The Concept of a Critical Realignment, Electoral Behavior, and Political Change

1995 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter F. Nardulli
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Enormous Amount ◽  
National Movements

The realignment perspective has exerted an enormous amount of influence on thinking about American politics, but recently it has fallen into disfavor. As a theory of political change, this dissatisfaction is warranted. However, in rejecting the realignment perspective, scholars risk losing a valuable concept, the notion of a critical realignment. My thesis is that, properly defined, the concept of a critical realignment can be a powerful tool in the study of electoral behavior and an important component of a broader theory of political change. This thesis derives from an analysis of presidential elections between 1828 and 1984. This analysis provides dramatic evidence for the proposition that critical realignments are important electoral phenomena. The evidence is equally clear, however, that critical realignments are subnational phenomena that vary considerably in form, not the majestic national movements some believed them to be. The analyses reported here reveal broadly based electoral eruptions of 40 to 50 points that endure for decades.

Women as a Force in Electoral Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Burns ◽  
Ashley Jardina ◽  
Nicole Yadon
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Access To Data

This chapter examines the study of gender and electoral behavior. Early gender scholars took on the challenge of countering the literature’s portrait of women’s passivity and minority status. They provided analyses and data that could speak to the possibility that women were in fact participating, clear-eyed, and political. We begin with an overview of this early work, and outline the trajectory of research on gender and electoral politics through the present day, where women are now seen as a political force in American politics. Scholars have built on these groundbreaking efforts, re-centering attention more squarely on both women and men, gaining access to data they themselves shaped, and drawing on theoretical tools with a wider array of observable implications to shift understandings of sameness, difference, and the processes that give rise to these outcomes.

More Than a Trace: Political Periods, Presidential Losers, and the Goldwater and McGovern Experiences

The Forum ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew E. Busch
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Electoral Coalitions ◽  
History Of

AbstractPeriods of American politics marked by recognizable surges of ideas and activists are not driven solely by winners. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern were among the biggest losers in the history of American presidential elections, yet they produced surges that continue to affect American politics decades later. These losing candidates had three things in common: 1) Their candidacies represented more than individual attempts to gain the presidency, 2) they altered their parties’ electoral coalitions and strategies, and 3) they each made distinctive arguments that laid the groundwork for future party and movement successes.

Law and American Political Development

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (03) ◽  
pp. 779-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Frymer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Political Change ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
Institutional Autonomy ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Judicial Decision Making ◽  
The Supreme Court

This essay reviews the recent volume edited by Ronald Kahn and Ken I. Kersch, The Supreme Court and American Political Development(2006), as well as the broader literature by law scholars interested in American Political Development (APD). The Law and APD literature has advanced our knowledge about courts by placing attention on the importance of executive and legislative actors, and by providing political context to our understanding of judicial decision making. But this knowledge would be more powerful if it would embrace the broader APD field's orientation toward the importance of state and institutional autonomy for understanding politics and political change. Law and APD scholars could go further in examining the ways in which courts and judges act institutionally, and how the legal branch as an institution impacts American politics and state-building. In doing so, Law and APD scholars would contribute not only to our understanding of judicial decision making but also to our understanding of the place and importance of courts in American politics.

Watching Election 2016 with a Gender Lens

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (04) ◽  
pp. 807-812
Author(s):  
Kelly Dittmar
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Gender Dynamics ◽  
Women Candidates ◽  
Masculine Norms ◽  
Gendered Space ◽  
Gender Neutral ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Gender Lens ◽  
The Ideal

