Nominations, Campaigns and Elections

The president is elected every 4 years. Any party can nominate a candidate. (The Republican and Democratic parties are the two major political parties in the United States.) Before the actual election the campaign starts between the members of the party. A party meeting nominates 2. There is a succession of primaries and caucuses (первичные выборы) in different states. After that the party selects the official candidate and the president is elected by indirect voting. Each state forms its Electoral College.

In November of the election year the voters across the country go to the polls. If the majority of the popular votes in a state go to the candidate of 1 party, that person is supposed to get all of that state’s electoral votes. The electoral votes are equal to the number of senators and representatives each state has in Congress. The candidate with the greatest number of these electoral votes wins the election. That’s why it’s important in what state the candidate wins.

23. National and social population of great britain

The population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is over 57(59) million people.

The demographers predict some falling. The reasons : 1. low birth rate. 2. baby boom generation is dying out. 3. uneven distribution of people across the country. 4. a persistent drift to the South and Southeast.5. disbalance of agegroups. Some other factors:- trends towards later marriages, -the age of woman giving birth to children is 29, -preferences to smaller families,- changing of social values.

The population lives mostly in towns and cities and their suburbs. Four out of every five people live in towns.

The distribution of the population is rather uneven. Over 46 million people live in England, over 3 million in Wales, a little over 5 million in Scotland and about 1.5 million in Northern Ireland.

Greater London, the south and the southeast are the most densely populated areas. Only London's population is over 7 million. Most of the mountainous parts of the UK including much of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Pennine Chain in northern England are very sparsely populated.

The UK is inhabited by the English, the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish who constitute the British nation. The British are the de­scendants of different peoples who settled in the British Isles at dif­ferent times.

The earliest known people of Britain were of Iberian origin. Then followed a long succession of invaders including the Celts, the Ro­mans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and at last in 1066 the Nor­mans.

Now there are also many people of all colours and races in the U K. These are mostly former inhabitants of the former British colonies. These people, called "the coloureds", came to the UK in search of better living standards as their own countries had been impoverished by centuries of the British colonial oppression.

English is the official language of the UK. Besides standard literary English there are several regional and social dialects. A well-known example is the cockney of East Londoners. The Scottish and Irish forms of Gaelic survive in some parts of Scotland and Northern Ire­land. Wales is officially bilingual, Welsh is spoken by about a fifth of its population. Welsh is the first language in most of the western counties of Wales and at least formally has the same status as English. Now­adays there is a growing movement in Wales and Scotland for a revival of national culture and languages.

Life interval - 73 for a man, 79 for a woman.

Official statistics treats class as a strictly economic distinctio which is based on a six-point scale of employment types;

A — Upper middle class (top managers, doctors, lawyers...

В — Middle class (middle managers, teachers...)

C— Lower middle class (office workers...)

C — Skilled working class (electricians, car mechanics...)

D — Unskilled working class (farm or building labourers...)

E — Residual (unemployed...)