Shadow Realignment, Partisan Strength and Competition : 1960 - 2000 9780313075339, 9780275973032

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Shadow Realignment, Partisan Strength and Competition

Shadow Realignment, Partisan Strength and Competition 1960 to 2000

Albert J. Nelson

Westport, Connecticut London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nelson, Albert J. Shadow realignment, partisan strength and competition : 1960 to 2000 / Albert J. Nelson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–97303–4 (alk. paper) 1. United States—Politics and government. 2. Politics, Practical. 3. Political parties—United States. I. Title. JK2261.N45 2002 324.273’09’045—dc21 2001036304 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2002 by Albert J. Nelson All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001036304 ISBN: 0–275–97303–4 First published in 2002 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my incomparable parents, love Kenneth G. Nelson 95 Agnes [Johnson] Nelson 82 and in loving memory of Elsie Anna Clara [Wendt] Nelson

Contents Illustrations

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1. INTRODUCTION Party Cycles Separation of Powers and Decline of Parties Candidate-Centered Politics and Incumbency Regionalism and the Decline of the Democrats Postindustrial Dislocation Direction of this Book

1 2 4 8 10 14 16

2. SHADOW REALIGNMENT AND NATIONAL PARTISAN VARIATION AND COMPETITION National Party Strength Index Electoral Periods and Shadow Realignment National Partisan Strength in Regions National Partisan Competition by State

22 25 28 33 39

3. STATE PARTISAN VARIATION AND COMPETITION National and State Party Strength Indices Compared Regional Party Strength State Party Competition

53 54 56 61

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Contents

4. EXPLAINING SHIFTING PARTY STRENGTH, ELECTORAL REFORM, AND CONCLUSIONS Predicting Party Strength Indices Predicting Presidential Elections Gala 2000 Electoral Reform Bush Problems Conclusions Bibliography Index

72 74 79 81 83 89 91 95 107

Illustrations TABLES 2.1 The National Party Index, Kennedy to Bush (1960–2000)

26

2.2 Four-Dimensional Rotated Factor Matrix of National Party Strength Using Principle Component Analysis, Kennedy to Bush (1960–2000)

31

2.3 The National Party Index of Strength in the West

34

2.4 The National Party Index of Strength in the Northeast

36

2.5 The National Party Index of Strength in the South

37

2.6 National Partisan Strength and Competition in the United States, from Kennedy to Bush in Four Electoral Periods

40

3.1 A Comparison of National and State Party Strength Indices, from Kennedy to Bush (1960–2000)

54

3.2 The State Party Index of Strength in the West

57

3.3 The State Party Index of Strength in the Northeast

58

3.4 The State Party Index of Strength in the South

60

3.5 State Partisan Strength and Competition in the United States, from Kennedy to Bush in Four Electoral Periods

62

x

Illustrations

4.1 Regression Analyses Using Beta Weights to Measure the Three Independent Variables’ Prediction of National Party and State Party Strength Indices (1960–2000)

75

4.2 Regression Analyses Using Beta Weights to Measure the Three Independent Variables’ Prediction of Presidential Elections during Shadow Realignment and Conservative Consolidation (1980–2000) 80

Chapter 1

Introduction One of the interesting questions of the past forty years has addressed the “end of realignment” as a concept in American party politics (Shafer, 1991). The authors of the articles in Byron E. Shafer’s book The End of Realignment? Interpreting American Electoral Eras are concerned about the failure of a partisan realignment, or the failure of Republican conservatism to win electoral victories throughout the federal system in the 1980 elections. Shadow Realignment, however, is an attempt to assess the past generation of partisan experience during the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy to the unusual electoral victory of George W. Bush (covering from 1960 to 2000). Within this time frame, the party cycle seemed to function quite well through the 1976 elections (Burnham, 1970, 1982; Key, 1955, 1959; Sundquist, 1983), but then, systemically, the cycle seemed to be put on hold. If a new party system had not emerged from the contentious 1968 election and period of dealignment (to 1980), how could presidents govern successfully? I assume like many others that American parties are important vehicles of popular sovereignty that tie together America’s checks and balances political system, in effect, making governance of a highly diverse nation possible (Committee on Political Parties, 1950). How else could presidents govern effectively, or how could America systemically pursue long-term policy questions if not with disciplined parties? In the past, a pattern of partisan behavior has been identified that resonates with policy changes and Supreme

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Shadow Realignment

Court interpretations of the Constitution. This cycle seemed to be aborted, but I believe a “shadow realignment” has effectively emerged in the past forty years. PARTY CYCLES The past generation of leadership poses some interesting problems for a continuing party cycle. Since the 1968 election, the traditional party cycle has not developed as expected. This is due to a significant decline in party identification, rise of candidate-centered organizations, and a transition to a postindustrial economy. Historically, American political change was associated with a party cycle including three periods: a realignment of political forces following a “critical” election (Burnham, 1970; Everson, 1982; Key, 1955: 3–18; 1959: 198–210; Ladd, 1981: 127–149; Petrocik, 1981; Sundquist, 1983) that was either catastrophic or secular in nature. A catastrophic critical election (realignment of partisan forces) occurs rapidly, for example, following the shattering effects of the Great Depression. This led to the Democratic New Deal associated with the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the rise of the welfare state. Secular realignment would represent a more gradual change in the realignment of partisan forces, but the effect would over time be the same, the redirection of existing policies associated with the emergence of new, dominant interests in the nation (Key, 1955: 3–18; 1959: 198–210). Perhaps a secular (I prefer transitional) realignment represents the nature of events over the past thirty years. Whether realignment is catastrophic or transitional in nature, in American politics it has generally meant two things. First, a new dominant coalition in the guise of a political party emerges to dominate national and state institutions; and second, a realignment is a phase of fertile creativity in policymaking that responds to the policy demands of voting groups in an emerging dominant coalition. Indeed, realignment could not occur if policies were not placed on the political agenda to mobilize their support (Key, 1959). A period of stability or a consolidation of a new policy agenda follows realignment. The minority party finds that in order to win elections, it must come to terms with this agenda, accept it in many respects, or find political success impossible to achieve. As further change continues, the success of the new coalition may find that its success has unintended consequences that weaken the coalition’s support. Un-

Introduction

3

certainty due to crisis and change destabilizes, or dealigns, elements of a dominant coalition, and assuming that political institutions survive, the cycle recommences. David S. Broder (1980) was the first to write that a realignment occurred with the “changing of the guard” and election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980. However, it was an unusual realignment since Republicans captured the presidency and the U.S. Senate, but not the U.S. House of Representatives, although they did increase the number of seats they held in the House. Nor did Republicans capture significant numbers of gubernatorial offices or state legislative chambers. However, significant shifts in policy reversed the substantial role of the national government. Furthermore, substantial partisan shifts reported in a national partisan index for each state (southern realignment and shifts of public attitudes toward Republicans) would produce, I hypothesize, a unique electoral period during Reagan’s and George H. Bush’s administrations—a shadow realignment. By “shadow realignment,” I mean that a substantial partisan shift indeed occurred creating this unique electoral period (see Chapter 2) although it did not constitute the capture of national and state institutions (as do critical and transitional realignments). If partisan capture of national and state institutions did not occur, we must be aware that the party cycle includes far more than the relative success of parties; it also includes significant shifts in policy associated with new public concerns. A number of writers believe that the concept of partisan realignment should be “tossed out” of the rubric of political science (Shafer, 1991), although I disagree. One political analyst, Sean Q. Kelly (1994: 162–190), looked to other disciplines for a concept that could address change without a complete partisan triumph in national and state elections. He suggests “punctuated change,” a term borrowed from paleontologists (Eldridge and Gould, 1972; Eldridge, 1989). Punctuated changes represent “broad and sustained changes in behavior of the electorate and subsequent changes in the behavior of the government” (Kelly 1994: 166). Echoing Walter Dean Burnham (1991: 115–116), he posits that punctuated change depends on two criteria. First, politically decisive minorities must change traditional patterns of behavior. Following the 1968 election, southern whites shifted their partisan support to the Republican Party in presidential elections (Black and Black, 1987, 1992) and in doing so determined the success of the Repub-

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lican Party. Eventually, they also elected congressional leaders, which was extremely crucial to Republican dominance of Congress in 1980 (Senate) and from the 1994 election until 2000. To this, one can add the decided change among younger and older voters toward a conservative Republican Party during the period 1980 to 1988 (Miller, 1990: 97–115). Second, the change should have important consequences in the organization of the political system. One of these changes would represent significant policy shifts away from the liberalism of Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration that substantially strengthened the role of the national government. Changes in government behavior would be a significant shift of policy direction (e.g., a movement away from a liberal emphasis on the national government’s responsibilities to a devolution of power to the states coupled with market mechanisms in policymaking). I agree with the substance of this argument, but I decidedly do not agree to dismiss the concept of realignment. Thus, rather than punctuated change, I would stipulate that a shadow realignment occurred, that is, substantial partisan change without the control of all national and state institutions, and tied to a significant change in policy opposed to the liberalism of the Kennedy-Johnson administrations. SEPARATION OF POWERS AND DECLINE OF PARTIES Several factors explain the difficulty of achieving partisan realignment and party government: separation of powers, decline in partisan identification, rise of candidate-centered politics, and effects of incumbency. One of the difficulties is a unique system of separation of powers etched into national political life by the U.S. Constitution (Dahl, 1956; Hartz, 1955; Key, 1956, 1964; Lipset, 1963, 1991; Madison, 1937a, b). Fearful of democracy’s flaws associated with majority rule, the founding fathers made it difficult for government to respond efficiently to majorities whose passion may endanger the rights of others in society. The creation of three distinct institutions—executive, legislative, and judicial—made governance and the partisan capture of institutions at best very difficult. In addition, a bicameral legislature was created that made governance even more difficult. This was done to ensure that powers would be shared between institutions whose members represented different majorities, and whose elections were at best syncopated. The chief execu-

Introduction

5

tive is elected every four years and represents a national coalition, indeed, presidents since Andrew Jackson grasped this advantage to 1 press their “mandates” to govern. Senators are divided into three classes and each class is elected for six years. Note how different the majorities are that they must represent, for example, a majority coalition in New York, California, Texas, and Pennsylvania might in many ways be similar to a presidential coalition, but the majorities in South Carolina, Montana, South Dakota, and Arkansas are likely to be extremely different. If one is to be reelected to the Senate, one must be able to effectively represent the predominant values of a state’s majority coalition, or suffer the consequences in the next election (even though many more incumbents win). Under these circumstances, it could take more than one election for a minority party to seize control of the Senate. Even then, there must be a high degree of consensus to move policy in another direction since a minority in the Senate has ample opportunity to block significant change. Finally, there is the U.S. House of Representatives, which is elected as a body every two years. Again, the majority coalitions each representative ought to respond to is likely to be far more homogenous than those represented in the Senate or by the president. Under these circumstances, since “all politics is local,” one might expect that a representative is likely to be “captured” or have less room to maneuver between interests, hence his or her policy preferences will largely reflect the interests of that coalition. When one assesses the effects of this relationship and the importance of committee appointments, is it surprising that the “iron triangles of politics” (Cigler, 1991; Salisbury et al., 1987), or “issue networks” (Heclo, 1978; Petracca, 1992; Salisbury et al., 1992), represent important subgovernments that can frustrate a presidential or chamber’s leadership initiatives? It seems presidents with strong political coattails (and these seem to have disappeared lately) could have a large effect on whether their party will succeed during presidential elections. However, midterm elections represent a problem when a “coalition of minorities” (injured by the president’s decisions) turn their support to the loyal opposition. The judiciary, appointed with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate, primarily represents the values of a dominant coalition (Dahl, 1957: 279–295; Funston, 1975: 795–811). A new party may obtain executive and legislative powers but no opportunity to appoint

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Shadow Realignment

new members to the Supreme Court (e.g., see Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term), which is extremely important to a governing coalition. During a period of realignment, Richard Funston (1975: 795–811) notes that the Supreme Court is far more likely to declare the actions of a new party coalition in Congress and in the executive office unconstitutional. This makes governing difficult and indicates that realignment probably involves a number of elections before a new majority can govern effectively (Sundquist, 1983). The vertical separation of powers, federalism, also makes it difficult to capture important state institutions. During President Roosevelt’s era, many governors held office for two-year terms, and presidential coattails were extremely effective in seizing control of gubernatorial offices. Now, most governors serve for four years and are elected during midterm elections that lessen the effect of national issues on state elections. This significantly inhibits the likelihood of partisan realignment, and governors of an opposition party can have an important effect on presidential elections in their states. Since governors receive significant media attention, they can affect a presidential election’s dynamics. For example, the 1998 electoral success of Republican governors likely had some affect on President George W. Bush’s electoral chances for this past 2000 presidential election, especially in Florida where his brother Republican Governor Jeb Bush arguably had some effect on the election. The problem of partisan realignment has also been significantly compounded by the decline of parties (Wattenberg, 1994) and ticket-splitting (DeVries and Tarrance, 1972). Since the early 1960s, partisan identification had less effect on voters’ electoral choices, and without a doubt, Democratic identification substantially eroded since 1964. The concomitant rise in the number of independents probably ensured an increase in ticket-splitting, an opportunity that always existed but was seldom used by American voters. Since the 1970s, voters consistently divided their votes between the parties with a vengeance, thereby making governance difficult and partisan realignment an uncertain concept in political science (Quirk and Nesmith, 1994). V.O. Key writes: “Common partisan control of the executive and legislature does not assure energetic government, but division of party control precludes it” (1964: 688). In the past 32 years, the country has had only six years of unified government, although Presidents Jimmy Carter (1977 to 1980) and William Jefferson Clinton (1993 to 1994) were less than successful. In spite of

Introduction

7

divided government, David Mayhew (1991) argues that an effective and successful legislative agenda is indeed possible during divided control. Perhaps this was true during the 1980s, but President Clinton’s success significantly declined following the Republican takeover of the U.S. House and Senate in 1994. Republican control of these chambers since the 1994 election has eroded in successive elections, but the 2000 election has largely placed the executive and legislature in Republican control. I might add tenuous control since their majorities are very small in the House (222 to 211 following a special election won by a Republican in 2001) and control of the Senate divided (50–50; changed to 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans in 2001 when Senator James M. Jeffords, VT, left the Republican Party to become an Independent) with the vice president capable of casting deciding votes. In addition, the Supreme Court’s conservatives hold a 5–4 margin that may or may not be enhanced should one of the older judges decide to retire during President George W. Bush’s administration. The previous discussion describes the difficulty attached to obtaining party control of the government in order to ensure that no abuse of power occurs in the country. Although this was the intention of the founders, the institutional mechanisms (representation, checks and balances, and federalism) wrought in 1787 (Madison, 1937a, b) contributed to a breakdown of democratic values. One must remember that there is an important matter of nationalizing a denationalized issue. That is, minority rights in the federal system prior to the Kennedy-Johnson administrations were denationalized. For example, the Civil War ended slavery and blacks temporarily entered the political mainstream during the period of Reconstruction. An argument over electoral college votes (1876 was in some ways similar to the 2000 election although not with the significant policy effects) led to a political compromise in 1876 that ended Reconstruction and in time ushered in a period of Jim Crow laws (Cash, 1969). The issue of black civil rights was effectively denationalized and legitimated by a number of Supreme Court decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which supported a “separate but equal” doctrine that was clearly unequal and exclusionary in its effects (Gunther and Mugham, 1993; see also Weaver and Rockman, 1993). Racial exclusion remained denationalized and in the hands of hostile southern whites until the mid-twentieth century, when the Supreme Court’s

8

Shadow Realignment

Brown v. Board of Education (1954, 1955) decision established that “separate but equal” institutions were not constitutional. Today, we can argue that once a minority has representation in America, ample “veto points” in the checks and balances system allow that group and its allies to protect their rights. Although access to government institutions is important for this to occur, particularly at the national level, there is ample possibility for significant anti-democratic mischief. CANDIDATE-CENTERED POLITICS AND INCUMBENCY Before the 2000 election, which found Republicans controlling national institutions and most gubernatorial offices, it was difficult to conceive of realignment in a conventional sense of partisan victories, since parties have significantly declined over the past generation of leadership (1968 to the present). Apparently, the increased split in Senate delegations and the failure of the U.S. House of Representatives to realign in this period is associated with the emergence of candidate-centered organizations. These organizations needed enormous infusions of money to pay for media and marketing to project candidate image and local issues (shared by presidential candidates as well) that successfully isolated congressional candidates from national tides. This was particularly true of U.S. House incumbents in the 1970s and especially the 1980s (Bennett, 1996; Brunell and Grofman, 1998: 391–399; Cox and Katz, 1996: 478–498; Everson, 1982; Gelman and King, 1990: 142–164; Jacobson, 1996; King and Gelman, 1991: 110–138; Wattenberg, 1991). Effective candidate-centered organizations were able to raise enormous financial resources for their campaigns. With their large war chests, they could frighten off contenders and use the funds to communicate with their constituencies, often by running against their institution and bringing home pork barrel projects (Bennett, 1996). Generally, 90 percent or more of all incumbents in the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures won reelection. More important, candidate-centered politics represented an enormous fragmentation of the American party system (Jacobson, 1990; Mayhew, 1991), exacerbating the effects of what Key refers to as the “perversion of Separation of Powers” that frustrates party government (1956: 52–84).