The presence of women candidates in both major parties’ presidential primaries, including a likely woman Democratic nominee, has increased the attention paid to gender dynamics in the 2016 US presidential election. However, the presumption that previous presidential elections—without female prominent contenders—were gender neutral is false: gender dynamics have been at play in all US presidential elections to date. The nation’s top executive office is arguably the most masculine in American politics. Duerst-Lahti (1997) describes the presidency as a gendered space in which masculine norms and images are reified as the ideal, adding, “the masculinist assumption-made-normal is strong and is made even stronger when it goes unnoticed for its gendered aspects” (22). Presidents and presidential contenders, whether male or female, are expected to meet the masculine expectations of the office through words and actions, and those around them—family, spouses, and advisors—often play a role in shaping the degree to which they are successful. In navigating American politics, candidates also face gendered treatment by opponents, voters, and media, reminding us that presidential politics is far from gender neutral. These gender dynamics have been detailed by scholars, particularly in analyses of the presidential candidacies of women (Beail and Longworth 2013; Carlin and Winfrey 2009; Carroll and Dittmar 2009; Dittmar and Carroll 2013; Duerst-Lahti 2013; Falk 2010; Han and Heldman 2007; Heldman, Carroll, and Olson 2005; Lawrence and Rose 2009; McClain, Carter, and Brady 2005). However, the depth and nuance in scholarly analyses are rarely evident in popular dialogue about the ways in which gender shapes presidential elections.

scholarly journals CATHOLICS AND THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-312
Author(s):  
Corwin Smidt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Vote ◽  
The Past ◽  
Swing Vote ◽  
Election Process

This article examines the role of Catholics within the 2020 presidential election in the United States. Although Catholics were once a crucial and dependable component of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition, their vote in more recent years has been much more splintered. Nevertheless, Catholics have been deemed to be an important “swing vote” in American politics today, as in recent presidential elections they have aligned with the national popular vote. This article therefore focuses on the part that Catholics played within the 2020 presidential election process. It addresses the level of political change and continuity within the ranks of Catholics over the past several elections, how they voted in the Democratic primaries during the initial stages of the 2020 presidential election, their level of support for different candidates over the course of the campaign, how they ultimately came to cast their ballots in the 2020 election, and the extent to which their voting patterns in 2020 differed from that of 2016.

The “Obama Effect” Revisited

2021 ◽  
pp. 104-130
Author(s):  
Ray Block ◽  
Angela K. Lewis-Maddox
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Research Design ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Descriptive Representation ◽  
Political Office ◽  
Racial Polarization

In this chapter, we examine the influence of Obama’s presence on racial divisions in partisanship. We interpret these divisions as evidence of racial polarization. Since Obama is a Democrat and because African Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates in presidential elections, we define polarization as a gap in the extent to which African and Anglo Americans identify with the Democratic Party. Our focus on polarization stems from the fact that partisanship has always been a racialized concept in American politics. We ask the following questions: Was there a race gap in party identification during the Obama presidency? If so, did the former president’s media activities influence the width of this race gap? How did Obama’s media presence affect the party gap? Did the former president push Whites away from the Democratic Party (while pulling African Americans into it)? Or did Obama make racial differences in partisanship disappear? We conclude this chapter by discussing the substantive implications of our evidence and the limitations of our research design. When discussing potential avenues for research, we focus on the fact that Obama’s presidency gave race scholars the opportunity to study descriptive representation in the nation’s highest political office.

The Partisanship of Protestant Clergy in the 2016 Presidential Election

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
James L. Guth ◽  
Corwin E. Smidt
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
General Election ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Protestant Clergy ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Strategic Position ◽  
American Society ◽  
High Level

Abstract Given their strategic position within American society, clergy continue to remain important actors in American politics. This article examines the partisan identifications and electoral behavior of American Protestant clergy in the 2016 presidential election. Although clergy partisanship may be of interest in any election, the 2016 contest, given the milieu of political polarization and the presence of the Trump candidacy, provides an intriguing context for assessing the profession's electoral behavior, particularly among Republican clergy. Based on survey results from over 2,500 clergy drawn from ten Protestant (five mainline and five evangelical) denominations, the study finds that, during the early stages of the 2016 nomination process, only a small percentage of Republican clergy supported Trump and that, despite the high level of political polarization, a sizable segment of Republican clergy resisted partisan pressures and refused to vote for Trump in the general election. The propensity of both independent and Republican clergy to vote for the GOP nominee varied largely with the level of perceived “threats”: to the Christian heritage of the nation, from Islam, and from the process of “globalization.”

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