A RISING RED TIDE
It seems that during every presidential election, the press repeats the phrase: “This is the most important election in American history.” Among academics, the analysis of election results is not seen in individual outcomes, but best seen in a rearview mirror perspective trying to discover long-term trends that led to the outcome. If results are difficult to describe immediately after the vote, they are almost impossible to measure for long-term reasons in of voter likings. Respected political scientist V.O. Key called attention to different election outcomes in 1955, saying that sometimes “there occurs a sharp and durable electoral realignment between parties.” Every election is important, but the outcomes of some, like the victory of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, seem lasting.
Key identified 1896 and 1928 as critical elections, but the 1932 “realignment” seemed more important outcome because its effects lasted for decades. In the US House of Representatives, Democrats controlled the chamber every year, except four, from 1932-1994. In a span of sixty-two years they had the majority vote and leadership for twenty-nine of thirty-one congressional sessions. Elections remain “critical,” but no streak has matched what came to be known as the ’New Deal alignment’ of 1932. A realignment political event is defined as one that brings: “a long span of unified party control of government in the House, Senate and presidency.” That record of full partisan loyalty does not exist in most American history, but there have been some close similarities. “While the Great Depression altered partisanship nationally, the claims of [subsequent] realignments do not hold up.”
At the end of the 1960s, Kevin Phillips predicted that there would be a new conservative majority after the liberal programs of the John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations disappointed voters. The Emerging Republican Majority was released just months after Richard Nixon’s presidential victory in 1968. The book declared that Nixon’s election was the end of the Democratic ‘New Deal Hegemony.’ Arguing that past Democratic voters were new recruits to a Republican allegiance, the author identified what he called a “Sunbelt” line of allegiance in the southern US states stretching from California to Florida. This surging birth of population and political rebirth led to Nixon’s 1972 landslide electoral victory 530 to 17 over George McGovern. Was it a realignment? No. It didn’t last and the Congress did not cooperate.
The problem with the realignment studies was that “the explanations reached a climax in one or more critical elections” and then moved on to another loyalty. The Republican resurgence was soon spent and the duration of any electoral change came into question. Nothing could approach the 1932 result of FDR, and any victory afterward proved short. The Reagan presidency remained popular, especially after his enormous electoral triumph of 525-13 in 1984, but in about a decade worldwide events and foreign policy terrorism led to a change of heart. Not surprisingly the two-term presidency of Bill Clinton (1993-2000), the first double victory win by Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt, seemed to usher in another wave of change. The second term of the Clinton term suffered from the Lewinsky scandal and that may have dampened the prospects of any realignment, but that didn’t stop the realignment predictions.
In 2003 John B. Judis and Ray Teixeira forecast the dawn of a new progressive era in their book The Emerging Democrat Majority. Central to the new argument was the emergent of a large and well-educated group of professionals who were prepared to join other minority groups to form a new governing partnership for Democrats. “The transition from an industrial to a postindustrial society” provided a group of well-educated voters “in which their labor was primarily directed at producing ideas and services” not manufacturing goods. The authors identified a sizeable, and still growing, group of teachers, publicly organized workers in unions and professional local, state and federal officials who collectively supported government spending in the economy and the expansion of other services in life. The fact that many Americans did not back the European Union, or its bureaucratic structure, didn’t matter. Government servants generally believed that their view of the world, always reinforced with statistics and measures of need, was better than any outside opinion.
The new century produced a society where the population organized around metropolises called “ideaopolises,” meaning areas with a reputation for something consumed nationally, like ‘Silicon Valley’ and ‘Hollywood’ in California, or the ‘Research Triangle’ in North Carolina and ‘Fashion’ in New York. Judas and Texeria believed these areas funneled ideas and people into what the author’s called ‘soft technology’ – entertainment, media, fashion, design and advertising. These areas were an ideal breeding ground for a large constituency of people loyal to a new electoral majority. When joined to minority groups with a proved record of loyalty to Democrats, the resulting coalition was self-evident, a new political realignment.
