Learn the difference between party realignment and dealignment and understand historical examples of major party realignment, such as in the 1960s. See examples of party dealignment.
Updated: 11/21/2023
Political Party Realignment | Definition & Examples
Table of Contents
- Political Party Alignment
- Party Realignment: Definition
- Party Dealignment: Definition
- Lesson Summary
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do politicians switch parties?
Politicians switch parties typically because realignment necessitates it. Democratic politicians in the South during the 1940s would have likely switched to the Republican party by the 1970s. This is not because they would have necessarily changed their views, but because the two political parties dramatically changed their platforms in the period of time.
What is political party realignment?
Realignment is when people or a group change their political affiliation because they think a different party represents their interests more accurately.
Why does party realignment happen?
Realignment happens because of large events like a national crisis (war, economic depression) which solidifies the stance of one or more political parties. This realignment lasts for generations as it becomes entrenched in specific regions.
What is it called when you don't align with a political party?
This is called dealignment and results in people being Independents. They may vote just as much as before their dealignment, but they are no longer bound by political parties when deciding who to vote for.
Table of Contents
- Political Party Alignment
- Party Realignment: Definition
- Party Dealignment: Definition
- Lesson Summary
Party alignment refers to people or a group of people who consistently vote for one political party over the other. In the United States, the Republican and Democratic parties are the only two major political parties. This means that voters can only choose from two visions of the country. Politicians from both parties understand who is aligned with their party and that means each party will focus on the issues that concern their supporters. These two massive political parties must try to please all the different and often conflicting interests of the people aligned with their political party.
However, this alignment is not static and through many factors, entire regions can switch to the other party within only a few years. People stay aligned with a specific party because it may represent one's own personal values and ideals, or it could simply be because there is a party everyone votes for in that state or area.
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When voters or a group of them switch their party alignment, this is called party realignment. Party realignment can occur gradually due to population shifts, immigration, and the expansion of suffrage. However, it is more common for party realignment to be the result of a national crisis.
Lincoln
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A major national crisis occurred after the election of 1860 when the Republican Abraham Lincoln won the Presidency. The Republicans were a new political party and before this, the Democrats enjoyed large-scale support in both the North and the South. However, a major tenant of the Republican party platform was that slavery was not going to be expanded beyond the southern states. Southern states saw this as hostile and made sure to vote for the Democratic candidate. Upon Lincoln's victory, they seceded and started the Civil War.
This crisis ended in four years with the United States of America recapturing the South, however, party realignment had already occurred. After this, the former Confederate states almost exclusively voted for the Democratic party for a century to come. Additionally, the Republican party became connected with the abolition of slavery and so the newly enfranchised African Americans aligned themselves with this party. The northern states also became aligned with the Republican party because it was associated with loyalty to the United States.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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The next major American crisis after the Civil War was the Great Depression in the 1930s. It began during the Presidency of Herbert Hoover however he was not doing an adequate job addressing the issue. Hoover wanted to rely on the assistance of wealthy Americans as opposed to utilizing the arms of the U.S. government to fix the country's problems.
The massive economic collapse in the country meant that there was likely no way Herbert Hoover was going to defeat his Democratic challenger no matter who it was. During a national crisis like this, people look for whoever is most likely to improve their life. With the unemployment rate on the rise in 1931, Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt laid out a plan called the New Deal. This set of programs would expand the power of the U.S. government by creating millions of jobs, subsidizing industries, and insuring the financial sector so banks did not collapse. This plan gave people so much hope that FDR won in a landslide in 1932.
Once the New Deal went into effect, millions of Americans were finding work in the new government agencies and this was so effective that wealthy families even had a hard time keeping their African American staff, such as butlers and maids, because the government jobs paid so well. From this point on, the New Deal made the Democratic party a massive and unlikely coalition of voters. White southerners supported Democrats because they had represented their interests for generations since the Civil War. Also, African Americans also began to support Democrats because the New Deal brought opportunity to many underserved groups. Over the next thirty years, Democratic candidates tried to juggle their need to address civil rights while not supporting it so blatantly as to lose the massive bloc of white southerners to the Republican party.
A major effect of the New Deal was that the federal government gained far more power than it ever had before. The major critique white southerners had about the Democratic party was the fact that many of the New Deal's programs reduced states' rights in some capacity.
