Question: John Gale, is from North Platte, Nebraska, and has served as the 26th Secretary of State of Nebraska since 2000, he is a member of the Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP, an abbreviation for what, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States? 

Context articles: Democratic Party (United States)
Croatian Democratic Union
Republican Party (United States)
Political positions of the Democratic Party
Labour Party (Malta)
Conservative Party (UK)
Two-party system
South Platte River
John A. Gale
Union for a Popular Movement

The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party.
 Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Democratic Party was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest political party.
The Croatian Democratic Union (Croatian: "Hrvatska demokratska zajednica" or HDZ) is a conservative political party and the main centre-right political party in Croatia.
 It is one of the two major contemporary political parties in Croatia, along with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP).
 It is currently the largest party in the Sabor with 55 seats.
 The HDZ ruled Croatia from 1990 after the country gained independence from Yugoslavia until 2000 and, in coalition with junior partners, from 2003 to 2011 as well as since 2016.
 The party is a member of the European People's Party (EPP).
The Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP (abbreviation for Grand Old Party), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
 The party is named after republicanism, the dominant value during the American Revolution.
 Founded by anti-slavery activists, economic modernizers, ex-Whigs, and ex-Free Soilers in 1854, the Republicans dominated politics nationally and in the majority of northern states for most of the period between 1860 and 1932.
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States.
 The party nominally supports liberalism and progressivism in the United States, and is positioned center to center-left (though some factions of the party tend to be left-wing) on the left-right political spectrum.
 Policies of past Democratic platforms have sought to protect social programs, labor unions, consumer protection and workplace safety regulation, equal opportunity and racial equality, and regulation against pollution of the environment.
 Democrats support abortion rights and same-sex marriage, tend to legalize the undocumented immigrants.
The Labour Party (Maltese: "Partit Laburista" , PL), formerly known as the Malta Labour Party (MLP), is a social-democratic political party in Malta.
 Along with the Nationalist Party (PN), the Labour Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in Malta.
 It is currently the governing party in the Maltese House of Representatives following the March 2013 general election.
 The Labour Party is a member of the Party of European Socialists, and was a member of the Socialist International until December 2014.
The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom.
 It is currently the governing party, having been so since the 2010 general election, where a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats was formed.
 In 2015, the Conservatives led by David Cameron won a surprise majority and formed the first Conservative majority government since 1992.
 However, the 2017 snap election on Thursday 8 June resulted in a hung parliament, and the Conservatives lost their parliamentary majority.
 They are reliant on the support of a Northern Irish political party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), in order to command a majority in the House of Commons through a confidence-and-supply deal.
 The party leader, Theresa May, has served as both Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister since 13 July 2016.
 It is the largest party in local government with 9,237 councillors.
 The Conservative Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United Kingdom, the other being its modern rival, the Labour Party.
 The Conservative Party's platform involves support for free market capitalism, free enterprise, fiscal conservatism, a strong national defence, deregulation, and restrictions on trade unions.
A two-party system is a party system where two major political parties dominate the government.
 One of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referred to as the "majority" or "governing party" while the other is the "minority" or "opposition party".
 Around the world, the term has different senses.
 For example, in the United States, Jamaica, and Malta, the sense of "two party system" describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to one of the only two major parties, and third parties rarely win any seats in the legislature.
 In such arrangements, two-party systems are thought to result from various factors like winner takes all election rules.
 In such systems, while chances for third party candidates winning election to major national office are remote, it is possible for groups within the larger parties, or in opposition to one or both of them, to exert influence on the two major parties.
 In contrast, in the United Kingdom and Australia and in other parliamentary systems and elsewhere, the term "two-party system" is sometimes used to indicate an arrangement in which two major parties dominate elections but in which there are viable third parties which do win seats in the legislature, and in which the two major parties exert proportionately greater influence than their percentage of votes would suggest.
The South Platte River is one of the two principal tributaries of the Platte River.
 Flowing through the U.S. states of Colorado and Nebraska, it is itself a major river of the American Midwest and the American Southwest/Mountain West.
 Its drainage basin includes much of the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado; much of the populated region known as the Colorado Front Range and Eastern Plains; and a portion of southeastern Wyoming in the vicinity of the city of Cheyenne.
 It joins the North Platte River in western Nebraska to form the Platte, which then flows across Nebraska to the Missouri.
 The river serves as the principal source of water for eastern Colorado.
 In its valley along the foothills in Colorado, it has permitted agriculture in an area of the Colorado Piedmont and Great Plains that is otherwise arid.
John Gale (born October 23, 1940) is from North Platte, Nebraska, and has served as the 26th Secretary of State of Nebraska since 2000.
 He is a member of the Republican Party.
The Union for a Popular Movement (French: "Union pour un mouvement populaire" ] ; UMP ] ) was a centre-right political party in France that was one of the two major contemporary political parties in France along with the centre-left Socialist Party (PS).
 The UMP was formed in 2002 as a merger of several centre-right parties under the leadership of President Jacques Chirac.
 In May 2015, the party was renamed and succeeded by The Republicans ("Les Républicains ").