Majority and Minority Parties
The "Majority party" is the political party that either has a majority of seats or can form a coalition or caucus with a majority of seats; if two or more parties are tied, the vice president's affiliation determines which party is the majority party. The next-largest party is known as the minority party. The president pro tempore, committee chairs, and some other officials are generally from the majority party; they have counterparts (for instance, the "ranking members" of committees) in the minority party. Independents and members of third parties (so long as they do not caucus with or support either of the larger parties) are not considered in determining which is the majority party.
Read more about this topic: United States Senate
Famous quotes containing the words majority and, majority, minority and/or parties:
“The candidate tells us we are the “backbone of the State,” and we know that it is true, not because we are possessed of certain endowed virtues, but because we are a majority and have the vote.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All parties attempt to represent important things that have developed outside themselves as unimportant, and where they fail in this they assail those things all the more bitterly the more admirable they are.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)