Analyzes the pattern of Democratic presidential failures from post-WWII to the present, looking at factors involved in Democratic realignment including rise in affluence in the post-war years; race and civil rights issues; the Democratic party's perceived shift to the Left around 1966; President Carter's failures in domestic issues; and economic conditions in the early 1990s. Includes numerous tables. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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American electoral politics since World War II stubbornly refuse to fit the theories of political scientists. The long collapse of the Democratic presidential majority does not look much like the classic realignments of the past: The Republicans made no corresponding gains in sub-presidential elections and never won the loyalty of a majority of the electorate in terms of party identification. And yet, the period shows a stability of Republican dominance quite at odds with the volatility and unpredictability central to the competing theory of dealignment.The Collapse of the Democratic Presidential Majority makes sense of the last half century of American presidential elections as part of a transition from a world in which realignment was still possible to a dealigned political universe. The book combines analysis of presidential elections in the postwar world with theories of electoral change—showing how Reagan bridged the eras of re- and dealignment and why Clinton was elected despite the postwar trend.
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