Introduction

9

Samuel Lubell (1971) seems to understand the new era best when he writes that the Democratic New Deal probably could not be reestablished following the 1968 election. Nor does he think that the Republicans could become a new majority party. These things were not likely to happen because party loyalty among the electorate was no longer important. Indeed, Martin P. Wattenberg (1994) reports a continual decline in partisan attitudes and identification from 1952 to 1992. With partisan attitudes in serious decline, the evolution of “total elections” was more likely; that is, presidents would use their power in economic (Tufte, 1978) and foreign affairs to affect electoral outcomes. If the economy soured, or a scandal tainted the White House resident as in 1998–1999, or foreign affairs debacles occurred, an administration would be denied election or forced to resign. This occurred during Carter’s administration when a sharp inflationary spiral with growing unemployment was tied to the Iran hostage crisis; during Richard M. Nixon’s and Bill Clinton’s administrations, scandal destroyed the former and undercut the leadership capacity of the latter; and President George H. Bush’s reelection bid was disrupted by economic stagnation. Lubell’s (1971) analysis is extremely ominous since he believes we are entering a period of plebiscitary presidential elections that can only focus on short-term—often symbolic—hot-button issues. What is even more disturbing has been the successful manipulation of public opinion from the oval office while suffering from an inability to govern. This inability to govern is associated with weak, undisciplined parties that make it difficult for administrations to establish long-range resolutions to policy problems (Key, 1964). American elections are increasingly dominated by “two incomplete, narrow-based coalitions polarized against each other” in a largely dealigned electorate, left versus right with little middle ground. If one wishes to be cynical about this state of affairs, one can always borrow a quote from Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary: “A Conservative is one who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others” (quoted in Dexter, 1996: 622). Morris P. Fiorina (1980, 1996), Gary C. Jacobson (1990), David Mayhew (1991), and James L. Sundquist (1986) reiterate this theme of political fragmentation and deadlocked government and in some respects reinforce Key’s (1964: 688) assessment of divided government as incapable of creative energy. Fiorina (1980) suggests that

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Shadow Realignment

one aspect of divided government is that politics in the United States seems able to articulate interests but unable to aggregate interests (i.e., compromise and negotiate solutions between interest demands for a collective good). The problem, according to Broder (1971), must be laid at the feet of ineffective American political parties’ inability to address larger public concerns rather than the dynamics of interest-group liberalism (Lowi, 1979). An example of this is found in Thomas Ferguson’s (1994: 118–140) assessment of Clinton’s first administration that promised “change.” His most substantive policy successes represented the interests of organized capitalism that invested in his campaign. The effect of Clinton’s “success” was lower voter turnout in the 1996, and frankly, I see more of the same with campaign financing scandals attached to both political parties. In fact, after a quarter century of “going negative” in political campaigns (Ansolabehere and Iyengar, 1995), voting turnout among the electorate has declined to 50 percent or less in presidential elections. Not only has declining voter turnout developed, but split-ticket voting has also emerged, and with these circumstances divided government. Fiorina (1996) believes that divided government was nothing more than a deep distrust of both parties that represented polarized interests and not the moderate center of politics. In order to obtain more moderate policies, voters simply voted for fiscally conservative Republican presidents to offset the social liberalism of Democrats. Jacobson (1990) argues that divided government was the result of voters who preferred the benefits of the welfare state’s social policies but sought to escape the cost of the services. They did so by favoring the election of Democrats to Congress who promised to protect these programs, and voted for Republican presidents who promised to hold the line on taxes, or quite possibly cut them. REGIONALISM AND THE DECLINE OF THE DEMOCRATS Like other political eras, sectional differences continue to give color and character to presidential and congressional elections (Bensel, 1984; Berkman, 1993b; Black and Black, 1992; Burnham, 1982; Clubb, Flannigan, and Zingale, 1980; Key, 1949; Sundquist, 1983). Richard Franklin Bensel writes that the “most massive and complex fact in American politics and history” was (and is) sectionalism (1984: 5).

Introduction

11

He views it as a conflict between the industrial-financial center that emerged in the Northeast and other regions that serviced and depended on this center. The Democratic New Deal’s orthodox liberalism associated with economic-welfare issues once straddled sectional differences until the 1968 election. The emergence of cultural-national issues (especially race) confounded Democratic fortunes for the next two decades in presidential elections (Shafer and Claggett, 1995). Perhaps most important to this struggle is the unique history of the South, which has paradoxically created among southerners a sense of being a “conscious minority,” and which was one reason for placing a southerner on a presidential ticket. This was reinforced by the North’s perception that southerners were culturally inferior (Carpenter, 1930). A Johnson, Carter, Clinton, or Gore generally increased the proportion of southern votes, not only from that candidate’s state, but also throughout the entire South (Campbell, 1992: 385–407). In 1968, southerners took a large step away from the Democratic Party initially over the issue of race (Bass and DeVries, 1977; Converse, 1966; Cook, 1964; Edsal and Edsal, 1992; Lamis, 1984; Shafer and Claggett, 1995). The conflict over race destabilized the New Deal although this was not a foregone conclusion when President Kennedy was elected in 1960. He moved with circumspection in seeking a solution to African American citizenship status since he was concerned with southern support in the forthcoming 1964 election. One must also remember that Vice President Nixon, the Republican candidate for president in 1960, received a substantial African American vote. It seemed apparent that increased turnout among African Americans would have benefited both parties if it had not become a partisan issue. That was not to be the case. In 1964, Barry Goldwater, a Republican presidential hopeful (unfortunately for the country), opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act proposed by President Johnson (note that congressional Republicans were instrumental in obtaining its passage in addition to other civil rights legislation). Johnson recognized that the support of civil rights would cost support among southern whites, hence Democrats had to support the politics of racial inclusion with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. This moral action, essential in a democratic republic, was also politically expedient (Carmines and Huckfeldt, 1992: 117–134) in order to offset the loss of white southern votes. Furthermore, sup-

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port for the Voting Rights Act was to ensure that African Americans would not be denied the vote again. The 1965 Voting Rights Act (Carmines and Huckfeldt, 1992; Rae, 1994) followed close on the heels of important Supreme Court decisions associated with reapportionment. Baker v. Carr (1962), deemed by Chief Justice Earl Warren to be the most important decision of his court tenure, led to the reapportionment of state legislative districts that enhanced urban representation. It also served as a precedent for Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), which forced the reapportionment of the U.S. House of Representatives, and for Reynolds v. Sims (1964), which specified that the size of legislative districts should approach “one man, one vote.” In the view of many academics, not only was urban representation ensured, but minorities and women (initially in underrepresented suburbs) would obtain representation in state and national legislatures as well. In Davis v. Bandemer (1986), a more conservative Supreme Court reinforced this trend when it ruled that drawing district lines solely on the basis of race to dilute minority representation was unconstitutional. This latter decision, in combination with other decisions, also affected suburban voters and created more racially homogenous districts that opened the door to southern Republican success as well. I must add that the initial realignment of the South to the Republican Party in presidential elections did not immediately affect voting for congressional or state leaders (Aistrup, 1996; Bullock, 1988), but it did affect a top-down Republican strategy initially focused on presidential success. However, looking back to the early years of the New Deal, this phenomenon might not be all that unusual. Sundquist (1983) reports that the New Deal realignment did not occur immediately in all the states. For example, Wisconsin’s and Pennsylvania’s state politics did not realign to the Democratic Party until the early 1950s. Joseph A. Aistrup (1996) indicates that Republican plans sought support for the presidential ticket initially, and like much of the country following the 1968 election, the South engaged in ticket-splitting (DeVries and Tarrance, 1972) by primarily voting for Republican presidential candidates and Democrats for congressional, state, and local offices. Increased support for southern Republican candidates to Congress and state legislatures was likely, in any case, as an older generation of conservative, white southern Democrats passed from the political scene. However, a Democrat’s success with white southern-

Introduction

13

ers was likely if the campaign projected a populist flavor that voiced economic concerns. Paradoxically, many southern whites distrusted government action, particularly those who moved from rural to urban areas. They often endured poor public service delivery and consequently opposed taxes for many social programs (Bass and DeVries, 1977). It was these voters who provided a good portion of the Republican Party’s supporters due in part to the reapportionment decisions that ensured minority representation (Canon, 1999). The addition of new business and professional immigrants from the North also increased Republican support, at least in Texas (Dyer, Vedlitz, and Hill, 1988: 155–168). In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the Republican Party significantly increased its representation in southern state legislatures (potentially crucial in Florida during the 2000 election) and U.S. Congress. Following the 1990 census, white Republicans and minority Democrats acted in concert to create even greater homogeneity in the make up of districts. These state reapportionment decisions (not confined to the South) coupled with the ineptitude of a young President Clinton led to enormous partisan change in which the Republicans seized control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in the 1994 election (Canon, 1999; Hill, 1995: 384–401). For the first time since the 1920s, Republicans retained control in spite of a Democratic presidential victory in 1996. Furthermore, Republicans made significant in-roads in state gubernatorial and legislative elections. The 1990 reapportionment decisions were eventually challenged and reversed by the Supreme Court’s Miller v. Johnson ruling (1995), because the newly drawn legislative districts were created solely on the basis of race (see Nelson, 1996; Shaw v. Reno, 1993). Democrats hoped that moderate Democrats would successfully win in the newly created districts in 1996, and in some cases Democrats did win; but some (but not all) minority Democrats also lost their reelection bids. In 1998, Republicans maintained their congressional control, although they lost five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives during the Clinton administration’s second midterm election, an atypical political outcome in American politics. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a Republican from Georgia, took responsibility for that defeat and resigned his office and seat. In the 2000 elections, Republicans retained control of the House but shared Senate control with fifty seats. In reality, the political geography of the

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Shadow Realignment

nation is radically different from the period 1936 to 1964. Democrats cannot expect an easy return to power or hold substantial majorities in both legislative chambers as they had from 1960 to 1978. Partisan conflict over congressional control will likely remain competitive in the foreseeable future. All in all, the realignment of the South is of critical importance. Earl Black and Merle Black (1992) indicate that if Republicans can sweep the South in presidential elections, at least through 2000, they will only need three-tenths of the North’s electoral college votes. President George W. Bush’s (with some problems in Florida) southern sweep emphasizes this reality. From a Democratic perspective, in spite of winning the mother lode of electoral college votes in California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania (a combined total of 165 electoral college votes), Gore, the Democratic candidate, lost an electoral college majority while winning a plurality of the vote (shades of 1876!). Essentially, the South’s switch (or realignment) to the Republican Party turned presidential politics on its head (Black and Black, 1992; Brunell and Grofman, 1998: 391–399). The lock Democrats had on the electoral college (with a one-party southern Democratic support) became a Republican lock. POSTINDUSTRIAL DISLOCATION Civil rights conflicts that led to the realignment of the South to the Republican Party cannot alone account for all the turmoil associated with the 1968 election and the following electoral outcomes. A transformation from an industrial to a postindustrial state (Bell, 1973; Drucker, 1989, 1994) occurred, which Alvin Toffler (1981) deems to be a “third wave” that will have enormous socioeconomic and political consequences. This change began in the mid-1960s moving toward an economy whose growth was increasingly driven by new knowledge and technological institutions. As might be expected, it was a time of increasing social dislocation and fragmentation (Fukuyama, 1999). More crucial for Democrats, as well as social democratic parties in Western societies, is the decline of the industrial corporations and blue-collar class. Blue-collar workers have been the linchpin of the Democratic Party, particularly those organized in trade unions (Berkman, 1993b; Burnham, 1970; Hermele, 1993; Ladd, 1995; McWilliams, 1995: 102; Meyerson, 1986: 193, 206; Petrocik, 1981;

Introduction

15

Sundquist, 1983). Peter F. Drucker relates that: “No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue collar worker. And no class in history has fallen faster” (1994: 56). In the 1950s, the class represented two-fifths of the U.S. workforce, but by the early 1990s, it accounted for less than a sixth, equal to its proportion in 1900. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (1998) reports that in 1983, 20 percent of an already declining class was unionized and this had fallen to 14 percent in 1996. By 2000 to 2010, the blue-collar class’s proportion of the workforce is likely to fall to one-eighth, and this decline, already aggravated by racial conflict, further undermines the Democratic Party. Other social dislocations in terms of rising crime, increasing immigration, and declining families and birth rates have led to a “fourth reawakening,” a religious revival identified with the “moral majority” that is extremely conservative (Phillips, 1983) and favors Republican electoral success. Economic dislocation has led to uneven economic development (Berkman, 1993b) that undermines Democratic strength in another manner. The decline of the industrial Northeast (i.e., the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic states), which Bensel (1984) identifies as a bastion of Democratic liberalism, has created population shifts in the Sunbelt, a bastion of conservatism, that continues to change the political landscape in the U.S. House of Representatives and the electoral college that favors Republicans (Dyer, Vedlitz, and Hill, 1988: 155–168). The decline of the Northeast and the rise of the Sunbelt is likely to lead to more conservative policymaking, especially government management policies associated with taxation (Clausen, 1973; Berkman, 1993b). The battle to decrease taxes, particularly among the most affluent in society, has made the funding of a wide-range of existing and new social programs more difficult. Unmistakably, economic, social, and concomitant sectional change during the last quarter of the twentieth century has substantially affected partisan success, yet a partisan realignment did not occur, although Broder (1980) believes it did with the 1980 presidential election. The South realigned, but not other regions (Black and Black, 1987; Brunell and Grofman, 1998). But is this entirely true? Warren E. Miller (1990: 97–115) and L. Sandy Maisel (1999) report that ideological change occurred first among younger, inexperienced voters following Reagan’s election in 1980 and then by a similar shift among older voters during his second administration. The growing conservatism among voters meant that Democrats would

16

Shadow Realignment

need to move to the right if they wished to win the presidency. They would need to become “new kinds of Democrats” and make an accommodation with prevalent values. This behavior echoes the strategy of nineteenth-century Whigs and President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s accommodation with the New Deal during the 1950s. Of course, one might argue that the increased money invested in American elections leveraged Democrats in Congress to the right. What we know is that Reagan’s first administration shifted policy to the right leading to a devolution of power to the states. In 1992, for the first time in 12 years, government was unified under Democratic control and Clinton had substantial success at least in terms of presidential support in Congress. A careful analysis of that success indicates that the administration’s most important issue, health care policy, failed. Business consultant Ira Magaziner and former First Lady Hillary Clinton (now a Senator in New York), strong liberals in charge of developing the program, sought to create a high-quality, expensive program of health care for all Americans regulated by a large bureaucracy. Much of this was due to their partisan liberal approach that refused to work with and compromise with congressional Republicans. This recipe for failure and an inability to adequately explain the substance of the health care plan ensured its defeat. The program appeared to threaten the public’s freedom to choose one’s own doctor (Quirk and Cunion, 2000: 216–217) and provided opposing interests with an opportunity to attack the health care program. Interests, especially insurance companies, raised questions whether government was competent to run such a complex program that affected 14 percent of the gross domestic product. This public opinion strategy reinforced an existent public distrust in the competence of government, and ensured defeat of the policy (Yankelovich Partners, 1994). Following this and other defeats, Clinton entered the 1996 election stating that “the era of big government is over” (Stephanopoulos, 1999). DIRECTION OF THIS BOOK Many of the authors in Shafer’s (1991) book wondered if realignment was an appropriate concept to assess partisan behavior in contemporary America. Partisan realignment did not occur with Reagan’s election in 1980, but while a national realignment did not occur, a partial and very significant realignment did occur in the

