Understanding the US Elections

Hi.

Welcome back to www.engvid.com.

I'm Adam.

Today we're going to talk about "The American Election".

Now, if you live anywhere in the world, it's very hard to escape hearing about what's going

on in America.

The elections are coming up, everybody's talking about it.

They're using a lot of new words, a lot of complicated words that you might not be familiar

with, so we're going to talk about this.

I'll explain to you a little bit how it works.

I'll explain to you some of the words you're going to hear commonly.

And keep in mind that although it's a bit more for advanced students because I have

a lot to say about all this, there's a lot of new information here, but even if you're

a beginner, lots of new words, lots of good words that are everyday words.

If you watch CNN ever, you're going to hear some of these words because CNN loves to talk

about the election.

Okay?

So let's get into some of this, and we'll see where we go.

First of all we're going to start with the two parties.

Okay?

So, America is essentially a two-party system.

You have the Republicans and you have the Democrats.

Now, that doesn't mean there aren't other parties.

In fact, there are many parties in America, but usually they don't get many votes, and

maybe even...

Not even 1% of the total vote for all the little parties.

Now, you can also have a third-party candidate, meaning somebody who wants to run by him or

herself with his or her own money.

Okay?

Because the Republicans and the Democrats give money to their candidates to run a campaign.

I'm going to go over all these words, so not to worry.

So, first let's start with the Republicans.

Okay?

They're sometimes called the GOP.

You're going to hear this often.

This is just a nickname, it means "Grand Old Party."

I should make this a little bit bigger.

Grand Old Party.

It's just a nickname given to them a long, long time ago.

In fact, both of these parties are over 150 years old, and they have won every election

since way back when.

And what they do is they often switch.

Sometimes they'll go on a streak, like the Democrats will win a bunch of elections, the

Republicans will win a bunch of elections.

Sometimes they'll switch back and forth every election.

It depends on the season, depends on the mindset of Americans.

Okay?

So here we have the two Democrats.

Now, the campaign, the...

The attempt to run for office...

Okay?

So, "running for office" means trying to become president.

So what happens is they start their campaign.

A "campaign" is an organized effort to reach a goal.

Okay?

You have an advertisement campaign, you have a sales campaign.

It's basically something organized with a target to reach by the end of it.

In this case, the target is the presidency of the United States.

So, this campaign usually starts well over a year before the actual election.

Before they can vote for a president, each party must present a candidate.

A "candidate" is the person that the American people will vote for in November, Democrat

or Republican.

But before you have a candidate for each party, each party has nominees.

A "nominee" is the potential candidate, people who are chosen to try to become the candidate.

You could have three, four, five, 15.

It doesn't matter.

Whoever wants to try to be president can try.

Now, what they do, all these nominees, they go all over the country and they try to win delegates.

I'll explain "delegates" in a second.

So what they're trying to do is become the candidate for their party, they go around,

they have a campaign, they give speeches, they put TV and radio advertisements, they

do all kinds of things so the people will vote for them.

Okay?

Now, what they do is they go to each state and they have a primary or a caucus.

Basically, this is like an election, but it's state by state.

Each state votes for the nominees of their choice for each party.

So in one state the primary for Republicans will be voted on only by Republicans, people

who have joined the party, people who have registered as Republicans.

The other side is Democrats.

Now, a "caucus" is a little bit more confusing.

A "primary" is just a straight vote: "Here's who I want", check, vote,

and the winner is the winner.

"Caucus" is a little bit confusing.

Even Americans don't really know what a caucus is except in the states where they have a

caucus, but basically a caucus is more like a discussion.

You don't have a checkbox necessarily, you discuss and you say who you want to be your candidate.

But essentially, it's the same idea.

Each state votes for the nominee of their choice, and then the winner of this vote gets delegates.

A "delegate" is a representative of that state, and that delegate or delegates, depending...

Each state has different numbers of delegates, they will go to the convention in July for

each party.

So the Democratic convention and the Republican convention.

A "convention" is basically a very big meeting.

Another word for it is "conference".

So it's a huge meeting, and all the delegates from all the states, all the representatives

come to the convention and vote for the nominee who got the most votes in the primaries.

Okay?

Now, once you have a winning nominee, like you have a...

Let's say you had your 10 nominees and then after the primaries, one person got enough

votes.

So there are a total number of delegates, whoever has more than half of those delegates

that they won in the primary becomes the party's candidate.

And the candidates then run for office.

Then they...

The candidates fight each other, and in November, all the American people can choose one candidate

to be president.

Now, what happens is that they all want to take out the incumbent.

Now, "incumbent" means in office now.

It doesn't have to be the president.

It could be anything, in any position of authority, the person who has that position now is called

the incumbent.

So, the incumbent president of America right now is Barack Obama.

In January, there will be a new president sworn in.

That's actually a good word.

"Sworn in" means become official.

Put your hand on the Bible...

I guess you would raise your left hand.

Or no, left hand on the Bible, right hand up: "I swear to be the best president I can possibly be."

Now, the incumbent can serve a term of four years, and then there's another election.

A president can only serve two terms, eight years, and then he, in the future, possibly

she, will have to move and let the new president take over.

So where are we?

So right now we have candidates.

We have the Republican candidate, we have the Democratic candidate.

And then after the primaries where they fight the other nominees, they start fighting each

other and they have a presidential campaign.

Now, you can have a negative campaign, you can have a positive campaign.

A "negative campaign" is when you're attacking the other candidate.

A "positive campaign" is when you're just talking about what you're going to do.

What are you going to do for this country?

What is your platform?

So your "platform", basically is your beliefs on how to run the country.

What are you going to do for the economy?

What are you going to do for foreign policy?

What are you going to do for security?

All these things that you have in mind, all these promises you're going to make create

your platform.

