Chapter 7
POLITICAL PARTIES: Winning
the Right to Govern
American Political Development/Historical Focus:
Critical Elections
© 2011 Taylor & Francis
Critical Elections in American Politics
• Political scientists Walter Dean Burnham, V.O.
Key, and David Brady have added to the
literature exploring electoral realignment and the
effect changes in party loyalty have on elections.
• These distinct changes in party loyalty among
voters resulting in a lasting electoral realignment
are termed critical elections.
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Critical Elections in American Politics
• Three periods of sharp electoral change in which
a complete realignment occurs characterized by a
unified and dominant political party controlling
the Senate, House, and Presidency for at least a
decade:
• The Civil War Realignment of 1860
• The 1890s realignment
• The New Deal realignment.
• Each critical election is characterized by political
parties offering clear and distinct policy platforms
and is evaluated by the electorate based on these
differences.
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Critical Elections in American Politics
• In Critical Elections and Congressional Policy
Making, William Brady identifies five tenets of the
aforementioned electoral realignments.
• Dominance of local issues is momentarily softened by "national crosscutting issues"
• The "nationalization of issues during critical election periods creates
majority parties that are relatively united on major policy issues."
• The government is controlled by a single party, for a relatively lengthy
period of time, in order for policy changes to be implemented.
• A large number of freshmen congressmen are elected; in turn, the
committee system is "inundated with new members replacing old ones"
in leadership positions.
• Critical elections stipulate that the majority party actually acts upon
national issues.
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The Civil War Realignment
• The first period of critical elections, the
Civil War Realignment, occurred between
1854 and 1860.
• 1848-1874:
• House elections highly sectional;
• dominating national issues of slavery, Western
expansion, nationalistic economic growth,
immigration, protective tariffs.
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The Civil War Realignment
• Democrats: opposed protective tariffs, the expansion
of homestead legislation; supported the KansasNebraska Act of 1854.
• Whigs: soon to become the Republican Party, favored
Western expansion, tariffs to protect American
manufacturing, the admission of Kansas as a slavefree territory.
• 1856: Republican Party emerged as a national party
opposing slavery and directly challenging Democratic
platform calling for the non-interference by Congress
with slavery in states, territories, and DC.
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The Civil War Realignment
• As a result of the parties’ distinct stands on
national issues, the Democratic Party began to
lose House seats in the Northeast and Midwest.
• Brady cites an across the board change of -5.26 in the
critical period away from the Democratic Party in the
North suggesting that "national electoral factors were
benefiting the Republican Party."
• In the Midwest, the votes for Democratic
congressman were even lower. The Republicans
gained 35 House seats and averaged 66% of the vote
over Democratic candidates.
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The Civil War Realignment
• Republicans became the majority party in 1856,
attained unified control of the government in
1860 when Abraham Lincoln elected.
• Republicans controlled Congress and presidency
from 1860 to 1874.
• New 2-party system emerged: Republicans united
on issues of
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slavery,
secession,
civil rights,
expansionist banking policies and tariffs.
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The Civil War Realignment
• New majority party enacted significant
policy changes:
• slavery was abolished;
• blacks were enfranchised and were elected to
public offices in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic
states;
• Homestead Acts granted blacks the opportunity
to settle in the Western territories.
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The 1896 Realignment
• Second critical election period, 1894-1896, pitted
agrarian matters against industrial interests.
• Republican leadership supported pro-industrial
legislation (increased railroad construction, high
immigration quotas, protective tariffs, and the
maintenance of the gold standard).
• Democrats eradicated the Gold-Democrats, led by
President Cleveland, from the party and coalesced in
supporting the exchange of silver for gold, tariffs
favoring free trade to assist cotton producers, and an
isolationist foreign policy advocated by the Populist
candidate, William Jennings Bryan.
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The 1896 Realignment
• 1884-1894: excluding the heavily Democratic
South, the regions of the United States were very
competitive.
• In 1894, Republicans gained 6% of the vote in
the Northeast, West, and North-Central States
with the assistance of the Populist Party splitting
the Democratic vote.
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The 1896 Realignment
• In the critical period of 1894-1896,
Republicans gained votes in every region
except the South.
• Republican acquisition of 5.5% of the swing vote
compared to the Democratic loss of -7.6% in the East,
Midwest, West, and North-Atlantic regions.
• The votes-to-seats ratio in the House indicates a 5%
change in both the1894 and 1896 elections and an
astonishing 80% committee membership turnover
between 1892 and1896.
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The 1896 Realignment
• The 1890s realignment led to 34 years of
Republican dominance in national affairs.
