Political realignment

Realigning election or realignment are terms from political history and political science describing a dramatic change in politics. It may center on a "critical election" or be spread out over several elections. More specifically, they refer to any one of several United States presidential elections in which there are sharp changes in the rules of the game (such as campaign finance laws or voter eligibility), new issues, new leaders and new bases of power for each of the two political parties, resulting in a new political power structure and a new status quo that will last for decades. The usual focus is on the transition between party systems, as between the First Party System and the Second Party System, and then to the Third Party System and so on.

The central holding of realignment theory, first developed in the political scientist V.O. Key's 1955 article, "A Theory of Critical Elections", is that American elections, parties, and policymaking routinely shift in swift, dramatic sweeps.

V.O. Key Jr., E.E. Schattschneider, James L. Sundquist, Walter Dean Burnham and Paul Kleppner, some of the most distinguished election scholars of the past two generations, studied the election returns going back 150 years, and found patterns so similar and so peculiar that at first they seemed difficult to believe. Though they differed on some of the details, it was concluded that not only do realigning elections occur, but that they occur on a regular schedule: once every 36-years or so.

The alignment of 1860, with Republicans winning a series of close presidential elections, yielded abruptly in 1896 to an era of more decisive GOP control, in which most presidential elections were blowouts, and Democratic Congresses were infrequent and brief. Thirty-six years later, that system was displaced by a cycle of Democratic dominance, lasting throughout the Great Depression and beyond.

The terms themselves are somewhat arbitrary, however, and usage among political scientists and historians does vary. Many of the elections often included in the traditional 36-year cycle are considered "realigning" for different reasons.

However, except for the election of 1828, which solidified a new party system, all the presidential elections coincided with, or immediately followed at least two consecutive wave elections shifting 30% of the House in favor of the new dominant party. (While large swings were common until recent decades, two--or more--consecutive swings in the same direction were not.) This suggests a view in which presidential realigning elections are driven from below.

Some political scientists, such as David Mayhew, are critical of the realignment theory altogether. "Electoral politics," he writes, "is to an important degree just one thing after another ... Elections and their underlying causes are not usefully sortable into generation-long spans ... It is a Rip Van Winkle view of democracy that voters come awake only once in a generation ... It is too slippery, too binary, too apocalyptic, and it has come to be too much of a dead end."

Here is presented a list of elections most often cited as "realigning," with disagreements noted:

Realigning elections in United States history

• United States presidential election, 1800 — Thomas Jefferson
  • This election completed the turnover of power from the Federalist Party, embodied in Alexander Hamilton, to Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican Party. Power shifted from New England to the Southern United States and their agricultural interests. This exacerbated tensions over slavery.
  • Democratic-Republicans gained 19.7% of House seats in 1800, 9.4% in 1802 and 9.7% in 1804, for a total gain of 38.8% in 3 elections.
  • As late as 1812, the Federalists came within one state of winning. A larger shift in electoral politics arguably came in the 1812-1816 period, as the Federalists became associated with treason over the War of 1812.

• United States presidential election, 1828 — Andrew Jackson
  • This election redefined the party system in the United States. The Democratic-Republicans split into two parties, later renamed as the Democratic Party and the Whig Party. The Democrats were led by Andrew Jackson of Tennessee and Martin Van Buren of New York. The Whigs emerged as the opposition to Andrew Jackson, led by Henry Clay of Kentucky.
  • The election of 1828 was not fought over great issues (on issues of national importance, there were no clear cut party stances), and in statistical terms, using states as units, there is virtually no relation between 1836, when Martin Van Buren ran, and the three prior elections in which Andrew Jackson ran.

• United States presidential election, 1860 — Abraham Lincoln
  • This election marked the final downfall of the Whigs (who had sputtered throughout the 1850s) and the ascendence of the Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln beat out three other contenders as the South split its electoral votes between the Democratic contenders, allowing Lincoln, who carried every Northern state, to triumph. Lincoln's election was the proximate cause of secession and his efforts to keep the nation united led to the American Civil War. This represented the reverse of 1800, as electoral power flowed to the growing and industrializing North.
  • The Republican Party went from 18.3% in 1854, to 38.0% in 1856, 48.7% in 1858, and 59.0% in 1860, for a total gain of 59.0% in 4 elections.
  • Statistically, the election of 1860 does not seem terribly eventful. This may be explained away fairly easily, however, since no comparative statistical analysis could easily accommodate the Democratic Party's breakup into four factions that year.