Introduction

17

South. For this reason, my research focuses on four electoral periods and partisan change in nine regions identified by Michael B. 2 Berkman (1993b). A clear definition of regions is an extremely important key to understanding American politics (Bensel, 1984; Burnham, 1982; Key, 1949). Ira Sharkansky (1970) wisely argues that when classifying the states within regions, it is important to maintain a degree of continuity and to keep in mind their shared historic experiences. Any regional analysis cannot neglect Key’s (1949) classic study of the South, nor can one neglect cultural values associated with ethnic and religious migration patterns (Elazar, 1984; Gastil, 1975; which were applied by Nelson, 1980, 1991). Berkman’s (1993b) classification of American states into nine regions is based on variations in manufacturing, service, financial, extraction, and agricultural sectors. He stipulates that these differences strongly affect partisan success and congressional delegations’ support for tax policies. To some extent, I follow his classification, although I add Arizona to the Southwest on the basis of migration patterns and its traditionalistic subculture (Elazar, 1984). Furthermore, I divide the South quite differently on the basis of Key’s 1949 classic and Alexander P. Lamis’s (1984) separation into Rim South and Deep South. This change is associated with the variation in the proportion of minority population in these states that has affected their political behavior. My research strategy is similar to those developed by Paul T. David (1972) and Austin Ranney (1971), although with some variation. The national party strength indicator is based on presidential and congressional elections and the composition of the U.S. House in states during each presidential administration. For example, the Kennedy administration’s national party strength indicator would include the 1960 Democratic proportion of the presidential vote, U.S. Senate votes, and U.S. House votes in each state in addition to each state’s delegation in the U.S. House that is Democratic. Pursuing the logic of Michael Lewis-Beck (1985, 1992) and James E. Campbell (1986), I assume presidential approval (along with economic growth) will affect political choices during the 1962 midterm elections. Hence, I include the U.S. Senate and House elections and the composition of the House during that four-year period. I do not include the composition of each state’s Senate delegation since it does not reflect the precise partisan strength found in a Senate vote. Unfortunately, states with a single representative like North Dakota

18

Shadow Realignment

can skew their party strength indices. During each administration, the national strength indicator represents the sum of electoral outcomes divided by the number of electoral outcomes for each state. I do this for each administration 1960 through 2000. The 1972 Nixon administration is problematic; however, I think everyone would agree that Nixon’s Watergate Scandal and his resignation in August 1974 surely aided Democratic success in the country at large. Finally, I report a state party strength indicator based on gubernatorial elections (as a percent Democratic) and the Democratic composition of upper- and lower-state legislative chambers. Again, I assume some midterm coattail effect associated with each administration’s performance (Campbell, 1986; National Conference of State Legislatures, 1996). In each administration, a party strength indicator also represents the sum of election and composition outcomes divided by the number of election/composition outcomes for each state. My measures of party strength, however, are at variance with Paul T. David (1972) and Ranney (1971). My central theme, contrary to David’s fine analysis addressing Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections as a measure of party strength, is that state elections and outcomes should be separate from national elections and outcomes, particularly since most governors are now elected during midterm elections. In this way, I am a little closer to Ranney in the construction of these indices although I report party strength for four-year or presidential administration periods.3 In Chapter 2, I address national party strength from 1960 to 2000 (recognizing that the 2000 index is truncated), while asking that readers be cautious in assessing party strength since partisan identification has substantially declined and as has voting-age population turnout. This is followed by my national party strength indices based on each administration’s political experience. Since sectionalism is extremely important in American politics (Bensel, 1984), regional variations in the national party indices will also be reported. The national indices will then be analyzed with an R-factor analysis to ascertain the existence of four electoral periods (Rummel, 1970). As I reported earlier, the party cycle includes a period of realignment followed by political stability and consolidation that give way to partisan decay or a dealignment of political forces. This period is again followed by a realignment of political forces that shifts policy in a different direction. The Kennedy administration is viewed as part of the period of partisan stability focusing primarily on eco-

Introduction

19

nomic-welfare policies (New Deal orthodox liberalism). The 1968 election destroyed the existing party alignment of the once dominant New Deal, but what follows is uncertain. I agree with Broder (1980; see also Black and Black, 1987; Miller, 1990; White and Shea, 2000) that significant change occurred with Reagan’s election in 1980. This must be conceived of as a “shadow realignment” since there was no substantial partisan capture of national (only the executive and Senate, 1980 to 1986) and state institutions by the Republican Party. The Clinton and George W. Bush administrations represent a consolidation of prior conservative streams of policy. President Bush’s election is intriguing since substantial Republican control of the national government and state gubernatorial offices is reality. I think that we must understand that increasingly the American voter is making his or her choices of candidates based on ideological agreement concerning a number of issues, such as women’s role in society, abortion, size of government responsibility, aid to African Americans, among others (Jacobson, 2000: 9–30). Since the voters are more conservative, Clinton learned “that the era of big government is over,” and to use Republican rhetoric, he “stole” Republican issues to win the 1996 election. Within the generated electoral periods, I report the national party index of each state, and over time we will likely see a dramatic shift toward partisan competitiveness. Chapter 3 focuses on state party strength indices that are based on gubernatorial elections and composition of the state legislatures during each presidential administration. Much like the national party indices, these state indices are based on cumulative Democratic electoral outcomes.4 Initially, I compare the national and state party strength indices to show similar movement, even though state changes tend to lag behind those that occur at the national level. I also show divided government in states and regional variations over time. This can be problematic since some states like New Jersey and Kentucky have gubernatorial elections that fall on midterm odd years. I report these outcomes with the midterm elections associated with the administration of a president. I follow this by an assessment of state party strength indices for each presidential administration over time in all nine regions and of state competitiveness within each electoral period identified in Chapter 2. Chapter 4 explains the partisan strength indices and ascertains some of the dynamics of presidential elections. The explanation of

20

Shadow Realignment

partisan strength indices is done by analyzing the effects of regional political shifts, population shifts, and the percent of state populations that are foreign born. Regional political shifts are primarily identified with the Rim South, Deep South, and Southwestern states (represented as a “1”—a dummy variable in multivariate analysis). During the Kennedy years, the South should predict Democratic strength through a good portion of the 1980s, then decline in importance as the region turns to the Republican Party in state elections. Population shifts by native-born Americans due to a postindustrial economic transformation might also reinforce a Republican habit and represent an inverse relationship with my party strength index (based on Democratic outcomes). The proportion of foreign-born population within each state should by the 1990s predict a strong positive relationship to my indices. Indeed, Proposition 187 in California and the Republican Party’s action in the U.S. Congress prior to the 1996 election managed to alienate foreign-born members of our society. After the explanation of indices and four presidential elections, I address the unique 2000 election and provide several suggestions for reforming the electoral college that, had they been in effect, might have side-stepped the legal hassles of the election. Finally, I summarize the findings and recommend further research that might enhance the study of partisan strength in the United States. In doing so, I think that the shift in partisan success over the past forty years can be analytically distinguished and enhance our knowledge of the past generation of leadership. NOTES 1. Robert A. Dahl (1990: 355–366) doubts the existence of many announced mandates. 2. Berkman identifies nine regions in the United States. I have not followed them religiously given the nature of political behavior based on the works of Key (1949) and Daniel J. Elazar (1984). These are denoted as (1) the Pacific region (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington); (2) the Rocky Mountain region (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming); (3) the Great Plains region (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota); (4) the Great Lakes region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin); (5) the Mid-Atlantic region (Delaware, Maryland [once referred to as a Rim South state], New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania); and (6) the New England

Introduction

21

region (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont). The South is divided into three regions that are at some variance to those identified by Berkman due in part to the proportion of minorities that substantially affect electoral behavior: (7) the Rim South region (Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia); (8) the Deep South region (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina); and (9) the Southwest region (Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas), which shares a traditionalistic subculture and in many respects is unlike the other two southern regions. My primary guide for the creation of national and state partisan strength/competition indices is Austin Ranney (1971). Like him, I think it is appropriate to separate national and state elections since state partisan trends tend to lag substantively behind national partisan trends. Ranney’s index is based on the cumulative percentage of Democratic electoral outcomes and includes all state-wide elections although the number of state-wide elections tend to vary (gubernatorial, secretary of states, attorney generals, and so on). Added to these state-wide electoral outcomes is the Democratic composition of state legislatures. Ranney reports these cumulative indices for each state during an extended electoral period, for example, 1956 to 1970 (87). I narrowed my state partisan strength/competition indices to include only the percent of the Democratic gubernatorial vote and Democratic composition of the state legislatures. I think this is a “cleaner” indicator since the number of state-wide elections varies from state to state. Finally, I report these partisan indices during presidential administrations by states, within regions (noted earlier) and electoral periods in Chapters 2 and 3. I should add that Paul T. David (1972) has created a national partisan index that includes gubernatorial elections, which are excluded from my index based on Ranney’s (1971) critique. 3. My data sources for 1960 to 1992 presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial electoral outcomes are from Congressional Quarterly (1994), and for 1994, 1996, and 1998 outcomes from Richard Scammen, Alice V. McGillivray, and Rhodes Cook (1996, 1998). The composition of state legislatures comes from the U.S. Bureau of Census (1961–1998) and the National Conference of State Legislatures (1999, 2000). 4. Readers should be aware that the state party index for Nebraska will only include its gubernatorial vote since its unicameral legislature is selected in nonpartisan elections. Until 1972, Minnesota elected its legislative chambers in the same fashion, hence until that date, Minnesota’s index is based on the gubernatorial vote (as a percent Democratic).

Chapter 2

Shadow Realignment and National Partisan Variation and Competition The period 1960 to 2000 has seen five Democratic administrations (Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton twice) and six Republican administrations (Nixon twice, Reagan twice, George H. Bush, and George W. Bush). Two of these presidents are quite unique given their successful runs for the presidency. Clinton was the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be reelected, but one should note that he never obtained a majority of the national vote cast. Indeed, no Democrat since Carter has won over 50 percent of the vote. George W. Bush was the first president since 1888 to lose the popular vote but win a bare majority of the electoral college, and he is the second son of a president to be elected to this office. In some respects, his contested election effectively sewed up by the Supreme Court decision George W. Bush v. Albert Gore, Jr. (2000) reminds me of the 1824 election determined by the U.S. House of Representatives. The winner of the popular vote, Andrew Jackson, lost his presidential bid to John Q. Adams, a runner-up and son of a president. Jackson, figuring “he was robbed,” ran for president in 1828 and was successful, a historical parable probably not lost on Gore. Over the past forty years, the division of partisan administrations suggests Democrats are doing well, but this is not the case. Clinton’s

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23

remarkable success was a personal victory following a long period of partisan and especially Democratic decline (Wattenberg, 1994). Early in this period, the Democratic New Deal that obtained the election of Kennedy, collapsed during the 1968 presidential election. Democrats were no longer able to straddle regional differences. Arealignment of the South to the Republican Party in presidential elections, initially over the issue of race (Aistrup, 1996; Black and Black, 1987; Bullock, 1988; Sundquist, 1983), followed immediately and substantially altered the partisan environment in presidential elections (e.g., see the 2000 election). Initially, Republican success in the South was limited to the presidency, but Republicans were eventually successful in congressional and state politics. Following in close order came an economic, social, and political transformation associated with the postindustrial state (Bell, 1973; Drucker, 1989; Fukuyama, 1999; Toffler, 1981). The newly emerging economy would reduce the Democratic Party’s linchpin class—blue-collar workers—to a level comparable at the beginning of the twentieth century. More specifically, blue-collar workers would represent about one-sixth of all occupation groups, down from two-fifths in the 1940s and 1950s (Berkman, 1993b; Burnham, 1970; Drucker, 1994; Hermele, 1993; Ladd, 1981; McWilliams, 1995; Meyerson, 1986; Sundquist, 1983). Coupled with these events, the American population would shift to the Sunbelt, and a substantial increase in foreign-born, largely nonwhite citizens would enter the country. During the 1970s and 1980s, only one Democrat would be elected, Carter, and this was largely due to Nixon’s Watergate Scandal. As parties declined, they were substantially replaced by candidate-centered organizations (Broder, 1971; Everson, 1982; Wattenberg, 1994). Most scholars would agree that candidate-centered politics and incumbency forestalled an expected Republican realignment during or closely on the heels of Reagan’s election in 1980 (Black and Black, 1987; Broder, 1980; Miller, 1990). Incumbency’s effect meant that legislative incumbents escaped the direct effects of national tides, particularly public attitudes with reference to big government fomenting support for Reagan’s conservatism. While his administration was conservative, one must admit that the substantial funds pouring into Democratic incumbents’ war chests also leveraged that party to the right. Still, an era of divided government emerged when Democratic incumbents, isolated from this national tide, did not suffer defeat as

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Shadow Realignment

Republicans continued to control the executive office. This has been the bane of Republican presidents in the past two decades, and Clinton’s misfortune following the 1994 midterm election. Since the 1968 election, the United States experienced only six years of unified government whose Democratic presidents’ (Carter and Clinton) influence was largely frustrated. Following the 2000 election, I can tentatively assert that Republicans control the executive (in addition to most state gubernatorial offices) and legislative branches (until Senator Jeffords became an Independent in May 2001), although the margin of control in the U. S. House is extremely thin. Bush lost the popular vote but won the electoral college vote with a bare majority, 271 out of a possible 538. Republicans also hold slim margins in the legislature; 221 seats in the U.S. House and 50 seats in the Senate (immediately following the election) with Vice President Richard (Dick) Cheney in position to cast important deciding votes. Senator Jeffords’ switch in 2001 is but the first step in a likely Republican defeat in 2002 when twenty Republican seats will be at risk. Their success is in part dependent on President Bush’s lack of an electoral mandate that may affect his success and his approval with the public. Four factors will affect the election after a decennial census: reapportionment of U.S. House districts, presidential approval, the economy, and the likely retirements from the U.S. House of Representatives that occur following redistricting. Surely, divided government has made governance more difficult (e.g., see Clinton’s 104th, 105th, and 106th Congresses) since the proportion of a president’s party in a congressional chamber is a key predictor of presidential success (Shinn, 1983). David Mayhew (1991; see also Sundquist, 1986) reports that divided government has made governing difficult but not impossible (e.g., see Reagan’s first administration). He states that unified government made for only a little more success when a president’s party controlled Congress. To the decline of partisan identification among voters, I must add that a decline in the voting-age population turnout is associated with the declining importance of parties. This decline in presidential elections raises important questions concerning the legitimacy of the U.S. government. One might argue that the decline of voting behavior indicates complaisance among many voters, but when one ponders the narrow pluralities and majorities of winning candidates, complaisance must be tempered with concern. During this

National Partisan Variation and Competition

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electoral period, voting turnout was approximately 63 percent in the 1960 election but declined, with upward fits, to less than 50 percent in 1996, and a small increase to approximately 51 percent in the 2000 election (CNN, 2000; Infoplease.com, 1999). If one studies the implications of these figures beginning with the 1988 presidential election, the percentage of the total voting-age population supporting victorious presidents (the winning percent of the presidential vote multiplied by the percent voting) is minuscule: George H. Bush received 26.8 percent in 1988, Clinton received 23.7 percent in 1992 and extended that to 24.2 percent in 1996, and finally George W. Bush won 24.6 percent in 2000. The electoral college vote substantially “covers” these effects. George H. Bush won over 79 percent of the electoral college vote, Clinton, with plurality votes, won approximately 70 percent in both of his electoral victories, and George W. Bush won 50.4 percent of the electoral vote, while trailing Vice President Gore’s plurality in the popular vote. Winning is not the only thing—a large electoral college majority helps, hence a Bush mandate following the 2000 election is nearly nonexistent. NATIONAL PARTY STRENGTH INDEX The foregoing discussion raises questions about the nature of our partisan index resting as it does on a minority of all voters who increasingly do not favor political parties. However, following the realignment of the South, partisan coherence (Jacobson, 2000) now associates ideological preference with partisan choice. For that reason, a national party index provides a more complete and complex 1 picture of political competition. This index is associated with each presidential administration assuming that the presidency is an important political cue to partisan success in Congress and, of course, the American states. The index includes partisan outcomes as a Democratic proportion in each state. The first element of the index includes a presidential Democratic vote as a proportion of the total vote. Add to this the proportion of Senate votes during a presidential and midterm election, the mean Democratic House vote during the presidential and midterm elections, and finally the Democratic composition of the House during both administration congresses. By emphasizing congressional electoral outcomes, I recognize that the votes cast for U.S. House members are closer to partisan preferences of the electorate. I also accept Michael Lewis-Beck’s (1985,

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Shadow Realignment

1992) analyses that report the impact of presidential approval on Senate and House electoral outcomes. Unlike Paul T. David (1972), I do not include gubernatorial elections that are substantially about state political outcomes. As shown in Table 2.1, the index starts at a high of 58 during the Kennedy-Johnson administration following the 1960 presidential election. It declines during the Johnson administration, and while President Johnson won a substantial victory in 1964, the effects of U.S. Senate and House partisan outcomes decrease the index to 55 during his four years in office. The index further declines to 52 during Nixon’s first administration, and rises slightly to 53 during the Nixon-Ford administration. President Nixon’s success during the 1972 reelection offsets the losses during the 1974 midterm election following his resignation due to the Watergate Scandal. However, the partisan shift to Democrats is mirrored by an index of 55 during President Carter’s administration following the scandal and President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of Nixon. Table 2.1 The National Party Index, Kennedy to Bush (1960–2000)

