Voting Blocs Quotes

Politicians always do a two-step, depending on what their district politics looks like.

I want to continue to serve as whip of the caucus.

I have learned how to take votes where I had to hold my nose because I had to compromise - something that you learn to do, especially when you have been in the minority.

The great disadvantage of our present electoral system is that it freezes the pattern of politics, and holds together the incompatible because everyone assumes that if a party splits it will be electorally slaughtered.

My party was the only party that opposed the bifurcation of the state in Parliament, and I was suspended from the House along with the other MP from my party. TDP supported and voted for bifurcation, as did the Congress and BJP. Every party barring mine voted.

If I move one way, I lose a couple votes. If I move another way, I lose a couple votes.

You can have solid third party politics, but the problem is you're all lumped in to all the fringe groups. That's a stereotype that happens.

The actual gap between Labor, Likud and the new central party is microscopic.

It is very difficult to get legislation passed. But then the danger always is that you have no power at all if you do not exercise constant power.

Just following 'Survivor' over the years, sometimes if an individual is not a threat and he doesn't rub anybody the wrong way and he can get into an alliance, he can hang out there for a while.

The role of the speaker of the House is to deliver enough votes by understanding and accommodating the individual bottom lines of enough members to pass the bill.

Ordinarily, proportional representation has a centrifugal effect, because it allows many parties, some of them extreme, to win a few seats and enter the legislature.

AV does not bring you greater proportionality - and there is a tendency for parties to gang up on one of the major ones to run an 'anyone but' campaign.

I am not interested in splitting the white vote.

Traditional Conservative voters like me should lend their support to the Liberal Democrats but I think I am best placed to run as an independent.

The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.

I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I'm going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too.

In the melting pot that is America, inclusive trumps exclusive. Whether it's single women, young adults, or minorities, alienating the rapidly growing voting blocs is not smart politics.

All of us know that any substantial block of votes can cause trouble in the French legislature because practically any French government has to have the votes of many groups to have a majority.

Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.

The reality is that when three or four networks are at the table with three or four political parties, someone is going to be the victim.

As the show's executive producer, I envisioned something akin to "Gilligan's Island" meets Lord of the Flies meets Ten Little Indians mets "The Real World." "Survivor" marks a return to a core element of adventure: staying alive.

So if 1960 had occurred under the old convention system, Kennedy would have had a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination because he would have been rejected by all those people who had worked with him in Washington.

There is nothing wrong in aligning with a regionally strong party.

In my short time in Congress, I've learned it's a lot easier to find a reason to vote against something than to vote it.