A party platform, or platform sometimes also referred to as a manifesto

Manifesto

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...

, is a list of the actions which a political party

Political party

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

, individual candidate, or other organization supports in order to appeal to the general public for the purpose of having said peoples' candidates voted into political office

Office

An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the...

 or the professed opinion(s) proposed as part of law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

(s) or otherwise made into social policies. This often takes the form of a list of support for, or opposition to, socially relevant, urgent, controversial, or complicated topics or issues. Individual topics, and a party's, person's, or organization's opinion on them are often called the "planks" of their platform in reference to a basic stage

Stage

- acting :Stage , a space for the performance of theatrical productions* Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage"* The Stage, a weekly British theatre newspaper...

 made out of boards or planks of wood

Plank (wood)

A plank is a piece of timber, flat, elongated and rectangular, with parallel faces, higher or longer than wide, used in the construction of ships, houses, bridges, etc......

, similar to what can be assembled for public speaking

Public speaking

Public speaking is the process of speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain the listeners...

 or debates to be held on.

Famous political platforms

• The Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther
  Martin Luther
  Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
  
   in 1517, opposed practices of the Catholic Church at that time (both a religion and a political territory), and led to the establishment of Protestantism
  Protestantism
  Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
  
  
• Thomas Paine
  Thomas Paine
  Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
  
  's 1776 Common Sense (pamphlet)
  Common Sense (pamphlet)
  Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. It was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolution. Common Sense, signed "Written by an Englishman", became an immediate success. In relation to the population of the Colonies at that time, it had the largest...
  
   advocated freedom from British
  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
  
   rule for the American Colonists
  Thirteen Colonies
  The Thirteen Colonies were English and later British colonies established on the Atlantic coast of North America between 1607 and 1733. They declared their independence in the American Revolution and formed the United States of America...
  
  , and proposed a constitution for the new nation
• Friedrich Engels
  Friedrich Engels
  Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
  
   and Karl Marx
  Karl Marx
  Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
  
  's 1848 Communist Manifesto
• Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 New Deal
  New Deal
  The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
  
  
• The 1948 United States Democratic Party's platform including civil rights
  Civil rights
  Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
  
  
• Lyndon Baines Johnson's War on Poverty
  War on Poverty
  The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent...
  
  , 1965
• The 1993 Liberal Party of Canada
  Liberal Party of Canada
  The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
  
   Red Book
• Mike Harris
  Mike Harris
  Michael Deane "Mike" Harris was the 22nd Premier of Ontario from June 26, 1995 to April 15, 2002. He is most noted for the "Common Sense Revolution", his Progressive Conservative government's program of deficit reduction in combination with lower taxes and cuts to government...
  
  's 1995 Common Sense Revolution
  Common Sense Revolution
  The phrase Common Sense Revolution has been used as a political slogan to describe common sense conservative platforms in Australia and the U.S. state of New Jersey in the 1990s. Based on the Singapore Model of economics, its main goal is to reduce taxes while balancing the budget by reducing the...
  
  
• 100-Hour Plan
  100-Hour Plan
  The 100-Hour Plan was a United States Democratic Party political strategy detailing the actions the party pursued upon assuming leadership of the 110th Congress on January 4, 2007. The strategy was announced before the 2006 midterm elections. Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged that her party would...
  
   of the United States Democratic Party in 2006

See also

• Election promise
  Election promise
  An election promise is a promise made to the public by a politician who is trying to win an election. They have long been a central element of elections and remain so today...
  
  
• Government platform
  Government platform
  A government platform is a political platform of a government. A new government, when entering office, lists their objectives to be accomplished while in office....
  
  
• List of democracy and elections-related topics
• Mandate (politics)
  Mandate (politics)
  In politics, a mandate is the authority granted by a constituency to act as its representative.The concept of a government having a legitimate mandate to govern via the fair winning of a democratic election is a central idea of democracy...
  
  
• Multi-tendency
  Multi-tendency
  Multi-tendency when used in regards to a political organization, especially a left-wing or anarchist one, means that the organization recognizes or at least tolerates members who are affiliated with or identify with a variety of ideologies within the broad stance of the organization...
  
  
• Party line (politics)
  Party line (politics)
  In politics, the line or the party line is an idiom for a political party or social movement's canon agenda, as well as specific ideological elements specific to the organization's partisanship. The common phrase toeing the party line describes a person who speaks in a manner that conforms to his...
  
  

External links

• Platforms of U.S. political parties, 1840-present from the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara
  University of California, Santa Barbara
  The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...