Some pundits and perhaps some Democrats thought that Carter had pieced together the New Deal, but that was not the case. President Carter, as a successful Democratic outsider, entered office with the intention of rejecting the “old liberalism” of the Johnson administration. He called for “fiscal austerity, tax cuts, smaller government, deregulation and welfare reform, an agenda that foreshadowed the New Democrat approach successfully employed by Bill Clinton” (Cuomo, 2001: 9). However, his approach split the Democrats and led to an “old liberal” challenge by Senator Ted Kennedy in the 1980 primaries. Carter won this conflict, but in the general election a divided party, stagflation (rampant, increasing inflation and unemployment), the Iranian hostage crisis, and a per-

National Partisan Variation and Competition

27

ception of administration “malaise” cost Carter reelection in 1980. This was another element of dealignment that threw the Democratic Party into disarray as the Watergate Scandal did to the Republicans. The national index continues to slide to 51 and 50 during Reagan’s two administrations. A small upsurge occurs during Bush’s administration to 53, then drops to 48 and 45 during Clinton’s two terms of office. During these years, Clinton may have been the first Democrat to win office and be reelected since President Roosevelt, but he never received a majority of the national vote. Apparently, a Democratic recovery occurred in the 1988 and 1990 elections, but the bottom began to fall out, largely due to the 1994 election. Although Democrats regain some of the seats in Congress and win the 1996 presidential election, the index of national strength continues to decline to 45. This is surprisingly followed by an index of 44 in 2000, since one would expect that increased turnout during a presidential contest would ensure stronger Democratic outcomes. Gore did win a plurality of the national vote (48 percent) but it is important to remember that only two vice presidents were elected to the presidency since 1836. This is likely due to the difficulty vice presidents have in escaping the coattails of the presidents they serve. Furthermore, Vice Presidents Martin Van Buren and George H. Bush replaced Presidents Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan, respectively, both of whom were popular presidents that had set new policy directions. As crucial leaders during a period of realignment (or a shadow realignment), their popularity and policies had a profound effect on the next generation of Americans, a period of twenty-five to thirty years. President Clinton represented another period of leadership that has not had this profound effect. And, statistically, Clinton, unlike Reagan and Jackson, never won a majority of the national vote. While a decline in a successful vice president’s national vote is to be expected (as was the case with George H. Bush), support for Gore declined about 1 percent as he won a plurality—an exceptional success but not enough votes in the right states (like his home state of Tennessee). Essentially, it is highly unusual for vice presidents to successfully follow their party’s president after eight years in office. There is another element to be considered. President Clinton’s leadership during the 103rd Congress (1993–1994) indicated a surprising ineptitude and lack of political shrewdness that Republicans effectively used to seize control of the 104th Congress (and maintain a slim majority through the 107th Congress). Following his reelec-

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Shadow Realignment

tion, the ensuing impeachment proceedings created a difficult challenge for Gore to overcome during the 2000 election. Gore’s trepidation about seeking President Clinton’s support had much to do with whether Clinton’s character or public approval rating would engage the public’s concerns. As it is, the vice president did win a plurality of the vote, but not the electoral vote. ELECTORAL PERIODS AND SHADOW REALIGNMENT As one assesses the period 1960 to 2000, it seems apparent there are four electoral periods based on the political events of the past forty years: Democratic liberalism, dealignment of an existing party system, shadow realignment setting new policy directions, and a period of conservative consolidation. I suggest that the patterns of partisan success are strongly associated with the movement of policy from the left to the right. First, one may identify Democratic liberalism (the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, 1960 and 1964) as a period of orthodox liberalism or the economic-welfare issues that grew out the Great Depression. These issues were the primary concern of Kennedy, while Johnson substantially expanded economic-welfare issues with aid to education K-12 (i.e., kindergarten to twelfth grade) and the passage of Medicare. Beyond the expansion of economic-welfare issues, he strongly supported cultural-national issues addressing full-fledged African American citizenship in the Civil Rights (1964) and Voting Rights (1965) Acts (Shafer and Claggett, 1995). The cultural-national issues, especially race, meant Democrats could no longer straddle regional differences between the North and South, thus significantly undermining the New Deal coalition in the 1968 election. The following three administrations of Presidents Nixon (1968), Nixon-Ford (1972), and Carter (1976) was a period of continuing dealignment. During Nixon’s first administration, substantial government management policies, like environmental legislation, increased the influence of the national government, however, it was the wage-price controls prior to the 1972 election that divided Republicans. More conservative Republicans thought this was a substantial hindrance of free markets and of greater consequence than the Watergate Scandal that side-tracked Republican success in the 1974 midterm and 1976 presidential elections. In many respects,

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29

Carter understood the problems of Democrats and sought to move the Democrats to the center as Clinton did in 1992 and 1996. He pressed for tax cuts, deregulation, and welfare reform (Cuomo, 2001: 8–9). In doing so, he divided his party. The continuing conflict within the Democratic Party exacerbated Carter’s already tenuous ability to govern during a period of stagflation and the Iranian hostage crisis, both of which reduced his popular approval (Neustadt, 1990). The serious economic problems coupled with Senator Ted Kennedy’s liberal challenge in the primaries meant Carter’s reelection was a long shot in 1980. The party cycle seemed to evolve as expected in the three presidential elections from 1968 to 1976 that are identified with dealignment. However, Reagan’s election in 1980 did not usher in an expected partisan realignment as reported by David S. Broder (1980), although Republicans did capture the U.S. Senate. If a significant, national partisan shift to the Republicans did not fully develop, government management policymaking certainly shifted to the right. Taxes were cut and domestic policy responsibility shifted slowly to the American states. Sean Q. Kelly (1994) suggests a “punctuated change” occurred with an extended condition of divided government. Yet, the South continued its movement to the Republican Party (Black and Black, 1987) and public attitudes increased a positive shift to the Republican Party throughout the country during both Reagan administrations (Miller, 1990). This shadow realignment and the Reagan and Bush administrations represent a significant policy shift away from the New Deal’s liberal past. Harold Seidman writes: “If Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ marks the birth of the positive state, Ronald Reagan’s ‘revolution’ symbolizes its end. The evolution from the positive to the regulatory state commenced in the 1960s, but President Reagan was the first to redefine the federal government’s role as limited, wherever possible, to providing services without producing them” (1986: 119). Finally, the 1992 election of Clinton, who was a “new kind of Democrat” (Ferguson, 1994), did not really reverse the conservative nature of government management policymaking. Indeed, I would argue that Clinton represents the Whig strategy of the nineteenth century and President Eisenhower’s accommodation with New Deal values. If you want your party to win elections, you must embrace or make an accommodation with the dominant values espoused by the voting public. His administration attempted to

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Shadow Realignment

substantially increase government responsibility for health care, but the attempt foundered and was declared dead. This failure led him to again seek a moderate course, particularly in his reelection bid in 1996. Republicans were upset that he effectively “stole” Republican policy stances like “those good Whigs” of the past. Indeed, he sought to continue a policy to further decrease the debt (thus preempting any major expansion of “Democratic” programs) and signed a Republican welfare reform bill while exclaiming that “the era of big government is over.” While opposing the interests of the old liberals, he opposed the extremism of the Gingrich Republicans. In public eyes, he appeared to be the moderate in this complex triangular strategy that ensured his reelection, although not the majority of the national vote that he craved. Given these events and the Democratic inability to win a majority of the national vote in 2000 (needless to repeat, a smaller electoral vote), George W. Bush’s success ensures continued conservative policymaking with elements of compassion, that is, a continuing social welfare safety net, support for education, continued tax cuts, and a limited use of the national government to achieve important policy goals. I intend to test the premise that these four electoral periods exist based on the national partisan strength indices in the fifty states, and the R-factor analysis is a fine tool to test my hypothesis (Rummel, 1970; McRae and Meldrum, 1960: 669–683). This statistical technique reduces a complex array of variables to a more manageable, and most important, a smaller number of “factors” that we can more eas2 ily identify. In fact, by extracting four factors, or electoral periods, I can assess whether the national party indices associated with the administrations indicate the expected pattern of cyclical change. To ascertain this, I report the rotated component matrix, the factor loadings associated with each national party strength index, and the proportion of variance each factor or electoral period explains. To reduce the clutter in the rotated component matrix, I only report factor loadings of .500 and above (see Table 2.2).

National Partisan Variation and Competition

31

Table 2.2 Four-Dimensional Rotated Factor Matrix of National Party Strength Using Principle Component Analysis, Kennedy to Bush (1960–2000)

The four electoral periods establish the veracity of my hypotheses. The first period is shadow realignment rather than conservative “punctuated change,” a concept suggested by Kelly (1994). This period represents a unique partisan pattern of similar electoral outcomes although Republicans were unable to seize control of all national institutions. I am thus assuming that Reagan’s conservative policies could not be passed, clearly, without popular support at the polls. This period represents the most important electoral dimension and includes the 1980 (factor loading .721), 1984 (loading .887) and 1988 (loading .902) electoral periods. It is interesting to note that Clinton’s first administration loads (loading .640) with this electoral period and in the period of conservative consolidation (loading .519). The period of shadow realignment explains approximately 27 percent of the statistical variance that is referred to by Ferguson and Rogers (1986) as a “right turn” that signifies a decline of the Democratic Party’s liberalism. Broder stipulates that an important shift to a “new order” or “changing of the guard” (1980) in American politics occurred, and it continues to have a remarkable effect on American politics. The issues of deregulation, tax cuts primarily for the most affluent, budgetary devolution to the states, and a general re-

32

Shadow Realignment

duction in the national government’s role in the nation represent the domestic conservative tide of the Reagan administration. The second electoral period, dealignment, explains about 22 percent of the statistical variance and includes the 1968 (factor loading .649), 1972 (loading .863), and 1976 (loading .779) administrations. Dealignment represents the partisan confusion unleashed by the 1968 dealigning election that undermined and destroyed the stability of the New Deal’s Democratic liberalism. It also means that the United States entered an era of divided government, not quite deadlocked, but more cumbersome in its motion. The most important partisan shift occurred when the South deserted its Democratic habit to embrace the Republican Party, initially over the issue of race, but other divisive issues also crowded the agenda such as abortion, women’s rapidly changing role in society, and affirmative action. To this partial list of conflicts one must add the Vietnam War, which created further division and ambiguity about the United States’ use of power in foreign affairs. The third electoral period, conservative consolidation, delineates a period that explains approximately 21 percent of the statistical variance. It includes Clinton’s first administration (factor loading .519) that is also linked, appropriately I think, to the period of shadow realignment. Clinton’s second administration (loading .908) and George W. Bush’s truncated 2000 electoral election (loading .904) are included as hypothesized. This is an era in which Clinton uttered the fateful words that “the era of big government is over.” He embraced Republican issues like the Whigs of the nineteenth century and went on to victory in 1996. The period ought to be more quiescent, simply parodying if you will the direction of partisan change associated with the earlier period of shadow realignment. Certainly, there has been sharp rhetoric and partisanship in Congress and in the conflicts between Clinton and the Republican congressional leadership. However, I am being cynical—much of this is bombast and posturing about policy directions agreed to that were successfully set in motion during the Reagan-Bush years. What is at stake is “how much” should the country move, not “whether it ought to move” in a more conservative direction. This represents Ferguson’s (1994) conclusions that Clinton’s primary successes in the 103rd Congress represented the conservative triumph of the dominant institutions of organized capitalism. It is clear that George W. Bush is likely to continue conservative trends, particularly given

National Partisan Variation and Competition

33

the successful passage of his $1.3 trillion tax cut based on his campaign promise while maintaining a compassionate conservatism. The final electoral period, Democratic liberalism, is associated, as hypothesized, with the 1960 (factor loading .793) and 1964 (loading .859) administrations. This electoral period explains about 18 percent of the statistical variance and is associated with a significant expansion of the national government’s role in our national life and substantial Democratic partisan successes in the North and South. The enormous expansion of economic-welfare programs was blunted by the expansion of the American effort in Vietnam that would eventually cost President Johnson a second term in office. What is important about the Democrats’ electoral success is the support for an extensive array of liberal policies. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, lowering the voting age in the Twenty-sixth Amendment, creating Medicare, and providing substantial support for education and a range of urban programs ensured an increased government role as a solution to American ills. The important civil rights and reapportionment cases of the Supreme Court led to significant minority representation in national and state legislatures, and in the general life of the nation. In total, the four electoral factors explain approximately 90 percent of the statistical variance (100 percent possible) and establish the explanatory veracity that a partisan electoral cycle continues. In summary, a partisan realignment as traditionally understood did not occur during the Reagan-Bush years although a unique partisan shift underlies the period, and one is led to suggest that shadow realignment did occur. To repeat, it simply means that underlying partisan changes occurred and engaged a right turn in government management policies. This is clear proof of Mayhew’s (1991) thesis that while “divided we govern,” presidents can still obtain many of their important policy goals. NATIONAL PARTISAN STRENGTH IN REGIONS To better appraise partisan changes from 1960 through 2000 or ten and a half administrations (the 2000 Bush administration does not include midterm electoral outcomes), I report a time series analysis of national party index in nine regions: the West (the Pacific, Rocky Mountain, and Great Plains regions); the Northeast (the Great Lakes, New England, and Mid-Atlantic regions); and finally the South (the

34

Shadow Realignment

Rim South, Deep South, and Southwest regions). These results, which are noted in Tables 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5, are substantially varied. Beginning with the regions west of the Mississippi (see Table 2.3), one finds very real differences in electoral outcomes. The Pacific states are more Democratic during the Kennedy through Carter administrations (1960 to 1976) when the indices are largely between 57 and 62, but decline to between 50 and 52 during the Reagan-Bush years. The index declines from the high of 52 during the Reagan-Bush and first Clinton administrations to 49 during the second Clinton administration, indicative of a substantial decline for Democratic candidates during this past generation of leadership. It is important to report that Gore’s 2000 campaign reversed the declining Democratic support of Clinton’s second administration of 49 to the highest index during shadow realignment and conservative consolidation of 52. However, this index does not take into account the size differences (especially California’s size) between states (individual state indices will be reported in the latter portion of this chapter). Table 2.3 The National Party Index of Strength in the West

The Rocky Mountain and Great Plains states are far less Democratic as one could guess, although surprisingly, the mountain states’ indices range from 48 and 54 during the Kennedy through Carter administrations. A sharp decline is reported during the Reagan (40 and 38) years with a shift upward to 46 during the Bush administration. After these twelve Republican years, the indices sharply decline through the Clinton years from 41 in the first administration to 30 in the second with a mild increase to 32 during the 2000 election. The Great Plains are far less Democratic during the Kennedy through Carter years with indices between 42 and 44. Un-

National Partisan Variation and Competition

35

like most regions in this study (although like the Mid-Atlantic states), the indices increase from 47 during Reagan’s first administration to 55 during the Bush administration. During the Clinton-Bush years, a sharp decline to 49, 43, and finally to 40 indicates strong opposition to the Democratic Party. Most of the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains states are sparsely populated with few large cities with the exception of Denver. But even here, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell changed his party affiliation following the 1994 election from Democrat to Republican. This action would be repeated in the South as politicians sought to keep ahead of a changing partisan curve—a downward curve for Democrats. An analysis of the old industrial-financial center (see Table 2.4), that is, the greater Northeast (Bensel, 1984), which includes the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, and secondarily the New England regions, indicates a very different orientation. These three regions see an increase in the national party index that underscores Richard Franklin Bensel’s analysis that the older, financial-industrial center has become more Democratic while the periphery that once served it, or depended on it, has become more Republican. Having written this, I must qualify Bensel’s analysis that looks back from 1984. The industrial Great Lakes region index moves upward from 49 during Kennedy’s administration to 51 in 1964, declines to 45 during the dealignment administration of President Nixon, rises to 54 during the Carter and first Reagan administrations, and continues to rise to 56 in Bush’s 1988 administration. Bensel’s correctly perceives the shift to the Democrats (and liberalism). Apparently, the Republican presidential record was contrary to regional interests in the Great Lakes, as it was for voters in the Great Plains. However, this gain is followed by a decline to 47 in Clinton’s first administration and 39 during his second, and a sharp increase to 49 in the 2000 election. Clearly, if this region were becoming more liberal and Democratic, Clinton’s actions in office and his reelection did not substantially revive Democratic strength following his first administration. This region, a key battleground in the 2000 election, can only be referred to as extremely competitive, and its partisan direction is uncertain in the 2002 election, which could alter the sharp increase in the national index.