What the prognosticators on both sides of the aisle missed in their projections was the birth and expansion of the internet which instantly put candidates, pollsters and opinion pundits in direct contact with voters in their home. A situation unimaginable earlier, that candidates could visit with potential constituents at the latter’s convenience, became the norm. Within a very short time, the importance of newspapers, television and mail campaigns were replaced by a screen presence on the internet. “In 2000 the top ten countries accounted for 73% of all internet users, and about half had access at home.” In the US, by 2015 77% of the households used the internet daily, and users were as young as three. The number only expanded and so was the cost of reaching them on the internet. Campaigning for public office was very different when the candidate met virtually all the voters.
The whole idea of “realignment” was suddenly obsolete. From a geographical perspective age, religion, neighborhood residence and income became more important than geography because they could be identified online. States were merely artificial boundaries that housed major cities, sometimes with hundreds or more neighborhoods. A campaign could now identify particular regions and neighborhoods for attention. Over 68% of the Texas state population live in the metropolitan areas of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio; and over half the population of Georgia is in the Atlanta area, with its 20-odd counties. Within these cities lie a vast hodgepodge of neighborhoods that could be individually targeted across state lines and addressed in television and internet ads in individual homes.
In the internet age, political candidates achieved the democratic ideal: meeting voters regularly whenever they wanted long before the polls opened. As a result, a full-blown political realignment in specific states is unlikely. The change will be among groups and the effect will be additive. In the 2024 presidential election, the county with the highest Hispanic population in Texas voted for Donald Trump. The same kind of results could be gathered for churchgoers, singles, ethnic, married and unmarried voters as well as other specific information. In an environment where sex, income, age, location, magazine subscription and television watching habits are readily available especially a surprise realignment outcome is practically impossible.
In American politics anything is possible, but the expansion of media involvement and the willingness of the public to share their opinions, makes a full-scale 1932 voter-type realignment virtually impossible. Even convincing victories, like those of Barack Obama in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2024 were mitigated by pocket areas of resistance that could grow into larger bases for a takeover. Loyalty was transitory, and while attitudes could change they could now be addressed by specific mailings, television ads and emails.
There are tides of economic and social change in the populace, but they are generally gradual and can now be mapped. Once the term “Solid South” applied to the electoral loyalty in one area of the country. In the 1924 presidential election, the Democratic nominee (John W. Davis) carried twelve states, the eleven in the old Confederacy plus Oklahoma. The political label, “Yellow Dog Democrats,” meant that voter loyalty was so blind that they “would vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket.”. Such was the loyalty for some time.
Gradually, economic growth and social change enveloped the region. “Yellow Dogs,” died out, and were replaced by conservative voters who could be lured to the Republican Party. On election night in 2024, every southern state with the exception of Virginia, voted Republican. There is a long history of hypocrisy, resentment, betrayal and disloyalty behind that change, but it came. In time, a predictable population emerged and economic trends reinforced the new loyalty.
A “slow boil” of change among well-informed voters takes time.
1 V.O. Key, “A Theory of Critical Elections,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 17, February, 1955, 3-18. 2 David R. Mayhew, Electoral Realignments. New Haven, CT, Yale University, 2002, 27. 3 Ibid, 141.
4 Kevin P. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority. Delaware, NH: Arlington House, 1969.
5 David Mayhew, Ibid. E.E. Schattschneider, “The United States: The Functional Approach to Party Government,” in Sigmund Neumann, Modern Political Parties: Approaches to Comparative Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, 194-215. E.E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960, 78, 81-82, 86. James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983, 294.
6 John B. Judis and Ray Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority. New York: Scribner, 2002, 38-39.
7 Ibid, 73-73.
8 Camille Ryan and Jamie M. Lewis, “Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2015,” U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, September 2017. Census.gov.
9 J. H. Cullum Clark, The Texas Triangle: An Emerging Metropolitan Model in the Lone Star State. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2021.
10 “Texas Counties by Hispanic Population,” Texas Center, 2020, TexasCenter.Net. “Texas Presidential Vote: by County,” APnews.com.
11 “A Solid Leader for the Solid South,” Life, Vol 40, No. 21, May 21, 1956.