So a positive campaign focuses on the platform, a negative campaign attacks the other candidate.

So some...

Some candidates don't try to win because they're good.

They try to win by making the other candidate look bad.

That's one way to do it.

Now, the delegates.

So, the delegates, they represent each state.

Now, there is something called super delegates.

"Super delegates" are basically representatives of the party who can choose for any nominee

that they want.

Okay?

So sometimes they help, sometimes it doesn't make a difference.

Next, after the convention the campaign begins and now you're going to hear rhetoric.

"Rhetoric" is technically the art of persuasion.

Okay?

So, rhetoric is how you speak, how you try to convince people to believe what you are saying.

So, some candidates are very good with their rhetoric, some are not; but some have good

background, good experience, some do not.

Sometimes you only need to be a good speaker to become president.

You don't have to be very smart, you don't have to be very qualified.

You just need to have good rhetoric, you need to know how to speak to the people and convince

them to vote for you.

Now, part of rhetoric is called spin.

So, "spin", so every...

Nobody's perfect, let's admit, there's no perfect candidate, no perfect human being,

so sometimes some...

The negative attack, the negative campaign will say something bad about a candidate.

A smart candidate or a very powerful candidate will spin that story, they will take a bad

story, spin it, and make it look good.

And the people, the professionals who know how to do this are called "spin doctors".

So, every candidate has a bunch of people working with him or her that know how to take

every bad attack, spin it, and make it look like a good thing about their candidate.

Okay?

It's all part of rhetoric.

Next, you're going to hear a lot about polls, p-o-l-l, pronounced: "pole".

A "poll" is basically, like, a survey.

It's a collection of opinions.

It can be a noun or a verb.

"A poll" means the number or the survey itself and what's...

This guy got 54%, this guy got 46%, whatever.

"To poll" means to actually ask people what they think.

"Who are you going to vote for?"

Okay, 30% said this, 20% said that, 50% said that.

So there's...

Every day there's a new poll.

For some people polls are very important, for some people they mean nothing because

on the Election Day the polls...

The only poll that matters is the one at the ballot box.

That's the day that the voters cast a ballot.

"Cast a ballot" means vote.

Go into the room, check, box, done.

You cast your ballot.

You voted.

Okay?

But there are always swing voters.

"Swing", you know like when you were a little child, you sat down on a tree, and you go

back and forth, and back and forth.

So swing voters.

"Swing voters" are the people who the polls don't apply to.

These are the people who decide at the ballot box.

Before...

One week before they didn't know who they're going to vote for, one day before maybe they

didn't know who they were going to vote for.

So they go in, that day they decide.

So the polls or the "pollsters", the people who conduct polls, they have no idea what

these people think.

And these people have a huge influence on who becomes president.

Okay?

Because you don't know what they're going to do, so the campaigns, they can't even target

advertising towards them, they can't use rhetoric because they don't know what these people think.

They're not part of the polls.

And then you watch CNN, ABC, NBC, you watch all the news channels and every day, all day

you hear the pundits.

"Pundits" are experts in one...

In whatever field they work for.

So they come on TV, they say: "Oh, I think this is going to happen.

Oh, I think this is good, this is bad.

Why, why not", etc.

So, pundits are experts who are asked for and who give their opinion, usually on TV,

radio, etc.

Then there's always the lobby groups.

Lobby groups or sometimes lobbyists.

A "lobby group" is an organized group of people, sometimes it's a company, a whole company

who try to influence other people.

So, a lot of these lobbies, they try to give money to the candidates.

They are donors.

A "donor" is a person who gives money for the campaign.

And these lobbyists try to influence politics.

They go to the candidate and they say: "Okay, if you vote for this bill, I will help you

with that bill or I will give you money, or I will do something for you."

There's a lot of politics involved in politics as it were.

Next, now we come to Election Day.

Now, how does...?

How do the elections work in America?

There's something called an Electoral College, as opposed to the popular vote.

So, the "popular vote" means the most number, the greatest number of people who vote for

one candidate or the other.

But to try to be fair, to try to be democratic, the American system uses the Electoral College.

Now, the "Electoral College" is a group of people, I think there's 538 people who basically

represent the nation.

Okay?

So every state gets a certain number of these electors, the people in that group of 538.

Every state based on population size, based on a few other things has a certain number

of electors.

So, a president or a candidate I should say needs to win the most number of electors.

I think 270.

270 electors, they have to win that many number of electors to become the president.

So, it is actually possible to lose the popular vote and win the Electoral College, and become president.

In fact, Bush, President Bush, the second Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but

still became president because of the Electoral College.

It's meant to be fair.

So, for example, California which has the biggest population in the States has an equal

share... Sorry.

Has an equal share relative to, like, Idaho, which has very few people in it.

Okay, so that's how it works.

So then on Election Day, November something, something, the American people go to vote.

The Electoral College has a certain number of people, they get all those people, they're president.

Come January they are sworn in and we have a new president or America has a new president,

which affects everybody, but that's another story altogether.

So, one thing I want to say before I finish off here, this is...

This lesson was just meant to give you an idea of what's going on in America and how

the election works.

It is not necessarily an invitation to have a political discussion.

You can have those with your friends and family.

Everybody has their opinion, everybody's entitled to their opinion, but keep it to yourself,

keep it with your...

Within your group of friends and family.

Let's not get too serious about it.

Unless you live in America, it doesn't necessarily affect you all that much.

So I hope I've been very helpful here.

I hope that you like this lesson and that you will subscribe to my YouTube channel.

If you have any questions about this, please go to www.engvid.com.

There's a forum there, you can ask all the questions you have, I will be happy to answer them.

There's also a quiz to make sure you understand the English of the system.

And yeah, if you have anything else, let me know and I'll be happy to help you with that.

I'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.