• United States presidential election, 1896 — William McKinley
  • The status of this election is hotly disputed; some political scientists do not consider it a realigning election. Other historians emphasize that the rules of the game had changed, the leaders were new, voting alignments had changed, and a whole new set of issues came to dominance as the old Civil-War-Era issues faded away. Funding from office holders was replaced by outside fund raising from business in 1896—a major shift in political history. Furthermore McKinley's tactics in beating William Jennings Bryan (as developed by Mark Hanna) marked a sea change in the evolution of the modern campaigning. McKinley raised a huge amount of money from business interests, outspending Bryan by 10 to 1. Bryan meanwhile invented the modern technique of campaigning heavily in closely contested states, the first candidate to do so. Bryan's message of populism and class conflict marked a new direction for the Democrats. McKinley's victory in 1896 and repeat in 1900 was a triumph for pluralism, as all sectors and groups shared in the new prosperity brought about by his policy of rapid industrial growth.
  • While Republicans lost House seats in 1896, this followed a massive two-election gain: from 25.9% in 1890 to 34.8% in 1892 and 71.1% in 1894, for a total 45.2% gain. Republicans lost 13.4% in 1896, but still held 57.7% of House seats.
  • In statistical terms, the election of 1896 is a realignment flop. The election of 1876 passes the numbers test much better, and resulted in far more drastic changes in United States politics: Reconstruction came to a sudden halt, African-Americans in the South would soon be completely disenfranchised, and politicians began to focus on new issues (such as tariffs and civil service reform).

• United States presidential election, 1932 — Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • Of all the realigning elections, this one musters the most agreement from political scientists and historians; it is the archetypal realigning election. FDR's admirers have argued that New Deal policies, developed in response to the crash of 1929 and the miseries of the Great Depression under Herbert Hoover, represented an entirely new phenomenon in American politics. More critical historians see a great deal of continuity with Hoover's energetic but unsuccessful economic policies. There is no doubt Democrats vehemently attacked Hoover for 50 years. In many ways, Roosevelt's legacy still defines the Democratic Party; he forged an enduring coalition of big city machines, labor unions, Catholics, Jews, Westerners and Southerners.
  • The Democrats went from 37.7% of House seats in 1928 to 49.6% in 1930 and 71.9% in 1932, for a total gain of 34.2% in two elections.

• United States presidential election, 1980 — Ronald Reagan
  • In this election, Ronald Reagan won a sweeping victory over Democrat Jimmy Carter, who won only six states (plus the District of Columbia), which accounted for just 10% of the electoral vote. Republicans also took control of the Senate for the first time in over 25 years. (See Reagan's coattails.) Many people viewed Reagan's policies as sufficiently new to consider this a realigning election, and his iconic status within the Republican Party would appear to confirm this.
  • On the other hand, detractors note that control of the House did not change, nor even come close to changing, at this time. Republicans actually held fewer House seats in 1983 than they held in 1973. In addition, the Republicans lost the Senate again only six years later, leading some to theorize that the Senators simply rode in on Reagan's coattails, and did not represent a true shift in the ideological preferences of their constituents. Also absent was a shift in partisan alignment from public opinion polls.
• United States House election, 1994 and United States Senate election, 1994
  • This election is now generally accepted as a realigning election by political scientists. Republicans won majorities in both the House and the Senate, taking control of both chambers for the first time since 1954. In addition, control of the House continued until the 2006 Election. Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America seemed like a sufficiently innovative technique to qualify, and the overwhelming nature of the Republicans' victory—they gained 54 seats, in a chamber of only 435 (the total gain in elections since was, for either party, in the single digits until 2006)—would seem to make this a candidate for consideration as a realigining election.
  • Importantly, but often overlooked, is the dramatic changes that occurred at the state level in this election. For example, the GOP gained seats in an amazing 43 of 46 state houses. These gains continued into the next decade, so that by 2002 the GOP held the majority of state legislative seats for the first time in fifty years.
  • Another factor making this a clear realigning election is the persistance of the changes that occurred. There is a growing consensus in political science that this is a realigning election, given the consistency of Republican control of national and many state institutions. For example, the GOP held the majority of state governorships between 1994 and 2006.
  • Notably, the period of party decline and mass dealignment appears to have ended in the 1990s. Strength of partisanship, as measured by the National Election Study, increased in the 1990s, as does the percentage of the mass public who perceive important differences between each party.
  • This election also indicates the rise of religious issues as one of the most important cleavages in American politics. While Reagan's election hinted at the importance of the religious right, it was the formation of the Christian Coalition (the successor to the Moral Majority) in the early 1990s that gave Republicans organizational and financial muscle, particularly at the state level. At the very least, most observers agreed that by 2004 the nation had realigned on national issues into "red" (Republican) and "blue" (Democratic) states, with sharp differences in attitudes and politics between the two blocs.
  • Critics note that this, unlike the others, is a midterm election. They also claim that the third party candidacy of Ross Perot enabled the election and reelection of Bill Clinton in 1996. But as Stone and Rapoport (2005) argue, it is precisely the mobilization of these voters, and their shift into the Republican Party, that gave the GOP their historic victory. The Contract with America, as they point out, was taken largely from the 1992 Reform Party platform.

