How do we end up with one democrat and one republican candidate for president?

Question

I was just wondering what the process was. I know that there are alot of ppl who run, but does congress vote for them??

Answer 1

All citizens but especially politicians get to say they want to run for president.

Their parties get to decide who they want to support.

Once the parties decide which one candidate (or more) they want to support, they then go through the process of nominating them

(Remember, there are more than one party-- and citizens get to run too, but they must get petitions saying so many thousands support them)

Then there is a whole process of funding the run for presidency, the ads, travel and speeches and such.

Then there is a primary to narrow each party down to one candidate.

Then the people vote.

That's Democracy in a nutshell

Answer 2

Every single political party, includeing the Reform Party, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Socialist Party, and GOP and Dem's each have a primary election wherein they decide who will represent their party in the general election.

Answer 3

because the american political system is so entrenched in the 2 party system, that any third party candidate, be it libertarian, progressive, green party, ross perot are all portrayed as crazies by the mass media, because they aren't saying what the 2 main parties are saying. in defense of the mass media, maybe ross perot was a little nuts