Persistence of Party Success in American Presidential Elections

Abstract

Persistence of Party Success in American Presidential Elections The record of party success in American presidential elections has generally been considered by historians and political scientists to consist largely of periods of supremacy of first one and then the other major party. According to this view, at most points in time, either the Democrats or the Republicans were ascendant on a national basis, commanding the continuing loyalty of a sufficient fraction of the electorate to permit dominance for the relatively long term. Thus one had the Republican era from i860 to 188o, the Democratic period from 1932 to 1948, and so on. Serious analysts usually allow for transitional or evenly balanced phases between such ascendancy periods; but still, in simple terms, the prevailing, standard view has been that the success of a particular party tends to persist until such time as new issues or new entrants into the electorate bring about a realignment, which inaugurates a new era in the relative balance between the major parties.1 Whether or to what extent the described persistence is truly present is a question of some importance. It bears on the matter of how much stability there may be in the ideological preferences of the electorate as a whole, or, to put it another way, bears on whether changes in the system of causes which determine political or ideological preferences tend to occur on long or short time scales. Moreover, since a realignment is essentially an event separating different epochs of stability, the concept of realignment itself would appear to have a questionable basis were there little persistence or stability to begin with. Thus the existence or degree of persistence is relevant to the manner in which we regard American political behavior and the forces which affect it.