Possible Realignment in the 2006 Midterm Elections?

Some pundits, such as E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, have begun to speculate that the 2006 midterm election may have also been a realigning election [1]. Dionne has argued, "I think this election was really that conservative crackup that people have been talking about for 20 years, and it never quite materializes...the approach of the Republican revolution in Congress was overturned. "

Several points suggest that the 2006 election may have been realigning, including:

• • The bulk of Republican losses in the U.S. House occurred in the northeast, and surrounding states. These seats had been Democratic-leaning for many years, but continued to support their Republican incumbents. Advocates of this realignment theory argue that the power of an unpopular Republican president, and the war in Iraq, was enough to cause a change in these seats. They also argue that given the Democratic-leaning nature of these seats, many may be difficult for Republicans to win back. A similar situation occurred in 1994 with regard to the U.S. House. Democratic losses in 1994 midterm elections were concentrated in southern Republican-leaning seats that had been Democratic during the days of the New Deal. These southern Democratic incumbents had managed to be reelected despite the nature of their seats. The unpopularity of President Bill Clinton has been widely attributed as the primary cause of this southern sweep. Even as of the 2006 midterm elections, most of the seats Democrats lost in 1994 had yet to be won back.
  • Several of the senate seats that Democrats won had been held by Republicans throughout much of recent history. Examples include the senate seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Some of these states, in particular Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, have shown Democrats to be strengthening statewide in recent decades, despite Republican dominance dating back to the 19th century.
  • Democratic pickups, with regards to both governorships and state legislative chambers, also were concentrated in Democratic leaning states. Many of these governorships and state legislative chambers, had been in Republican control throughout much of recent history. For example, the New Hampshire state house and state senate were both picked up by the Democrats in the 2006 election. Democrats had not held both chambers in eighty years. The Democratic sweep with regards to both New Hampshire congressional seats, the state executive council, and the easy reelection of the Democratic governor of New Hampshire, may point to a stronger underlying cause of the change in statehouse control.
  • Several smaller signs also point to a possible realignment. One sign has been a number of Republican-to-Democrat party switching in Midwestern states such as Kansas and Nebraska. In Kansas, for example, the newly-elected Lt. Governor, and the newly elected Attorney General, both switched political parties, from Republican to Democrat, in early 2006. Another sign is the increasing Democratic strength in Virginia, due largely to the growth of the Washington, D.C. suburbs in Northern Virginia.

