Session 5: Realignment, Dealignment, and Party Systems

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Session 5 Realignment, Dealignment, and Party
Systems
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Party Systems

• Third Party System, 1856-1896 Ascendant
  Republicans Versus Democrats
• Republicans anti-slavery, a composite party
• Democrats dominated by southerners
• Whigs dissolve
• Regionalism
• Party machines, westward expansion, the
  Australian ballot

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• Fourth Party System, 1896-1928 Republican
  Dominance Renewed
• Critical Election 1896
• Intensive social and economic change
  monopolies, railroads, urbanization
• Republicans sided with business interests
• Democrats a shadow of
• Republicans
• Populists and Progressives
• Lack of party competition

Teddy Roosevelt and Bull Moose in 1912
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• The Presidencies of the 4th Party System
• Warren G. Harding and scandal
• Calvin Coolidge and silent politics
• Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression

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Party Systems
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Party Systems

• The Fifth Party System, 1932-1964 The Democratic
  New Deal Era
• Critical Election - 1932
• Democrats a coalition of groups
• Republicans lost supporters
• Growth of the welfare state

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• Dealignment
• (The 6th Party System, 1968)
• One party looses its dominance but no other party
  emerges as the new dominant party
• Attachments that voters have to the parties
  decline in general
• Electorate is less predictable

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• The Sixth Party System, 1968-1994 Dealignment
  and Divided Government
• Dealignment weakening of attachment to parties,
  neither party is dominant, split ticket voting
• Also
• Black voters increased their participation and
  began to identify with the Democratic party
• Partisanship declined and voters (particularly
  young voters) began to identify as independents
• White Southerners moved to the Republican fold
• Support for the Democratic party declined among
  its traditional supporters Catholics,
  blue-collar workers, etc.

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• Weakening of party ties can be seen in third
  party challenges
• George Wallace 1968
• John Anderson 1980
• Ross Perot 1992, 1996
• The advent of candidate-centered campaigns
• Parties begin to be in support of rather than
  in control of the candidates campaigns

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Party Systems

• The Seventh Party System, 1994 You Were Here To
  See It Happen
• Republicans
• Democrats
• Social and cultural issues