• As a result, pro-industrial policies were
implemented:
• The Dingley Tariff of 1896,
• the gold standard,
• international military intervention resulting in The
Spanish-American War,
• increased subsidies for railroads,
• and increased immigration quotas favored by the
Republicans.
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The New Deal Realignment
• The third era of realignment occurred due
to the Great Depression.
• The critical election of 1932 provided the
voters with a stark choice
• Democrats: nominated Franklin Roosevelt as their
presidential candidate and called upon the federal
government to take an active role in assisting the
states with debt relief and social programs
• Republican incumbent: Herbert Hoover, who believed
that any relief should come from state governments.
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The New Deal Realignment
• Despite the fact that 72 House Democrats resigned
or chose not to run for re-election between 1931
and 1933, the Democrats captured 8.95% of the
swing vote in virtually all House districts and in
traditional Republican regions such as the Northeast
and Midwest.
• The Democratic gain was around 10% nationally as a
result of the "solid South" increasing its Democratic support
from 86.7% to 90%.
• During the New Deal realignment there was an
unprecedented turnover of House committee members
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The New Deal Realignment
• Public overwhelmingly supported government
intervention in the economy; number of people voting
was twice as high in 1932 than in 1928.
• An across-the-board realignment enabled Democrats
to control Congress and presidency for 14 years; New
Deal coalition of
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Southerners,
urban workers,
minorities,
the unemployed,
northern industrialists,
Farmers.
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The New Deal Realignment
• New majority passed:
• agricultural assistance bills
• the McNary-Haugenism Act
• infrastructure projects (Tennessee Valley Authority, The
Public Utilities Act)
• reciprocal trade agreements
• the Fair Labor Act
• the extension of unemployment benefits.
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De-alignment Politics and
Divided Government 1968present
• Since the Nixon years, there has been no
pronounced dominance by either major party.
• Divided control over the Congress and the
presidency has been the norm.
• Also, the rise of independents, decline of the
Democrats, and only marginal increases in
Republican identification have characterized these
politics.
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De-alignment and Divided
Government
• A vacillation between the two parties has
characterized modern politics where the public
mood causes shifts of control over policymaking
on a regular basis.
• Recent events are intrinsic of this.
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The 2006 Mid-term Elections
• The results of the 2006 midterm election
suggested the possibility of significant
defections from the Republican Party.
• Only one Republican incumbent in the New
England states, Chris Shays (Conn.), won
reelection; 5 Republican incumbents were
defeated in the Senate
• As a result, the Democrats regained control
over both houses of Congress.
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The 2006 Mid-term Elections
• Public discontent with the Bush administration’s
handling of the Iraq War led to anti-war Democrats
gaining the support of weak-leaning Republicans and
Independents.
• Some senior Republicans in Congress—Chuck Hagel
(Neb.) and Arlen Spector (Penn.) in the Senate and
Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Ron Paul (Tex.) in the House—
have broken with the President over increased
spending, further U.S. military involvement in the
Middle East and a variety of scandals attributed to
the Bush administration and Republicans in
Congress.
• The Southwestern and upper Plains states became
increasingly more Democratic
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The 2006 Mid-term Elections
• Under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, the first
female Speaker of the House, and Harry Reid, an
unpopular leader of the Senate, Democrats have
yet to find a national leader or salient issue, other
than the Iraq War, on which to attract swing
voters to the Democratic Party.
• As of June 2007, the 2008 Presidential election
was the first election since 1952 to have neither
an incumbent President nor former Vice-President
as a candidate.
• This scenario should provide political excitement,
establish a new record for campaign spending
and redefine the modern presidential campaign.
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The 2008 Election
• In the 2008 nomination process, then Senator
Obama built up a popular delegate lead
principally relying on a caucus over primary
strategy, emphasizing his community
organizational skills.
• This was a fundamental break with the past, in
which candidate nominations have been
increasingly decided by primary elections, not
party organization driven caucuses.
• Obama’s employment of this is a further
cooptation of candidate over party-centered
politics, as now the main remaining instrument of
party influence is in the hands of candidate
organizations.
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The 2008 Election
• The implications: evidence of a further
democratization of the electoral process but a
means of greater top down control, this time
from candidates themselves.
• Though Senator Clinton had higher popular vote
totals than Senator Obama, she lost because of
the indirect method of presidential nomination
through delegates and the re-empowering of
caucuses at the expense of primaries.
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2008 Outcome by Parties
2010 and Beyond
• The president’s approval has fallen with hesitation
over his domestic and foreign policies.
• The Tea Party Movement re-energized Republican
Party politics with its anti-tax, anti-government
agenda.
• Disaffection with the Democrats looks to help the
Republicans in the short term.
• But, the electorate is fickle and Republicans now
control the House, while the Democrats retain the
majority in the Senate (though with a smaller
margin).
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