Possible modern realigning elections in the United States

Some doubt exists today as to what elections (if any) could be considered realigning elections after 1932. Although several candidates have been proposed, there is no widespread agreement:

• U.S. presidential elections, 1964 through 1968 -- Lyndon B. Johnson/Richard Nixon
  • The two elections resulted in the rise of racial issues as the dominant issue cleavage in American politics. The 1968 election is often cited due to the innovative campaign strategy of Nixon. In running against Hubert Humphrey, he used what became known as the Southern strategy. He appealed to white voters in the South with a call for "states' rights", which they interpreted as meaning that the federal government would no longer demand the forced busing of school children on behalf of African Americans' civil rights as it had under Democratic president Lyndon Johnson (who had signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Democrats protested that Nixon exploited racial fears in winning the support of white southerners and northern white ethnics. Republicans responded that in a democracy every vote counts equally and it is unamerican to delegitimize anyone's vote. Since realigning elections previously had tended to occur at 36-year intervals, the new realignment came on schedule. Roosevelt's New Deal coalition had lasted over 30 years but after the urban riots and Vietnam crisis of the mid 1960s one by one the coalition partners peeled away until only a hollow core remained, setting the stage for a GOP revival. Nixon's downfall postponed the realignment which came about under Reagan, as even the term "liberalism" fell into disrepute.
  • Including this as a realignment preserves the roughly 30-year cyclical pattern: 1896 to 1932, 1932 to 1964, and 1964 to 1994.
  • For political scientists, 1964 was primarily an issue-based realignment. The classic study of the 1964 election, by Carmines and Stimson (1989), shows how the polarization of activists and elites on race-related issues sent clear signals to the general public about the historic change in each party's position on Civil Rights. Notably, while only 50% of African-Americans self-identified as Democrats in the 1960 National Election Study, 82% did in 1964, a change which persists to this day. Perhaps the clearest indicator of the importance of this election, was that Deep Southern states, such as Mississippi, voted Republican in 1964, something unimaginable as late as 1956. In contrast, much of the traditional Republican strongholds of the Northeast and Upper Midwest voted Democratic. Vermont and Maine, which stood alone voting against FDR in 1936, voted for LBJ in 1964.
  • Many people do not consider 1968 a realigning election because control of Congress did not change; the Democrats would control the Senate until 1980 (and again from 1986 to 1994) and the House until 1994. Also missing was a marked change in the partisan orientation of the electorate. Importantly, these two elections are consistent with the theory in that the old New Deal issues were replaced by Civil Rights issues as the major factor explaining why citizens identified with each party. Other scholars contend that this is the beginning of a thirty year dealignment, in which citizens generally moved towards political independence, which ended with the 1994 election.

Realigning elections outside the United States

• Canadian federal election, 1896 — Liberal victory; Sir Wilfrid Laurier Prime Minister
  • From the 1867 election until 1896, the Conservative Party of Sir John A. Macdonald had governed Canada, excepting a single term from 1874 to 1878. The Liberals had struggled to retake office, under Laurier and his predecessor, Edward Blake. 1896 was the first election held after the death of Macdonald in 1891, and the Conservatives had been in complete disarray in the ensuing years, with no less than four different leaders. The Liberals would remain in office until 1911. Beyond that, political scientists often consider this election that made the Liberal Party the dominant force in Canadian politics, holding office for more than two thirds of the time between 1896 and 2006.

• Irish (UK) general election, 1918 — Sinn Féin victory
  • For the previous four decades, Irish politics had been dominated by the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party, which sought Home Rule within the United Kingdom. The 1918 election was a landslide victory for the Republican Sinn Féin party, winning nearly 70% of the seats (albeit with just 47% of the votes). The new Sinn Féin MPs refused to take their seats in the Westminster Parliament, instead setting up their own republican assembly called Dáil Éireann. This assembly issued a unilateral declaration of independence, an act which led to the start of the Anglo-Irish War and eventually to Irish independence from the United Kingdom. The Irish Parliamentary Party never recovered from this defeat. To this day, all modern political parties in the Republic of Ireland except the Labour Party, the Progressive Democrats and the Green Party are descended from the Sinn Féin party which won the election of 1918.

• UK general election, 1979 — Conservative victory; Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister
  • This election brought the Conservatives into government where they remained for 18 years. Thatcher's policies of monetarism and privatisation represented a very different strand of Conservatism to that of previous governments and a bold shift from the post war consensus that had existed since 1945. The shockwaves led to a new party (the Social Democratic Party) and a long period of opposition for Labour during which time they were reformed and transformed into New Labour before they returned to government. At a more base level it led to a shift in voting patterns as the traditional class based voting started to break down and many of the working classes voted Conservative, whilst at the same time many public sector professionals turned away from them.

