In politics, the term base refers to a group of voters who will almost always support a single party's candidates for United States, this is typically because high-level candidates must hold the same stances on key issues as a party's base in order to gain the party's nomination and thus ballot access. In the case of legislative elections, base voters often prefer to support their party's candidate against an otherwise appealing opponent in order to strengthen their party's chances of gaining a simple majority - typically the gateway to overarching power - in a legislature.