? Does your party need to change its image among voters? Should it target all citizens or are some potential voters more important than others to the party? Does the party need to recruit better candidates and, if so, how could this be done? Does it need to have more “grassroots” volunteers? What can or should the party do to attract more financial or volunteer support?

Of course, you should not try to answer all of these question in your paper. These questions are suggestive and designed to prompt your consideration of relevant issues. Think about the problems facing contemporary American parties and be creative in putting together ideas for how your party might try to improve itself. Above all, you should organize the content of your paper in the manner most conducive to an informative and persuasive strategy paper. You should present your paper as formal, professional writing. That is, your paper should be written clearly and concisely using standard English intended for a professional or academic audience. Your goal is to assess the current political situation of your party objectively and, based on that assessment, identify a strategy and recommendations for winning future elections. Most importantly, your paper should communicate the assessment, strategy, and recommendations convincingly.

To create a convincing professional strategy paper, you must provide proper citations for any sources that you use. Please use Chicago style in-text citations that include the author’s name, date, and (if needed) the page number (this is called the author date style). For example:

The Republican party will benefit from emphasizing this issue because the party “owns” this issue and “the theory of issue ownership suggests that candidates have a built-in advantage with voters on issues ‘owned’ by their party and it is thus beneficial to the candidate to frame the election debate in terms of those issues” (Burbank, Hrebenar, and Benedict 2012, 89).

Voters who identify as independents rather than as Democrats or Republicans, primarily see themselves as moderates in terms of ideology (Brenan 2025).

The first example use a direct quote and so must include the page number in the citation. The second example refers to the point of the report generally and so does not require a specific page number. The full citations for each source must be identified in a list of references arranged in alphabetical order by the authors name at the end of the paper:

References

Brenan, Megan. 2025. US Political Parties Historically Polarized Ideologically. Gallup News, January 16. https://news.gallup.com/poll/655190/political-parties-historically-polarized-ideologically.aspx

Burbank, Matthew J., Ronald J. Hrebenar, and Robert C. Benedict. 2012. Parties, Interest Groups, and Political Campaigns. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

If you have questions about proper citation format, please ask me or consult the style guide for the University of Chicago author-date citation system (shown in the examples above):

Papers will be evaluated based upon the following criteria: 1) Does the report clearly assess the current political situation for the party? 2) Does the report present a politically viable strategy and recommendations that the party could implement? 3) Are the assessment and recommendations supported by evidence from opinion polls, media reports, election results, scholarly writings, relevant examples from American politics, or other sources? and 4) Is the report well written and free from errors of usage that hinder its clarity or substance?