Political Party Alignments

Historically, a majority of voters have held stable preferences for and elected candidates from one of the two major political parties for an extended period of time. When this occurs, the electorate and the party of preference are said to be in “alignment.” While individual partisan preferences are slow to change, dramatic events (such at the Great Depression or the Vietnam War and Watergate) can cause large numbers of people to give up on their parties, at least temporarily, and vote for candidates of the other party. When voters move away from one party and support the other one in an election, the seeds of a realignment have been sown. If the voters immediately return to their previously preferred party in the next election, the prior election is called a “deviating” election.

However, if voters’ preferences shift more permanently away from the old party toward the new one for several elections, the original election in which the shift occurred is recognized as a “realigning” or “critical” election. For example, the United States had a democratic president from 1992 to 2000. The election of George W. Bush in 2000 suggested that a realignment may have been imminent. Since Bush was re-elected in 2004, we may say that a realignment occurred — meaning that the election of 2000 could be called a “realigning” or “critical” election. If John Kerry would have been elected, however, the election of 2000 would have been known as a “deviating” election.

One of the most significant realigning elections in American political history, in terms of political party history and its effect on the nation, was the election of 1856, in which the modern-day Republican Party first contested elections and wrested control of the national government away from the Democrats by running against slavery. In that election, the Democratic Party became the party of the South and remained dominant there until 1994. The next major realignment occurred in 1896 when an era of healthy two-party competition came to an end with the Republicans again emerging as victors. The Republicans thoroughly dominated national politics until 1932 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Democrats across the nation were swept into office as the nation plunged deep into the Great Depression and collectively decided that it was time for the “New Deal” FDR promised.

From 1932 to 1994, the Democratic Party dominated the United States Congress. For nearly two-thirds of the century, there was a Democratic majority in the House and in the Senate. The only exceptions were between 1947–1949 and 1953–1955 when the Republicans temporarily won majorities in both houses and between 1980 and 1986 when the Senate was controlled by the Republicans (Democrats remained the majority party in the House). During that same time period, however, Republicans have been in the White House just as often as Democrats, with Republicans dominating presidential elections between 1952 and 1992.

Since the 1950s, neither political party has been able to win and maintain control of both the Congress and the presidency for more than two or three elections. Consequently, many political scientists have argued that the American electorate, instead of being in alignment with one party or another, is in a state of dealignment. While many observers believed that the electorate had realigned itself toward the Republican Party, when it took control of both the House and the Senate for the first time in nearly forty years, the Republican’s failure to win the presidential election in 1996 meant that the nation would remain without a clear political party alignment. Even when Bush was elected in 2000, his party did not win clear control of the Congress. However, further evidence that a realignment may be under way came when Republicans won larger majorities in the Congress in 2002 and George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004. The narrow margin of Bush’s victory and a bitterly divided Congress, though, suggest that it is too early to declare the emergence a long-lasting Republican alignment. In fact, the 2006 elections may very well see a control of one or both houses of Congress.