Constituency
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A constituency is any cohesive body of people bound by shared identity, goals, or loyalty. Constituency can be used to describe a business's customer base and shareholders, or a charity's donors or those it serves. In politics, a constituency can mean either the people from whom an individual or organization hopes to attract support, or the people or geographical area that a particular elected official represents.
A constituent is any member of a constituency, including those who did not vote for an elected representative.
The term is frequently used in US politics. In most democracies the term is not that relevant, since the electorate is represented by more than one elected legislator, and the elected legislator has a responsibility to all the electorate rather than to his constituents. In the US system electorate and constituents are identical groups, but that is not the case in representative democracies. The electorate are all who can vote in the election (e.g. to the parliament), but the constituents are only those who can vote for a particular candidate in that election.
In US political campaigns the terms is often used to divide the legislator's electorate into separate groups, for instance along racial lines, religious lines, cultural lines, sexual preference lines, etc. (e.g., 'the LGBT constituency', which shall be interpreted as the intersection of the LGBT community, and the Constituency).
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[edit] Outreach to a constituency
The franking privilege in the United States Congress allows elected members to freely send direct mail to their entire constituency.
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A simplified version:
MMP (Member proportional election system) MMP is an ‘additional member’ voting system that is used to elect representatives to numerous parliamentary systems of the government around the world. MMP is also similar to proportional representation the overall total of party members of the elected body that is intended to mirror the overall proportion of votes received. Set member of the Geographic constituency are excluded from the party totals as to maintain overall proportionality. There for they top up the top local party seats.
Meanings: Parliamentary systems: The people who have the authority to increase taxes and other money bills. Proportional representation: A category of voting systems similar to the percentage of votes that groups pr candidate’s obtain in elections and the number of seats during assemblies. Constituency: Means people from an individual or organisation that hopes to attract support.
[edit] Core constituency
The term core constituency is sometimes used to refer to a base of supporters. The constituency of a member of Congress, for instance, might be every citizen in his district, but his core constituency could be the people who voted for him in the last election.
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