• Canadian federal election, 1993 — Liberal victory; Jean Chrétien Prime Minister
  • Throughout Canadian history two parties had taken turns in government and opposition: the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives (sometimes known as Liberal-Conservatives, Conservatives, Union and National Government). The Progressive Conservatives had won the largest majority in Canadian history in 1984 and were re-elected with a majority in 1988. In their second term, however, the policies of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney became largely unpopular and Quebec was frustrated by the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords. The result was the rise of regional parties who elected large numbers of MPs despite a lack of national support. The Conservatives were crushed, winning just 2 seats, while new regional parties, the Bloc Québécois in Quebec and the Reform Party in the west won seats traditionally in the Conservative column. The Liberal Party would not be seriously challenged again until 2004, while the Progressive Conservative party never recovered, winning 20 (of 301) seats in 1997) and 12 in 2000 before merging with the Canadian Alliance, which had succeeded the Reform Party when it attempted to gain a national base of support, in late 2003. The new Conservative Party of Canada, though taking the "Tory" namesake of the old Progressive Conservatives, carried most of the policies of the old Reform and Alliance and continued with Stephen Harper at its helm who had lead the Canadian Alliance into the merger.

• ROC presidential election, 2000 (Taiwan) — Chen Shui-bian
  • Though more popular and consistently ranked higher in the polls, James Soong failed to gain the ruling Kuomintang's (KMT) nomination over incumbent Vice President Lien Chan. As a result, he announced his candidacy as an independent candidate, and was consequently expelled from the party. The split in the KMT vote resulted in a victory for Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party, even though he won only 39% of the popular vote. After the election, Soong founded the People First Party, which attracted members from the KMT and the pro-unification New Party, which was by that time beginning to fade. Angry from the defeat, the KMT expelled chairman Lee Teng-hui, who was president until 2000 and was widely suspected of causing the KMT split so that Chen would win. Lee then founded the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union. The impact of these events changed the political landscape of Taiwan. Not only did the KMT lose the presidency for the first time in half a century, but its policies swung away from Lee's influence and it began intra-party reform. The two newly-founded parties became far more viable than other minor parties in the past, and the multi-party nature of Taiwan's politics was confirmed by the Legislative elections of 2001.

• Palestinian legislative election, 2006 (Palestinian National Authority)
  • In January of 2006 the militant Hamas organization, classified as a terrorist group by the United States government and other groups, won a landslide victory over the ruling Fatah party which had been in power under the leadership of former PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. The Bush Administration and others have threatened to cut off aid to the new Palestinian government if Hamas refuses to abandon terrorist tactics and recognize the right of the nation of Israel to exist.

Voter realignment

Realignment can also be used to describe the switching of voter preference from one party to another, in contrast to dealignment (where a voter abandons his/her party and does not gain a new one).

Realignment can be a temporary or permanent state. In the U.S., as the ideologies of the parties define many of the aspects of voters' lives and the decisions that they make, a realignment by a voter tends to have a longer-lasting effect.

In the UK, on the other hand, voters have a tendency to switch parties on a whim, perhaps only for one election, as there is far less commitment amongst voters towards a particular party as there is in the United States.

See also

• American election campaigns in the 19th Century

References

• Abramowitz, Alan I. and Kyle L. Saunders. 1998. “Ideological Realignment in the US Electorate.” Journal of Politics 60(3):634-652.
• Charles S. Bullock, III, Donna R. Hoffman and Ronald Keith Gaddie, "Regional Variations in the Realignment of American Politics, 1944–2004", Social Science Quarterly v 87#3 (Sept 2006) pp 494+; Abstract: Using the concepts of critical and secular realignments as a framework, models change in the end product of realignment, election outcomes. Tests for secular and critical changes in partisan strength across six geographic regions in US, focusing on office-holding data at both the federal and state legislative level. There are elements of both critical and secular realignments at work with different patterns in each region, and that different regions have been affected by a variety of elections associated with critical events since 1944. The collapse of Republican hegemony in the Northeast and Pacific West has gone largely unnoticed, buried in the intense examination of the growth of the Republican Party in the American South. The 1994 election is the most prominent in terms of its impact on seat holding by the parties at both the state and national level, and constitutes a realigning election.
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