36

Shadow Realignment

Table 2.4 The National Party Index of Strength in the Northeast

The New England region, prior to 2000, has not been that Democratic. Therefore, its national party strength index is quite volatile, ranging from 49 to 59 during the administrations prior to 1980. With the election of the Reagan administration in 1980, the index stabilizes between 44 and 47 through Clinton’s first administration in 1992, after which it rises to 55 and then declines to 53 in the 2000 election, thereby making it the most Democratic region in the northeast (thus explaining Senator Jeffords’ careful switch from Republican to Independent). Much of this is due, I think, to the Democratic support given in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and increasingly Maine. The Mid-Atlantic region evinces strong Democratic support during the Kennedy administration, but then the index falls below 50 until the Carter administration in 1976. From an index of 53 in 1976, it increases to 58 in 1984, slips to 56 in 1988, and then falls to 46 in 1992 during the first Clinton administration. In 1996, his second administration, the index nudges upward to 49 then to 51 in the 2000 election, suggesting that this region is also extremely competitive. Summarizing Table 2.4, New England is the only region to increase above 50 during the second Clinton administration, while all the regions in the Northeast increase with the 2000 election. In every region outside the greater Northeast (special reference to New England), there is a decline in the index with resurgence among some regions in the truncated 2000 index. In the South, the direction of the index over time is generally downward. It is this transition that has significantly changed the American party system and ensured a more conservative drift in American politics (Black and Black, 1987, 1992).

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The South is divided into three regions: Rim South, Deep South, and Southwest (see Table 2.5). Among these regions, the Deep South is unique given the proportion of African Americans, which substantially affects the region’s political behavior (Key, 1949). Compared to all other regions, the South is more Democratic initially but it increasingly behaves like the other regions, in effect, by becoming more competitive. During the Kennedy administration, the national party strength index is 66 to 82 with the Deep South far more Democratic than the other two southern regions. The index declines for each state with the Deep South and Southwest falling to 40 or less during Clinton’s second administration. In the 2000 election, the Deep South index continues to decline to 39 while the Southwest remains at 37. The Rim South national party index is 66 during the Kennedy administration and declines to 57 during the 1968 dealignment election. From this point, it rises to 62 during the Carter administration, then slips to the mid-50s during the Reagan-Bush administrations. Even though there is a decline in Democratic strength, the Rim South generally remains more Democratic than the other two southern regions, with the index floating in the low 50s during the Clinton years and then dipping to 47 with the 2000 election. Competitiveness seems to be the characteristic of the Rim South’s politics that is clearly conservative (e.g., see Tennessee and Gore’s anguish) and characterized by the Florida presidential vote in 2000. Table 2.5 The National Party Index of Strength in the South

The Deep South projects the sharpest decline in its national party index among the nine regions. Clearly a Democratic region during

38

Shadow Realignment

the Kennedy administration with an index of 82, this index declines to 61 during the Nixon-Ford administration. The 1976 election of Carter, a Deep South presidential candidate from Georgia, leads to a mild resurgence to 68, but from that time onward Democratic success declines to the low 60s during the Reagan-Bush years. The decline is even sharper during Clinton’s years in office to an index of 40 during the second administration followed by a 39 in 2000. The Southwest’s decline of party index is similar to the other regions in the South, although less Democratic. The index rests at 66 during the Kennedy years, but shifts downward to 54 in the Johnson years and 51 during Nixon’s 1968 administration. From that low point, it rises to 58 in Carter’s (a southerner on the ticket) administration but then declines to the mid to upper 40s in the period of shadow realignment. The index continues its sharp decline first to 43 in Clinton’s first administration, then to 37 in his second, and remains there in the 2000 election. This movement from strongly Democratic to a more competitive partisan system marks, I believe, the modernization of southern politics. While the regions of the greater Northeast—the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, and New England states—increased their national party indices during the 2000 election, the indices with the exception of New England are generally lower than the prior Reagan-Bush administrations. Whether the “upturns” for these regions indicate a trend is uncertain. In other regions, there has also been a continuous decline in Democratic strength, and only the Pacific region records an index above 50, indicating that coastal regions share similar attributes. Summarizing what I have covered thus far, the Democrats no longer dominate the national party system, particularly with the realignment of the South and especially the Deep South and Southwest regions that have refuted their once solid Democratic adherence. This state of affairs is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Finally, the increasing competitiveness of the South has shifted power to the Republican Party in Congress. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Republicans obtained majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives while the South was solidly Democratic. Now, Republicans have obtained a competitive edge in the South and it will prove very difficult for Democrats to dominate this institution as they once did during the first three decades of this study.

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NATIONAL PARTISAN COMPETITION BY STATE Austin Ranney (1971) asserts that a study of partisan strength should include several elements (see Dawson and Robinson, 1963: 265–289). First, the index should include the proportion of success measured in this instance as a proportion of Democratic success, and Democratic success is measured for one reason: I am concerned about the decline of the New Deal Democratic coalition. Second, one ought to report the duration of an index during presidential administrations (see Lewis-Beck, 1985, 1992) where presidential approval and economy significantly affect elections. Ranney essentially reports his index for each state over a ten-year period, thus losing the intricate variation associated with each administration. Finally, an index should somehow take into account federalism. Ranney coun3 sels caution in the use of his state index since it differs from the partisan success at the national level. He is correct, and for this reason I created a national party strength indicator that excludes gubernato4 rial elections. My indices primarily report the proportion of Democratic success by administration (e.g., the Kennedy years 1960 and 1962) and then combine this success in accordance to periods of the electoral cycle generated by the R-factor analysis mentioned earlier in this chapter (see Table 2.2). Table 2.6 reports a composite index for each state during an electoral time frame (i.e., the sum of indices divided by the number of electoral periods during each electoral epoch), and places them into categories representing party strength and competition. In Ranney’s work, each state belongs to one of five partisan strength categories: one-party Democratic, modified one-party Democratic, competitive, modified one-party Republican, and one-party Republican. I add to his work two new categories: competitive leaning Democratic and competitive leaning Republican, hopefully increasing a greater sense of partisan dynamics. These categories are based on the literature of safe and competitive districts (Weber, Tucker, and Brace, 1991: 29–48; Jacobson, 1982, 1992) but at variance with Ranney’s (1971) and David’s (1972) analyses. My national indices exclude gubernatorial votes, a decision that I think is appropriate since most gubernatorial ballots are cast during midterm elections (especially the from 1970s onward) to escape the effects of national issues.

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Shadow Realignment

Table 2.6 National Partisan Strength and Competition in the United States, from Kennedy

to Bush in Four Electoral Periods

National Partisan Variation and Competition Table 2.6 (continued)

41

42

Shadow Realignment

One should be aware that the higher an index, the greater the Democratic success in a state. One-party Democratic states include those whose indices are 75 or above; modified one-party Democratic states 60 to 74 (every index has been rounded to the nearest unit); competitive leaning Democratic states 55 to 59; competitive states 45 to 54.; competitive leaning Republican states 40 to 44; modified one-party Republican states 25 to 39; and one-party Republican states exist 0 to 24. Three inferences may be made by a quick perusal of Table 2.6. First, based on my national party index, several states have become increasingly competitive with an increasing number of Republican states during the periods of the shadow realignment and conservative consolidation. Significantly, the once solid Democratic South has become very competitive during the period of conservative consolidation (the Clinton years). Finally, we can characterize most of 5 the states with at least twelve electoral college votes as becoming more competitive during the period of conservative consolidation. The national party index reported for the period of Democratic liberalism indicates the strength of the New Deal coalition, and certainly the effects of President Kennedy’s assassination on the 1964 elections. Twenty-seven of the states are either one-party, modified one-party, or competitive leaning Democratic, and they represent the greater West, Northeast, and particularly the South. Seven states are identified as one-party Democratic and as one would expect, five of these represent the South—Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Four of these states represent the Deep South, while Rhode Island with its large Roman Catholic population and Hawaii with its large minority population represent the New England and Pacific regions, respectively. Among the thirteen states referred to as modified one-party states, seven are from the South; four represent the Rim South (Florida, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina) and the other three the Southwest (Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma). In the West, Alaska is from the Pacific region, and Nevada and Colorado are from the Rocky Mountain region. Only Missouri, with a large number of electoral college votes, is from the Great Plains, while the remaining two states, Connecticut and Maryland, represent the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions, respectively. Among the seven states that are competitive leaning Democratic, the southern states predominate. Alabama from the Deep South is joined by Kentucky and Tennessee

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from the Rim South. Three states belong to the greater Northeast—Delaware and New York from the Mid-Atlantic region and Massachusetts from New England. Oregon represents the Pacific region. The dominance of the Democratic Party is enhanced by eight of sixteen states who have twelve or more electoral votes. Five of these eight states are from the South and emphasize the importance of dealignment to Democratic success in presidential elections. Missouri and Massachusetts would in a short time fall below twelve electoral college votes, leaving New York as a critical bastion of Democratic strength, a bastion that would continually decline until it represented the third largest state in the union, after Texas following the decennial census in 2000 (“Americans Number 281,421,906 in Census,” 2000). Among the competitive states, only one out of fifteen (Arizona) is from the Southwest, while the majority of the states belong to the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions in the Northeast. All five Great Lakes states—Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Ohio—are found here and all of these states have twelve or more electoral votes. Pennsylvania and New Jersey are also competitive and have substantial electoral votes. The remaining competitive states are located in the West with Washington and California serving as important members, particularly the latter with its large number of electoral votes. Three Rocky Mountain states—Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming—are testament to the pull of the New Deal since we perceive them to be largely Republican states today. They are joined by Minnesota and Iowa from the Great Plains region. Few states represent the Republican Party, and these are smaller, less populous states from the Rocky Mountain, Great Plains, and New England regions. In New England, Maine, and New Hampshire are competitive leaning Republican states while Vermont is a modified one-party Republican state. Utah is the only state from the Rocky Mountain region that can be labeled as competitive leaning Republican, while the remaining states are located on the Great Plains and are members of this very small group of competitive leaning Republican (North Dakota) or modified one-party Republican states (Nebraska, Kansas, and South Dakota). The Republican Party’s weakness is further established since no state can be labeled as a one-party state.

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Shadow Realignment

The period of dealignment reveals the erosion of the Democratic Party, particularly in the South. While a good number of states from that region may still be maintaining a Democratic habit, their indices have substantially declined from the period of Democratic liberalism. The first intimation of Democratic decline is reflected by two one-party Democratic states: Hawaii and West Virginia from the Pacific and Rim South regions, respectively. The number of modified one-party states remains at thirteen and eight of these states hail from the South. Florida is the only Rim South state that is modified one-party Democratic and it is important to observe that its index declines from 71 during Democratic liberalism to 62, a substantial shift (nine points on the scale) that is shared with other southern states. Four Deep South states are located here: Georgia and Louisiana (indices decline nine points), Mississippi (index declines thirteen points), and South Carolina (index declines sixteen points). These Deep South states were once the most solid South states during the hey day of the New Deal, primarily due to its unique “southern vote” associated with the largest proportion of minority citizens anywhere in the country (Key, 1949). The remaining southern states, Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma, are from the Southwest. Of the three, Texas is clearly more important in presidential elections and its national party index declines by six points while Arizona moves from a competitive condition. Two solidly Democratic states from New England, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, are also positioned here; Rhode Island’s index declines by seven points from a one-party Democratic standing, while Massachusetts’s becomes more Democratic with an increase of four index points. (Note that Massachusetts’s position on the national party index does not significantly shift during the rest of the electoral era.) Finally, each region in the West is represented by one state. Nevada from the Rocky Mountain region remains in this category although its index declines by seven points. Washington state from the Pacific region becomes more Democratic as it moves nine points from a competitive condition with an index of 54 to 63. Missouri from the Great Plains region remains in this category although its index declines from the previous electoral period. Seven states remain competitive leaning Democratic. Three southern states are placed here, with North Carolina, a Rim South state, declining four index points from a modified one-party Democratic position. Kentucky, also a Rim South state, remains in this cat-

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egory as does Alabama, a Deep South state. Oregon from the Pacific region is also a member of this category during the early electoral period. Wisconsin, from the Great Lakes region becomes more Democratic as does New Jersey from the Mid-Atlantic region, whereas Connecticut from the New England region becomes less Democratic as its index declines thirteen points. When comparing the electoral rich states’ positions during dealignment with Democratic liberalism, the erosion of Democratic strength becomes evident. Where eight states with twelve or more electoral college votes were Democratic during Democratic liberalism, only seven are represented here during dealignment, and their indices have shifted substantially lower. This is particularly true of the large southern states. The number of competitive states increases to seventeen; seven are from the West and Northeast, and three from the South. Among the western states, it is surprising to find that four of these are situated in the Rocky Mountain region: Montana, Wyoming (both states were in this category in the last electoral period), Colorado (whose index drops nine points from a modified one-party Democratic position), and Utah (whose index increases nine points to a competitive leaning Republican position). Minnesota, Iowa (both representing the Great Plains region), and California (representing the Pacific region) continue to be in the competitive category. Two Rim South states, Tennessee and Virginia, move from Democratic categories and see their indices decline eight and twelve index points, respectively. New Mexico from the Southwest region, falls twenty-four points from a modified one-party Democratic state to one that is more competitive and substantially Republican in the final two electoral periods. In the Northeast, three of the Great Lakes states remain competitive during this electoral period: Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Maryland (whose index declines eight points from a modified one-party Democratic state), New York (previously a competitive leaning Democratic state), and Pennsylvania (all of which are from the Mid-Atlantic region) are joined by New England’s Maine (previously a competitive leaning Republican state). Seven of the seventeen states in this category have twelve or more electoral votes suggesting that the diversity of their populations ensures competitive electoral outcomes. The number of Republican states increases from eight to eleven and this increase occurs among those states that were modified

46

Shadow Realignment

one-party Republican. This group of states consists of one Pacific state (Alaska), one Rocky Mountain state (Idaho), and two states from the Great Plains (Kansas and Nebraska). Alaska represents the largest change (index declines twenty-eight points) from a modified one-party Democratic state, while Idaho (index declines sixteen points) leaves its competitive position during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Nebraska and Kansas are joined by North Dakota from the Great Plains, while Vermont and New Hampshire from New England remain in this category. The final category, competitive leaning Republican, is saved for last since it is unique. First, the category declines from four to three states, with Ohio and its substantial electoral votes becoming a new member from the Great Lakes. Arkansas from the Rim South is also a new member as is South Dakota from the Great Plains. Arkansas (once a one-party Democratic state) sees its index decline from 83 to 42, a forty-one-point drop in its index. Shadow realignment, associated with the Reagan-Bush presidencies of the 1980s and early 1990s, represents a crucial right turn in American politics. Democratic erosion continues and for the only period in this analysis, no state belongs to the one-party Democratic category. Even the modified one-party category significantly declines by one state. The modified one-party class includes twelve states dominated by six southern states: Georgia (the only state electorally rich), Louisiana, and Alabama from the Deep South; West Virginia from the Rim South; and Oklahoma and Arizona from the Southwest. The Northeast has three small states in this category: Massachusetts from New England, and Delaware and Maryland from the Mid-Atlantic region. The West is represented by Hawaii in the Pacific and two Great Plains states, North and South Dakota, who often fluctuate wildly since each state has one representative. If a Democrat (or a Republican) is elected in both states, their national party indices are substantially affected since the composition of the U.S. House delegation is important. The reader may wonder how I can stipulate a significant decline in this category when there is one state less. My reasoning is simple. During each of the first two electoral periods, at least five states had twelve or more electoral votes, now there is only one: Georgia. There is an increase in the number (from seven to eleven) of competitive leaning Democratic states, but this is actually further proof of the Democratic Party’s decline. Six of these states are from the

National Partisan Variation and Competition

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South: Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, Florida (all four are from the Rim South), Mississippi (Deep South), and Texas (Southwest). North Carolina (electorally rich) remains in this category, while Florida, Mississippi, and Texas (also electorally rich), all former modified one-party Democratic states, lose seven, eight, and eight index points, respectively. Five states from the West also belong to this category: Oregon, Washington (both from the Pacific), Minnesota (Great Plains), Michigan, and Illinois (both from the Great Lakes). One favorable element exists for the Democrats in this category as Michigan and Illinois become more Democratic. Overall, the competitive leaning Democratic states during this electoral period suggest growing weakness as large southern states’ indices continue to decline, while two large Great Lakes states substantially increase in Democratic behavior. The number of competitive states declines to its former number of fifteen and only six of these states have twelve or more electoral votes (compared to eight and seven in the earlier periods). Only one southern state, South Carolina from the Deep South, fits in this category after belonging to the modified one-party Democratic category. In fact, this is simply one stop for South Carolina as it moves toward the Republican Party during the period of conservative consolidation. Eight states from the Northeast dominate this category: three from the Great Lakes (Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana), three from the Mid-Atlantic (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), and two from the New England (Connecticut and Rhode Island) regions. The West has six members in this category, which includes the largest state, California, from the Pacific region. Three Rocky Mountain states, Nevada, Montana, and Colorado, are competitive although they will be more Republican in the next electoral period. Missouri and Iowa from the Great Plains round out the membership of competitive states. The relative decline in the number of competitive states is enhanced by the decline of large states compared to previous periods. More important, there is an increase in the number of Republican states during this electoral period, but this is occurring while the number of states in the competitive leaning Republican category continues to decline. Only two states belong to this category, Idaho from the Rocky Mountain region and New Hampshire from the New England region.

48

Shadow Realignment

The number of modified one-party Republican states remains the same but with the addition of Virginia, a large electoral college state, joining Arkansas, both of which are from the Rim South. The remaining states are substantially small and homogenous, except New Mexico from the Southwest. The other states represent the Pacific (Alaska), Rocky Mountain (Utah), Great Plains (Kansas and Nebraska), and New England (Maine) regions. For the first time, there is a one-party Republican category consisting of Vermont and Wyoming that represents the New England and Rocky Mountain regions, respectively. It is interesting that there are fewer Republican states than one might expect during the period of shadow realignment; however, the period of conservative consolidation establishes a substantial increase in the number of Republican states. It also presents a picture of a significant decline in the Democratic Party. Beginning with the Democrats, only one state from the Rim South is a one-party Democratic state: West Virginia. It is interesting that Gore lost this state to Bush, but he was in a difficult position. He tried to soften his environmental stance in a coal mining state, but could not succeed without losing substantial support elsewhere in the country. Furthermore, his stance on gun control in a state with a large number of gun owners and hunters did not sit well, thus, he lost a state that should have been comfortably “in his corner.” The modified one-party Democratic category sharply declines by 50 percent. Six states represent the New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine), Pacific (Hawaii and Oregon), and Great Plains (North Dakota) regions. North Dakota may surprise some readers, but with only one representative that is elected as a Democrat, the composition of the North Dakota delegation is 100 percent. This, of course, significantly affects its party index. Three states belong to the competitive leaning Democratic category—nearly one-third the number of states during the period of shadow realignment: Minnesota (Great Plains), Connecticut (New England), and Maryland (Mid-Atlantic). Unfortunately for Democrats, these three categories of Democratic states include no states with twelve or more electoral college votes. All of these large states are either competitive or competitive leaning Republican, therefore Gore’s presidential campaign was in a continual fight to exploit what used to be a strong Democratic base.

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The seventeen competitive states are nearly divided between the South (seven states), Northeast (six states), and West (four) and include nine large electoral college states. Beginning with the West, California and Washington represent the Pacific region, while Missouri and South Dakota are from the Great Plains. The large group of southern states long ago used to be Democratic and represent all three regions, a measure of increasing southern modernity. Two southern states, Texas (Southwest) and North Carolina (Rim South), are Democratic in the prior three periods, while Arkansas (Democratic liberalism), Tennessee (Democratic liberalism and shadow realignment), and Virginia (Democratic liberalism), all three Rim South states, are Democratic at least in one previous period. The Deep South membership of this category consists of Mississippi and Louisiana. The Northeast’s large industrial states are largely competitive as well. Only Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin from the Great Lakes are competitive, as are New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania from the Mid-Atlantic. The decline in the number of Democratic states and large number of competitive states means that the Republican Party is much stronger. The number of Republican states is twenty-three, a substantial increase over other electoral eras. The number of one-party Republican states remains at two, but each of the remaining categories increases in number. The competitive leaning Republican category experiences its largest increase in state membership, twice as many that existed during Democratic liberalism. The West is represented by Montana, a Rocky Mountain state, while Indiana and Ohio, two large Great Lakes states, represent the Northeast. Five southern states are included in this category: New Mexico from the Southwest; Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina from the Deep South; and Florida from the Rim South. Of these member states, Indiana, Ohio, Florida, and Georgia are quite unique, not because of the increased membership, but because they are rich in electoral college votes. Democrats are dominant during the Democratic liberalism period with numbers of large electoral states among their modified one-party states, but there are no large electoral states in the modified one-party Republican category. The thirteen states that make up this category are largely from the Rocky Mountain (Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming) and Great Plains (Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska) regions. The states from the South generally consist

50

Shadow Realignment

of the smaller states from the Rim South (Kentucky) and the Southwest (Arizona and Oklahoma). Only two small states from the Northeast, Delaware from the Mid-Atlantic and New Hampshire from the New England regions, are members. The two one-party Republican states are also quite small, Vermont from the New England and Alaska from the Pacific regions. If there are not many electoral votes among these states, they represent an important regional base especially if Republicans win in the South and add all competitive leaning Republican states and some of the more competitive states. This is precisely what happened during the 2000 election when Bush won a bare majority of the electoral college—271 votes or 50.4 percent of the total, the closest election during this forty-year period and certainly in the twentieth century. Even with this victory, the Republicans will have to reach out to other groups that support the Democratic Party, particularly women and Latinos. In summarizing this chapter, it is important to report that the partisan cycle continues but without the formality of partisan realignment during the 1980s. A shadow realignment exists based on the states’ national party indices where a pattern of similarity exists between the 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992 presidential administrations. The remaining elements of the partisan cycle were generated as hypothesized: Democratic liberalism that is associated with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations; dealignment that is linked to the Nixon-Ford and Carter administrations of 1968, 1972, and 1976; and conservative consolidation that includes the Clinton administrations and a frustrated declaration: “the era of big government is over.” The Bush election of 2000 is a truncated index and surprisingly fits into my analysis. I did not think it would fit before the election and became more certain it would as the race remained very close. Gore won the national vote, but lost the electoral vote thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision. I still do not think pregnant, pimpled, and dimpled chads represent a vote nor did the Court. More important, it is significant to recognize that while Democrats have won the popular vote three times since Carter’s election in 1976, they have not won a majority of the votes cast in 1992, 1996, and 2000. The previous findings reinforce the direction of Democratic strength—it continues to decline. While it is possible that Democrats might increase their control of the U.S. Senate in 2002, reapportion-

National Partisan Variation and Competition

51

ment of U.S. House districts in that election may favor Republicans as states in the South increase their representative strength. If states were once Democratic, particularly in the South, most states are relatively competitive as determined by Tables 2.2 through 2.6. NOTES 1. My national index of partisan strength is reported for each state and by presidential administration. It includes the sum of the Democratic proportion of the total presidential vote (not the two-party vote that exaggerates Democratic and Republican success), Democratic proportion of the U.S. Senate votes during the presidential and midterm elections, and mean Democratic proportion of the U.S. House of Representatives vote during presidential and midterm elections. This sum is divided by the number of elections and U.S. House composition outcomes during each administration. For example, the Kennedy-Johnson administration includes the 1960 and 1962 election outcomes; the Johnson administration includes the 1964 and 1966 electoral outcomes, and so on, through Clinton’s second administration. The index does not weight the differences between states nationally or within regions, but the emphasis on U.S. House electoral outcomes ensures that the index moves a little closer to likely partisan preferences as do many legislative elections. 2. Concerning the R-factor analysis, I am using a parsimonious technique that will reduce eleven national partisan indices (based on administrations) to a four-factor solution using varimax rotation and a principal component analysis. The resulting electoral periods are essentially based on a similar configuration among the national partisan indices of each presidential administration in the fifty states. I hypothesize that the patterns of national partisan indices will produce electoral periods associated with the Kennedy-Johnson (1960 and 1964), Nixon-Ford-Carter (1968, 1972, and 1976), Reagan-Bush (1980, 1984, and 1988), and Clinton-Bush (1992, 1996, and 2000) administrations. For purposes of clarity, I report the most significant rotated factor loadings of .500 and above linked to each presidential administration. Please note that proportion of statistical variance explained by each factor, or electoral period, establishes its statistical importance. 3. For a systematic assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each type of index, see David G. Pfeiffer (1967: 457–467). 4. Paul T. David (1972) also includes the gubernatorial vote in his analysis. 5. States with at least twelve electoral college votes at least once during these four decades are: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,

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Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. It is important to note that the sharpest decline of electoral college votes are those states belonging to the greater Northeast (i.e., the New England, Great Lakes, and Mid-Atlantic regions). In 1932, they had 251 electoral college votes; by the 1990s the electoral college votes declined to 203. The greatest increase in electoral college votes occurred in the Pacific region, from thirty-five during the 1930s to ninety-six in the 1990s (the greatest growth being in California, whose electoral vote grew from twenty-two to fifty-four during this same period). The South as a whole moved from 160 electoral college votes in the 1930s to 181 in the 1990s, with most of the gains occurring in Florida and Texas (from thirty electoral college votes in the 1930s to fifty-seven in the 1990s, collectively). The initial figures following the 2000 decennial census suggest that the movement of power continues toward the South and West and away from the greater Northeast. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Texas (displacing New York as the second largest state) are likely to obtain two additional congressional seats, while California, Nevada, Colorado, and North Carolina will receive at least one seat. New York and Pennsylvania are expected to lose two seats, while Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin will each lose one seat. Two southern states, Oklahoma and Mississippi, are expected to also lose one seat. Given these circumstances, if the electoral college remains in effect, the Republicans would gain more electoral votes given the thin victory they obtained in 2000. In fact, Republicans hope that the 2002 election will enhance their representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. Note that each seat represents approximately 625,000 citizens (“Americans Number 281,421,906 in Census,” 2000).

Chapter 3

State Partisan Variation and Competition A number of authors discussing southern politics have suggested that realignment in the South was a top-down planned “revolution” (Aistrup, 1996; Bullock, 1988), but my suspicion is that it is a natural consequence of political change. First, the presidency is likely to be more sensitive to national tides and it is easier to win control of a single institution, the presidency, whose possessor can have an enormous effect on the nation’s agenda. By this I suggest the president is then in a position to reinforce or change voter political inclinations (Key, 1961) as President Reagan did, first among younger than older voters in the 1980s (Miller, 1990: 97–115). Lagging partisan variation certainly occurred during the New Deal era. James L. Sundquist (1983) reports that the New Deal realignment did not occur immediately in national and state politics. State political change generally lagged behind as it did, for example, in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which are not southern states. This behavior, I would argue, is a natural process and I therefore expect state indices to lag behind national indices in every region and mirror the direction of my national index. To better appraise partisan change from 1960 through 2000, I com1 pare my state party index with the national index to project their general drift. The idea for the index is largely borrowed (but far more simplified) from Austin Ranney’s (1971) research. In addition

54

Shadow Realignment

to documenting partisan change, I provide a bivariate correlation analysis to ascertain the similarities between the indices. I also report regional outcomes from 1960 to 2000 and a cumulative index of individual state party strength and competition during four electoral periods generated by the analysis found in Chapter 2 (see Table 2.2): Democratic liberalism, dealignment, shadow realignment, and conservative consolidation. This final analysis specifies whether a state is one-party Democratic/Republican, modified one-party, competitive leaning Democratic/Republican, or highly competitive. NATIONAL AND STATE PARTY STRENGTH INDICES COMPARED Table 3.1 summarizes and compares the national and state party indices. While some authors (Gelman and King, 1990; King and Gelman, 1991) view Republican attempts at changing the partisan attachments (at least in the South) with a top-down strategy that focuses initially on presidential elections, I suspect that this is their only viable strategy. State changes would likely follow national partisan trends in time, but it is important to recognize that governors are elected during midterm elections when opposition to presidential policies would be exhibited. However, the reality is that governors, like presidents, are also more sensitive to political trends. For example, a perusal of Republican fortunes in the past decade indicates that the governor’s office is far easier to win than state legislative chambers. What this suggests is that a shift to Republicans (thus a lower-state partisan index based on Democratic electoral outcomes) at the state level must lag behind a similar shift at the national level. Table 3.1 A Comparison of National and State Party Strength Indices, from Kennedy to Bush (1960–2000)

State Partisan Variation and Competition

55

State legislative selection follows this trend as well; first, the president’s party in the state legislatures does well during the presidential election but then loses ground during midterm elections (Campbell, 1986). But the change in legislative partisan makeup does not occur among incumbents. As membership to the U.S. House of Representatives is isolated from national trends by incumbency (Brunell and Grofman, 1998; Cox and Katz, 1996; Everson, 1982; Gelman and King, 1990; Jacobson, 1996; King and Gelman, 1991; Wattenberg, 1991), so are the state legislatures. For this reason, one must wait for a generation of leaders to grow old and pass from the political scene. While most gubernatorial elections occur during midterm elections to eliminate national issues from state political campaigns, the office is still comparatively more sensitive than the legislatures to changing political tides. In 1960, one might expect that the national and state indices would be highly similar since the Democratic New Deal, born in the Great Depression, effectively realigned the country. Democratic orthodox liberalism ensured that the party could straddle regional differences, and one must add, ensured a degree of unanimity between national and state partisan outcomes. Hence, the Pearson correla2 tion of .81. President Johnson’s 1964 administration introduced cultural-national issues in addition to expanding economic-welfare policies (Shafer and Claggett, 1995), but a reaction against the Democrats begins in 1966 (index falls to 55) that is not echoed in the states (index at 60). This leads to a lower correlation of .57 during the triumph of cultural liberalism. The reaction to cultural-national issues is clearly recorded in Nixon’s 1968 victory. The national party index falls to 52, and like the national index, a significant decline also occurs in the states. The correlation between the indices rises to .68 but as the states continue their former partisan habit in the 1972 election, the national index remains at 53 measured by a decline in the correlation (.60). In 1976, commentators believed that in large part Carter had reasserted the New Deal’s success, and the national index rises to 55, closer to the 62 found in state partisan outcomes. The correlation, .73, asserts the similarity of partisan outcomes in the states, particularly the South’s support of Carter in 1976. Through the 1980s, the states’ partisan indices remain the same, between 59 and 58, during the Reagan-Bush period of shadow realignment. The national partisan index falls to its prior lows during the Nixon-Ford years, from 50 to 53, and this change at the national level is translated into

56

Shadow Realignment

declining correlations (.58 during the 1980 administration, .57 during 1984, and .48 during 1988). In 1992, in spite of Clinton’s electoral plurality, the national index falls to 48, a decline shared by the state index of 54, but the pattern of variation among national and state electoral outcomes is sharply different as it is measured by a .37 correlation. It is clear that in 1996 and in the truncated 2000 period patterns of national and state electoral outcomes become increasingly similar. In 1996, the national index declines to 45 and the state index to 50, increasing the correlation to .52. Surprisingly, the national index declines to .44 in the truncated 2000 index. I expected the index to increase since voter participation is generally greater during presidential elections and generally favor Democratic electoral outcomes. A mild increase to 52 in the state index was what I expected, but more important, the pattern of partisan change in national and state electoral outcomes became more similar (.59), signaling a period of conservative consolidation favoring the Republican Party. Indeed, one would expect that correlations would be stronger during periods of consolidation and decline as partisan preferences change than following a period of realignment. One would then expect that correlations would increase when moving from realignment to a consolidation of new dominant coalition values. This pattern of correlations is simply due to the slower rate of partisan change that occurs in the states. REGIONAL PARTY STRENGTH The movement of state party strength indices for each of the nine regions suggests a large degree of variation reported earlier. In the West, which includes the Pacific, Rocky Mountain, and Great Plains regions, the variation is considerable among these three regions. The Pacific region is substantially more Democratic with indices ranging from 53 to 62, although there is perceptible decline since Carter’s 1976 administration. The Rocky Mountain and Great Plains regions are far less Democratic as Table 3.2 indicates. First, the Pacific region has been substantially Democratic and to some extent mirrors the national party index noted in Table 4.1. The index moves from 60 during Kennedy’s administration (1960) to 53 during Nixon’s administration and reaches its lowest ebb during the 1968 dealignment election. The effect of the Watergate Scandal leads to an increase of the index to 62, which flattens to a range of 57 to 59

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in the next 12 years (1980–1988). While the index sags to 54 in the truncated 2000 index, the proportion of foreign-born and minority members in a number of states coupled with higher social welfare needs seems to breed far greater Democratic support, much like that associated with the Mid-Atlantic region. From the indices’ high point of 62 during the Carter years, the index declines eight points in 2000. Table 3.2 The State Party Index of Strength in the West

The Rocky Mountain region is the least Democratic. Its state party strength index is 48 during the period of Democratic liberalism, and slides to 45 in 1968, suggesting discontent with Democratic liberalism in the dealignment election. The index rises to 53, its highest point, in response to the Watergate Scandal, slides to 42 during Reagan’s second administration, rises slightly to 45 during the Bush administration, and then sharply declines to the mid 30s during the period of conservative consolidation. The index declines 17 points by 2000 from its high of 53 during the Watergate Scandal years. The Great Plains region mirrors the Rocky Mountain region, but appears to be a little more Democratic. While it has the lowest index of 44 in the entire nation during the Kennedy years, its response to the Republican scandal in Nixon’s second administration leads to the sharpest increase of nine points, from 45 to 54. The index falls to 48 during Carter’s administration, then 47 in Reagan’s first years in office, but there appears to be a reaction to Reagan’s policies. The index rises to 52 during the Bush administration in 1988. The index slips to 50 during Clinton’s first years in office, but the impeachment proceedings against him create the sharpest drop of the index in the West (eight points) during his second term in office. The index con-

58

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tinues its decline to 41 in 2000. Overall, the index declines 13 points from its high during Nixon’s second administration to the 2000 election. The greater Northeast, which consists of the Great Lakes, New England, and Mid-Atlantic regions, ideally should become increasingly Democratic as Richard Franklin Bensel (1984) proposes in his assessment of sectional differences (see Table 3.3). The decline of the industrial belt and the increasing social and economic costs of the transition to a postindustrial economy would appear to necessitate continuing government programs for social welfare expenditures. To this one can add a new tide of immigrants in some of the states, and a more Democratic region is likely to emerge. Indeed, this is what occurs during the period 1960 through at least 1984. Table 3.3 The State Party Index of Strength in the Northeast

In the Great Lakes region, the state party index increases from 46 in 1960 to 52 and 53 from 1972 through the period of shadow realignment (1980–1988). The index declines to the mid-40s during the period of conservative consolidation. This decline should give pause to the Democratic Party since states like Ohio and Michigan will be central and very competitive in future presidential elections. This was certainly the case in the 2000 election, as Ohio and Indiana supported Bush, the Republican candidate. Surprisingly, this region proves to be less Democratic than New England. New England appears in many respects to be similar to the Great Lakes region during the period of Democratic liberalism when its index rises from 47 to 51 (1960–1964). The index jumps to 58 and 57 and remains in the high 50s during shadow realignment. During conservative consolidation, it experiences a small decline to 55, then rises

State Partisan Variation and Competition

59

to 63 with the 2000 election. These findings show that New England is the only region within the greater Northeast to become and then remain more Democratic. From its lowest index of 47 during the Kennedy years, the index rises 16 points by 2000, by far the greatest surge toward Democratic partisanship. The Mid-Atlantic region begins the era during the Kennedy years as the most Democratic in the Northeast. During Democratic liberalism, its index starts at 54 and rises to 61, sharply collapses to 48 during the dealignment election, rebounds to 63 during the Watergate Scandal years (the 1972 administration), and then remains between 63 and 58 through Reagan’s 1984 administration. The index slips to 56 during the Bush years and then to 49 in the second Clinton administration. The index rebounds to 53 in the 2000 election, and overall, declines ten points from its high of 63 during the period of dealignment. Overall, the South begins this period as more Democratic than either the Northeast or West, even though there are variations between the Rim South, Deep South, and Southwest regions. The primary reason for this variation must be the proportion of minorities (primarily African Americans) that is likely to create a more unique “southern vote” among Deep South states (Key, 1949). The South, however, is changing by becoming more modern, and this becomes apparent as I assess the state party strength index of each region. The Rim Southern region (see Table 3.4) begins this era with a state party strength index of 81 during the Kennedy administration, but the rush of liberal legislation during the Johnson years leads to a sharp drop to 70, then to 67 during the dealignment election of 1968. The Watergate Scandal launches the state index upward to 70 during Nixon’s 1972 administration and then to 75 in 1976 with the election of Carter, a southerner. Following the Carter administration, the index slowly declines to 73 during the 1984 Reagan administration, 70 in his second administration, and 68 during Bush’s administration. The election of President Clinton, who initially did not act like a “new kind of Democrat” signaled in the 1992 election, and the period of consolidation lead to two sharp six-point drops, first to 62 and then to 56 in 1996, the beginning of the impeachment years. The extremely competitive election in 2000 leads to a rebound to 61, an index that might decline after the 2002 midterm electoral outcomes

60

Shadow Realignment

are added to the Bush administration. Even with this surge to 61 in 2000, the net decline of this partisan index is 20 points. Table 3.4 The State Party Index of Strength in the South

The Deep South is nearly all Democratic with an index of 99 during the 1960 Kennedy-Johnson administration. However, a drop in the index to 88 is recorded during the 1964 Johnson administration. The index remains between 89 in 1968 and 85 in 1972, and then moves to 90 with Carter’s election in 1976. With Reagan’s election and the change to conservative politics associated with shadow realignment, the Deep South index declines to 84, 79, and then 73 over the next 12 years. The index shifts lower during the Clinton years to 67, 60, and then 61 regardless that two southerners were on the national ticket. The overall decline of the state party index of 38 points is the sharpest drop of any region and a measure of enormous change in southern politics. Finally, the Southwest region, much different from the rest of the South, also abandons its one-party Democratic habit. Like the Rim South, the Southwest index is 81 during the 1960 administration, but then declines, with the exception of a boost from 64 during the 1968 dealignment election to 68 in Nixon’s Watergate Scandal administration. While the states in this region are often referred to as conservative, the effect of a southerner on the 1976 ticket does not increase the index, rather, it declines to 62. The index declines to 57 during shadow realignment, Reagan’s 1984 administration, rises slightly to 59 during the Bush years, and then falls rapidly to 55 then 46 during the Clinton years. The rough and tumble 2000 election moves the Southwest from a competitive leaning Republican region to a com-

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61

petitive region in 2000. Overall, the index declines 28 points during the period under study. It is apparent that the South has changed substantially, not only in its increasing preference for Republican presidents, but also in its increasing support for Republican governors and state legislative elections, which are the grass roots of American politics. This latter change is quite important because it is likely to increase the pool and quality of Republican candidates who may seek a seat in the U. S. Congress. If incumbents do not run for reelection, studies indicate that the best candidates available have generally emerged from state legislatures. They have access to money for campaigns, are good campaigners with name familiarity, and when these candidates reach the national legislatures, they are more successful at becoming members of policymaking committees (Berkman, 1993a, 1994; Fowler and McClure, 1989; Louison, 1988, 1989). The sharp increase of southern Republicans means the South “will rise again.” Purges of southern conservative power during the congressional reforms of the early 1970s are being reversed by the election of Republicans in state politics (and certainly in Congress). The talent pools of both parties are being changed in ways that favor Republican, conservative electoral outcomes, and therefore, conservative policy outcomes. By this, I mean that there is a population shift to the Sunbelt, that there is uneven economic development (compared to the decline of the industrial Northeast), that there are preferences for more conservative government management policies, and that an increasing pool of qualified state legislators will strongly affect future politics in Congress (Berkman, 1993b). STATE PARTY COMPETITION The decline of Democratic strength and increased competition shown in my national party index is also found in the state party index. However, rather than a gradual decline in Democratic success, Table 3.5 reports an abrupt drop during the period of conservative consolidation that signals greater partisan competitiveness, thus the movement of the indices is clearly away from the Democratic Party.

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Table 3.5 State Partisan Strength and Competition in the United States, from Kennedy to Bush in Four Electoral Periods

State Partisan Variation and Competition Table 3.5 (continued)

63

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Shadow Realignment

During the period of Democratic liberalism, 11 states are deemed to be one-party Democratic states with another ten characterized as modified one-party Democratic states. Among the one-party states, much like the findings in Table 2.6, all 11 are from the South and include all five Deep South states (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Georgia), four states from the Rim South (Arkansas, North Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee), and two states from the Southwest (Texas and Oklahoma). Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and Florida are the largest southern states with 12 or more electoral college votes. Among the ten modified one-party states, half are also from the South (West Virginia, New Mexico, Virginia, Kentucky, and Arizona), two from the greater Northeast (Maryland and Massachusetts), and one from the Great Plains (Missouri) that in earlier studies (Key, 1949) was referred to as part of the Rim South (as was Maryland). Crucial for the Democratic Party, the Pacific region is represented by two states, Hawaii and California. Four of these states have 12 or more electoral votes indicating very strong grassroots support for the Democratic Party (Virginia, Missouri, California, and Massachusetts) when added to the four large one-party Democratic states. Together, these large states represent eight of the 16 large electoral college states. During the period of Democratic liberalism, those states deemed competitive leaning Democratic represent most northern regions: the Pacific (Alaska and Washington), Mid-Atlantic (Delaware and New York), New England (Rhode Island and Connecticut), and Rocky Mountain (Nevada) regions. Again, the Democratic Party can claim another huge electoral state, New York, ensuring enormous grassroots support for a party that was capable of straddling regional differences until the 1968 election. Among the 50 states, only about a quarter are very competitive including most of the Great Lakes (Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin) and Mid-Atlantic (New Jersey and Pennsylvania) regions, and a mix of Pacific (Oregon), Rocky Mountain (Montana, Colorado, and Utah), and Great Plains (Nebraska and Minnesota) states. This must be viewed as a significant battleground since six of the states have 12 or more electoral college votes: Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Those states that are deemed competitive leaning Republican are primarily from the Rocky Mountain (Idaho and Wyoming) and New England (New Hampshire and Maine) regions, with Iowa repre-

State Partisan Variation and Competition

65

senting the Great Plains and Ohio the Great Lakes. Of these states, only Ohio has significant electoral votes. The modified one-party Republican states generally represent the Great Plains (North Dakota, Kansas, and South Dakota) and New England (Vermont) as we might expect. It is clear that the Republican Party is a minority party given its grassroots strength in the nine smaller, homogenous states of the Rocky Mountain, Great Plains, and New England regions with but one well-endowed electoral college state, Ohio, in its ranks. It is interesting that the Republican Party’s grassroots strength diminishes during dealignment and recovers slightly during the shadow realignment years, somewhat surprising given the party’s resurgence in the national political arena. This, of course, is what Sundquist (1983) reports following the New Deal realignment. Some states lag behind national changes, and that tendency is increased since most governors are now elected during midterm elections. If Republican strength at the state level diminishes in the course of dealignment, Democratic strength barely slips during the two periods of dealignment and shadow realignment. In the former period, ten states remain among the one-party Democratic states and the number of modified one-party states increases from 10 to 12 states. Once again, all five Deep South states (Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina) remain one-party Democratic states, as do two states from the Rim South (Arkansas and North Carolina) and one from the Southwest (Texas). However, I should note that while these states remain in this category, their party strength indices decline somewhat. Maryland and Massachusetts are new members of the one-party states, indicating at least one shift to the Democratic Party in New England. Most important, eight large electoral college states remain safely one-party and modified one-party Democratic at the grassroots level (Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Virginia, Florida, Missouri, and California), but the downward shift of Texas (nine index points) and especially Florida (16 index points) is indicative of a future Democratic Party with less and less support in the South. Modified one-party Democratic states increases in number to include (again) many southern states (Oklahoma, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Florida), and New England’s Rhode Island, like Massachusetts, becomes more Democratic when its state index increases 14 points. The Pacific region continues to be

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Shadow Realignment

represented by California and Hawaii while Nevada represents the Rocky Mountain region. Missouri and Minnesota round out the category with the latter’s state index increasing 11 index points. Dealignment clearly has not occurred in southern politics, but movement toward greater partisan competition is afoot. For example, Tennessee, once a one-party state with a state index of 75, declines 17 index points to make it a more competitive leaning Democratic state. Five other states make up this category: Oregon (Pacific), which shifts toward the Democrats, as do New Jersey (Mid-Atlantic), Wisconsin (Great Lakes), and Montana (Rocky Mountain), while Connecticut (New England) remains in this category. The most serious movement toward competitive status is New York whose index declines 12 index points. Cumulatively, only one more state becomes more Democratic, but among Republican states, two states are lost to increased competition. The states that are competitive leaning Republican continue to represent sparsely populated states from the Rocky Mountain (Idaho and Wyoming), New England (New Hampshire and Vermont), and Great Lakes (Indiana, which is electorally rich) regions. Only two states from the Great Plains (North and South Dakota) make up the modified one-party Republican category, and no states fall in to the one-party Republican category. The competitive category of state strength during dealignment is the only one to increase in size from 12 to 15. Increasingly, it appears that the Mid-Atlantic (Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New York), Great Lakes (Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois), and Pacific (Washington and Alaska) regions have competitive partisan tendencies in common. The regions most identified with Republican success—Great Plains (Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa), Rocky Mountains (Colorado and Utah), and New England (Maine)—are represented in the increasingly competitive category. One Southwest state, Arizona, resides here with a state index of 45 that represents a decline of 16 index points when it once belonged to the modified one-party Democratic category. Reagan’s conservative administration during the period of shadow realignment does not have an immediate effect on state partisan indices other than to enhance Republican strength (somewhat) in conventionally Republican states. Looking at the states labeled competitive leaning Republican and modified one-party Republican, I find that Republican partisan strength increases by two states.

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This does not represent a great feat since most of the states represent the Rocky Mountain (Colorado and Wyoming as competitive leaning Republican, and Idaho and Utah as modified one-party Republican), Great Plains (Kansas is competitive leaning Republican and South Dakota is modified one-party Republican), and New England (New Hampshire as competitive leaning Republican) regions. Arizona from the Southwest was barely competitive during dealignment, while Indiana from the Great Lakes remains competitive leaning Republican. Among Democratic states, there is very little change in the number of states that are categorized as one-party and modified one-party Democratic. There are nine and eleven states, respectively, in each class—a mild decline, but more important is the decline of southern party indices that reflects a continuing shift away from the Democratic Party. Among the Deep South states that make up the one-party Democratic class (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana), the decline in the indices ranges from two to sixteen points with the decline among Alabama and Louisiana being the most substantial. Perhaps more important is the decline in the number of large electoral college states in this class. Only Georgia and Massachusetts with at least 12 electoral votes remain in the one-party Democratic class. This decline is countered by the only two Rim South states that remain in this Democratic category: Arkansas (a member during the last period), and West Virginia (previously a modified one-party Democratic member). Maryland, Hawaii, and Massachusetts round out the group as states from the West and East Coasts. While the number of states has not declined by much (one) in the modified one-party grouping, it is important to recognize that only three large electoral states remain in this category. The number of large electoral states (five) are affected by Missouri’s decline in population and California’s and Florida’s slip into the competitive leaning Democratic class. Together, the most Democratic states comprise only five states with twelve or more electoral college votes, the largest of which is Texas, a modified one-party Democratic state that was once a one-party Democratic state. Seven of the states in this category come from the South (South Carolina, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee) as one might expect, while one New England state (Rhode Island) remains in this category from the last electoral period. The three remaining states .

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Shadow Realignment

come from the Great Plains (Missouri and Minnesota) and Rocky Mountain (Nevada) regions. If one peruses the number of states that are competitive during the period of shadow realignment, the number of states remains equal to the previous period. As in the past, nearly half of the competitive states come from the Mid-Atlantic (New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) and Great Lakes (Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois) regions, but perhaps most important, these states have a large number of electoral votes. The remaining states are an interesting mix of New England (Connecticut and Vermont), Rocky Mountain (Montana), Pacific (Washington and Alaska), and Great Plains (Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota) states—many I would assume to be Republican during a period of national Republican dominance. Yet, this is continuing evidence of the lagging partisan drift of the American states that abruptly changes during the period of conservative consolidation. In the final electoral period, the one-party Democratic category includes only two states, Hawaii and Arkansas, but their indices are barely above the limit of index 75 that divides them from the modified one-party classification. The number of states in the latter category are dominated by those from the South, particularly the Deep South (Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia) and a scattering of Rim South (West Virginia and Kentucky) states. It is interesting that two states from New England (Massachusetts and Rhode Island) remain in this category from the previous period, although historically Massachusetts is closely linked to the liberal Kennedy clan (Irish Roman Catholics). The remaining states, Maryland and New Mexico, reflect some of the remnants of southern Democracy reported by V.O. Key (1949). Nebraska, again, is unusual since the index reflects the more volatile index associated with gubernatorial elections where issues and candidate images can drive short-term electoral forces. An additional point must be made about the decline of large, diverse states in the strong Democratic categories. Only two states, Massachusetts and Georgia, remain among the five to eight large diverse states that can be relegated to the Democratic column. Two large states, North Carolina and California, lean Democratic, but in the contemporary electoral era must be viewed as substantially competitive. North Carolina, like many southern states, continues to drift toward increased competition as the Republican Party im-

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proves its position. This is not to say we can expect southern states to become Republican states since minority representation and economic populism among low-income groups continue to ensure Democrats a foothold in these states. It is interesting that a once Republican state, Vermont, has become more competitive leaning Democratic, while Missouri slips into this category after being a modified one-party Democratic state during the previous electoral period. On the Republican side of this table, there is an ample increase of partisan strength. One state, Idaho, is the first one-party Republican state during this electoral cycle, and the Great Plains (South Dakota, North Dakota, and Kansas) and Rocky Mountain (Montana, Wyoming, and Utah) states strongly shift to the Republican Party. One wonders if this is due in part to the influx of former California residents who sought to escape high taxes and urbanized problems. Arizona continues its movement to the Republican Party, as evidence the 22-point decline in its index since the period of Democratic liberalism. Perhaps more important to Republicans is the movement of two large Mid-Atlantic states (Pennsylvania and New Jersey) and the return of Ohio to the competitive states that tend to lean toward the Republican Party. Alaska, Colorado (whose population continues to grow), and New Hampshire make up the remaining members of this category. The modernization of politics seems apparent in the increased numbers of states whose grassroots politics is highly competitive. In prior periods, the Mid-Atlantic (Delaware and New York) and Great Lakes (Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan) states dominated this category, but this is no longer true. Southern states (South Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, and Virginia) make up a plurality of this category, and the two largest southern states, Florida and Texas, are more competitive (Nelson, 1996). This is due to the influx of new minorities (Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, and other ethnic Latinos), regional groups (from the North), and a substantial shift by many southern natives toward the Republican Party. The politics of the old South is, as I have reported, modernizing and fulfilling the promise of a new two-party region (Lamis, 1984). The remaining states in this classification are from the Great Plains (Iowa), Rocky Mountain (Nevada), Pacific (Washing-

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ton and Oregon), and New England (Connecticut and Maine) regions. As the reader reflects on the analysis of partisan strength and increasing partisan competition, it would be misleading to assume that parties have a significant hold on the American voter. The opposite is true. The decline of party identification among Democrats and Republicans and increases in Independent voters (Wattenberg, 1994) belie assumptions of partisan strength. Add to this equation that approximately 50 percent of the voting-age population votes during presidential elections, one finds that substantial numbers of citizens remain inactive in politics. The midterm elections that determine the election of most governors and legislative seats (but not in all the upper-state legislative chambers) record a high turnout of approximately 48 percent in 1966 that declined to 36 percent in 1998 (Infoplease.com, 1999). Perhaps, as Theodore J. Lowi states, more voters would vote if a viable third party provided policy choices excluded by a two-party system (1998: 3–30). The decline of parties and the rise of candidate-centered politics represents the opposite sides of the same coin. What each state’s index of this chapter (and Chapter 2) reports is a partisan preference that captures the tendencies of voters with very weak partisan attachments or those voters deemed to be Independents. NOTES 1. The state party strength (and competition) is reported for each state and includes the sum of the Democratic proportion of the gubernatorial vote (during presidential and midterms if a governor serves a four-year term, or both elections if a governor is elected for a two-year term) and the proportions of the upper- and lower-state legislative chambers that are Democratic. The sum of these results is divided by the total number of electoral outcomes during each presidential administration. Like the national party strength index, the state party index is not weighted according to the size of states (making up one of the nine regions). It is also clear that the weight of legislative outcomes is emphasized, and I think these electoral outcomes mirror partisan preferences far better than gubernatorial votes. I must, however, give a note of caution here: The Nebraska index only includes the gubernatorial vote since the unicameral legislature is elected in a nonpartisan vote. Similarly, Minnesota’s index through the 1970 election is based on the gubernatorial vote since the legislative chambers were elected on a nonpartisan basis in previous elections.

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2. I am using Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient to measure the linear relationship between the national and state party indices. Pearson’s r is a coefficient of correlation, which ranges from –1.0 to +1.0.

Chapter 4

Explaining Shifting Party Strength, Electoral Reform, and Conclusions The four electoral periods generated and reported in Chapter 2 clarify the changing character of American partisan success. During the period of Democratic liberalism, especially during President Kennedy’s administration, the Democratic New Deal’s orthodox liberalism largely attached to economic-welfare policies was able to straddle regional differences. The emerging cultural-national issues (race, abortion, affirmative action, and busing among others) augmented by a substantial increase in the national government’s economic-welfare policies alienated members of the Democratic Party in the South and among what would be labeled Reagan Democrats (Shafer and Claggett, 1995). The period of dealignment emphasized the importance of regional differences in American political history (Bensel, 1984; Black and Black, 1987, 1992; Burnham, 1982; Key, 1949; Schneider, 1981: 179–231; Sinclair, 1982). The South, more conservative than other regions and dismayed by the new Democratic liberalism, rapidly shifted its partisan support to the Republican Party in presidential elections during dealignment (Black and Black, 1987; Carmines and Huckfeldt, 1992; Converse, 1966; Cook, 1964; Rae, 1994). Significant partisan shifts also occurred among other voters (Miller, 1990: 97–115) even while they became less attached to parti-

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san attachments and more independent (Nie, Verba, and Petrocik, 1976). Elements of this conflict (largely over race) in Boston are related in J. Anthony Lukas’s exceptional book Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (1985), which helps explain the emergence of Reagan Democrats during the period of shadow realignment. Among the political observers, Kevin P. Phillips understands that the backlash to Democratic liberalism provided an impetus to an “emerging Republican majority” (1970: 37), while Wilson Carey McWilliams probably catches the contradictory problems of liberalism best: Philosophic liberalism offers little help [dealing with racism]. The primacy of individual rights in the liberal tradition implies that equality, “before the law” and in politics, exists to protect earned inequalities in economic and social life. Enforced integration of low-income housing runs against property rights; busing menaces plans to give one’s children the benefit of superior public schools; affirmative action seems to endanger the basic principles of equal opportunity, that jobs should be awarded on the basis of demonstrated ability; . . . policies to promote racial equality are increasingly likely to be seen, in these terms, as “reverse discrimination,” violations of the unequal prerogatives of private achievement. (1995: 134–135) The effect of these conflicts first dealigned political parties and eventually led to the conservative era associated with shadow realignment or Sean Q. Kelly’s (1994) “punctuated change” following a period of conservative consolidation. During this latter period, Clinton, declaring the era of big government over, moved the Democrats to the moderate-conservative center. Combine these conflicts with uneven economic development (Berkman, 1993b) linked to the decline of the mature industrial state and the Democrats’ linchpin, the blue-collar class (Drucker, 1994), and an ongoing population explosion in the South and West with increased numbers of immigrants, one has fertile soil for political change and conflict. These elements served to generate the electoral cycle of politics that is recorded in Chapter 2. Three factors appear quite important to emerging partisan conflict: sectionalism, particularly the enormous effect of the South on presidential and congressional elections; the migration of a na-

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tive-born population from the aging industrial and financial Northeast to the South and West; and the increasing proportion of foreign-born citizens. Before assessing the effect of these three independent variables on partisan indices, it is important to recognize the substance of my indicators. The national and state party strength indices are based on Democratic electoral outcomes, hence any positive relationship between these three independent variables, or predictors, means that as their values increase, so will the values associated with my dependent partisan indicators—in effect, increased Democratic success. Should a negative relationship exist between an independent variable and the party indices, then the opposite occurs; that is, as the values of the independent variables increase, the values of the dependent variables will decline. This implies Republican success. PREDICTING PARTY STRENGTH INDICES Table 4.1 represents three variables assumed to predict national and 1 state party strength. The first “independent variable” is the South. It is a dummy variable that codes each Southwest, Deep South, and Rim South state as “1” and all other states as “0” given the importance of partisan regional conflict in the United States (Bensel, 1984; Black and Black, 1987). Historically, the South was solidly Democratic and a crucial key to the New Deal’s success. The second variable is the percent of population change over the preceding decade. The choice of this variable is associated with research that indicates increases in the Sunbelt population have been associated with an increased Republican vote (Dyer, Vedlitz, and Hill, 1988: 155–168; Lamis, 1984; Nelson, 1996). James A. Dyer, Arnold Vedlitz, and David B. Hill report that political change in Texas is associated with in-migrants’ prior political loyalties. Indeed, one-fourth of all new arrivals in Texas are likely to vote for the Republican Party. The remaining variable, the percent of a state’s population that is foreign born, should positively predict the party indices or Democratic success. Increasing immigration and the percent of foreign born should positively predict national and state indices based on cumulative Democratic electoral outcomes, particularly in the past two decades. Republican conservatism and the passage of Proposition 187 in California to deal with the substantial costs (not to mention fears similar to those of the nineteenth century’s Know

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Nothings) of immigration, illegal and legal, could only alienate the foreign-born population. Additionally, one must recognize that the additional costs in supporting the new immigrants increase the need for federal support to cure or at least alleviate the related social needs. Table 4.1 Regression Analyses Using *AJ= Weights to Measure the Three Independent Variables’ Prediction of National Party and State Party Strength Indices (1960–2000)

In using this variable, and the others, I assume an interpretation that each population’s voting behavior is rationally responsive to its interests (Key, 1966). Given V.O. Key’s analysis, the rational voters in the electoral periods under study are rationally reacting to policy ac-

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tions that either aid or harm their economic and ideological interest. These rational voters are the likely partisan switchers that determine the changing balance of partisan strength. Table 4.1 represents our findings associated with both national and state party strength indices. Addressing national party strength first, the cumulative effect of the independent variables, or predictors, varies in terms of the statistical proportion of the variance explained (R squares). This simply means that cumulatively, my three independent variables explain more or less of the variation found in national and state party indices. An analysis of the national party indices indicates wide variation in the proportion of variance explained, from 14 percent to 42 percent. With the exception of the 1988 presidential administration (18 percent of the variance explained), the lowest R squares are associated with Democratic liberalism (the 1964 administration) and dealignment (14 percent to 18 percent, respectively). The cumulative variance explained rises to 29 percent during the 1976 election, Carter’s administration, drops in 1980 to 22 percent, rises to 31 percent, then falls to 18 percent in 1988. The proportion of variance explained increases in value to 35 percent in 2000. One final note, each analysis of variance reported for each administration analysis is significant. The South initially represents the strongest variable predicting the Democratic national party strength index. It remains the most important “predictor” (1964, .46; 1968, .52; and 1972, .46) and increases its importance during Carter’s 1976 administration (.53). Some political pundits think, initially, that Carter had been able to reconstruct the New Deal coalition, but the South declines as an important predictor of Democratic strength over the next administrations. It remains the most important predictor of the national party index through Reagan’s first administration (1980, .48), and then declines (1984, .46; 1988, .26; and 1992, .24) in importance over the next 20 years. By 1996 (.13) and 2000 (.06), the South is no longer a significant predictor of Democratic electoral outcomes. An increasing proportion of the foreign-born population has initial significant importance in 1968 of .28 beta weight predicting Democratic strength, and that importance rises to .38 during the 1976 Carter administration. It declines to .27 during Reagan’s first administration and is insignificant during the 1984 and 1988 administrations. During the last decade of the millennium, it becomes

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significant by rising to .36 in 1992 during Clinton’s first administration, to .39 in 1996, and then to .49 in 2000. The Republicans’ negative reaction to the new immigrants especially in California, and Clinton’s successful currying of favor in the diversity of his administrative appointments, ensured that those states with large foreign-born populations would support Democrats. The findings recorded in Table 4.1 reinforce research reported by Dyer, Vedlitz, and Hill (1988) that much of the population change in the South and West significantly predicts an inverse relationship with the national party index. The significant impact of this population variable is initially recorded during shadow realignment and the first Reagan administration (-.29 in 1980). The variable increases to -.49 during the second Reagan administration, slips to -.44 in 1988, and reaches its high point of -.50 in Clinton’s 1996 administration. Population change declines in importance to -.38 in the 2000 election, but it would be wise to assume that this is a truncated index that does not include, quite obviously, the 2002 midterm electoral outcomes. My state party strength index tends to lag behind the downward movement of the national party index (see Chapter 3, Table 3.1). Again, it is based on Democratic electoral outcomes, and as the index declines, particularly during the period of conservative consolidation (1992–1998), one can infer a decline in Democratic success and generally an increase in Republican success. I say “generally” in view of the fact that some states (Maine and Minnesota) during the period of conservative consolidation elected third-party governors. As such, Table 4.1 reports that the statistical variance explained continues to fall from a high in 1960 of 72 percent of the variance explained to 37 percent in 1972, then rises to 49 percent in 1976, but continues falling to 25 percent and 23 percent of the variance explained during the 1996 and 2000 administrations and elections, respectively. Again, each of these analyses is significant. Through 1988, a large number of states considered to be Democratic (see Chapter 3) are southern, and the South remains the dominant variable predicting Democratic strength. Initially, the beta weight is .87 for Kennedy’s 1960 administration and declines to .65 during the 1972 Nixon administration. It rebounds to .76 in 1976 and .77 in 1980, but begins a marked decline to .64 in 1988 and to .42 in 1996 and .43 in 2000.

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The proportion of foreign born in the states and population change has little effect on the state indices until 1976. In that year, the foreign-born population’s beta weight is a significant .22, thereby predicting Democratic strength while the percent of population change represents an inverse relationship of -.20, hence a predictor of Republican success. This verifies with Dyer, Vedlitz and Hill’s (1988) research that addresses partisan behavior in Texas. In 1980, both of these predictors increase (.26 and -.24), but in 1984, Reagan’s second administration, population change (-.37) outstrips the significant effects of the foreign-born population (.23). Findings indicate that both indicators have relatively the same influence, but opposite effects, predicting state partisan strength in the 1988 Bush administration (.28 and -.29) and remaining nearly as influential in 1992 (.27 and -.28). During the second Clinton administration, the betas for each independent variable rise to over .30 (.31 and -.35) with population change slightly more important. Both indicators fall to nearly the same predictive strength (.29 and -.30) during the 2000 election. The effects of this research are reported by the Economist (“Bush’s America,” 2001: 21, 22, 24) and are still being studied for their effects on reapportionment and partisan outcomes. The internal migration of native-born Americans to the South, Southwest, and West is strongly associated with the decline of the industrial state, a migration that persists today and was observed in the country’s 2000 reapportionment of U.S. House districts. In this continuing shift, the larger Northeast lost eight seats (“Americans Number 281,421,906 in Census,” 2000) and will likely continue to increase the success of the Republican Party. The increasing numbers of foreign-born immigrants clearly represents an element of Democratic success and a factor that Republicans will have to seriously address as George W. Bush did as governor of Texas. Given the continuing increase of foreign born, both parties (first Clinton and now Bush) symbolically provide important positions within executive administrations for representatives of these groups, particularly the growing Latino population. The South, although strongly supportive of Democratic electoral outcomes in the states, is no longer a significant predictor of national Democratic strength. The increased importance of population change explains in part the reasons for this political reality, and as Earl Black and Merle

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Black (1992) report, the South is vital to presidential success. Sweep the South and a presidential candidate only needs 30 percent of the electoral votes in the North. Bush’s election in 2000 makes this point bluntly clear (if only Gore carried his home state, right?) and the election also reinforces Richard Franklin Bensel’s (1984) assessment of changing sectional interests. The greater Northeast (and much of the Pacific coast) rationalizes its policy preferences as being liberal, while the remaining portion of the country rationalizes its policy preferences as conservative. PREDICTING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS It may seem redundant to predict presidential elections (the proportion of the vote that is Democratic), but it is important to recognize that the presidential vote is but one element of the national party strength index. Most of the elements concern congressional electoral outcomes, therefore, there may be some variation in my analysis (not reported, but only the South was an important predictor 1960 to 1976). However, this analysis is restricted to the periods of shadow realignment through conservative consolidation (1980–2000), when all three of the variables, the South, the percent foreign born, and the percent population change were all significant predictors of the national partisan index. Table 4.2 shows the effects of shadow realignment and conservative consolidation (1980–2000). Initially, the cumulative proportion of variance is quite strong (.55) but declines during the 1984 and 1988 elections (.44 and .41, respectively). The partisan shift to the Republican Party is displayed when the outcome of the 1980 election is strongly and nearly equally predicted by the South and the percent of population change (.64 and -.63, respectively). The South predicts a strong Democratic vote while those states with increased population change strongly predict a Republican outcome. The states with a larger percentage of foreign born significantly predict a Democratic outcome, but it is barely significant (