Party Realignment: 1960s
During the early 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was gaining steam. Leaders of the movement like Martin Luther King Jr. were calling on President John F. Kennedy to act decisively on the question of civil rights. However, during his presidency, most things he did for African Americans was done quietly as to not anger the white Southerners. Without that massive bloc of voters, it would have been very difficult to win election as a Democrat at the time.
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Once Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon B. Johnson became President and one of the first things he did was create the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act made it clear that discrimination based on race was not going to be acceptable in the United States anymore. This act made it clear to white southerners that they were no longer at the center of the Democratic party's concerns and in the election of 1964 the heart of the South voted for the Republican candidate for the first time in history. Republican candidate Barry Goldwater's platform emphasized the importance of states' rights and wanted the government to reduce in size instead of expanding with every act it passed.
During Johnson's next term, he escalated the war in Vietnam so much that people from countless groups in the country opposed U.S. involvement in the conflict. Moreover, he lied to the American people about how much he was escalating the war and this meant many different groups no longer trusted him. This led Johnson to not seek another term in 1968 and the massive Democratic coalition of voters to finally crumble without a leader to hold them together.
The principle of focusing on states' rights and reducing the size of government stayed within the Republican party until Ronald Reagan ran for President in 1980. The country was in an incredibly difficult economic situation were economic growth had stopped. Reagan ran his campaign on the principle that government wasn't the solution to the problem, government was the problem. This echo of Goldwater's message helped attracted Reagan Democrats who were working-class white Americans that had been disillusioned by the economic situation of the 1970s and desired a President who gave them hope.
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Party Dealignment refers to when a voter or many voters become weary of both political parties and instead become independents. Party dealignment happened on a large scale after the late-1960s and early-1970s. The war in Vietnam was not supported by many Americans but both political parties were committed to staying in the country. Neither candidate was willing to commit to complete withdraw.
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After the election of Richard Nixon, the Watergate scandal completely destroyed the remaining faith Americans had in politicans. The result of these two events was not a shift in support, but that many Americans became Independents. Neither party seemed to represent the personal interest of millions of Americans and caused widespread disillusionment with the political system. Amongst this scandal and war, both political parties blamed each other as opposed to effectively governing through meaningful compromise. A scandal does not instantly discredit an entire political party, however, the 'blame-game' that politicians play afterward is the principal way to push voters towards dealignment.
One of the few groups that joined a voting coalition at this time was African Americans. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act, it was clear the Democratic Party was now the party of equality. In the election of 1968 and 72 candidates like Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern attempted to inspire this large voting bloc enough to defeat Richard Nixon.
However, scandals and bickering in every presidential administration since Lyndon Johnson has proved to many Americans that neither party represent their interest. This does not mean that Americans vote far less than before, but rather that voters are less tied to a specific party. Democrats may be focused more on civil rights and Republicans may be more focused on states' rights, but the voters across all demographics now tend to vote based on the specific stances of the candidate, as opposed to the platform of their political party.
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The United States is unique amongst democratic nations because it only has two major political parties.
- American voters can only choose between two competing visions for the country
- Alignment refers to the tendency of people or groups to vote for a specific political party
- Realignment refers to a person or group changing political affiliation, typically brought on by a national crisis
- Dealignment refers to voters become disillusioned with both political parties
- Dealignment occurs primarily when both parties blame each other as opposed to finding meaningful compromise
Ever since the 1960s, dealignment had been on the rise in this country. The Vietnam War and the controversy surrounding it was the start of Americans believing that neither political party can reliably represent their own personal beliefs.
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Video Transcript
Choosing a Side
Love them or hate them, political parties are a huge part of American politics. In the USA, there are traditionally two dominant parties that set the entire tone of government.
Affiliation with a political party is known as alignment, and it can have its perks. Aligned voters get to help set the party's agenda, attend party conferences, and participate in government through the structure of the party.
But is it enough? What happens when people feel the party isn't steering them straight? It's time for a new alignment.
Realignment
In American politics, alignment is a very useful tool to show us how the American people feel about the government and about important national issues. If one party promises to abolish alcohol and then many people join that party, we know that this is an important issue to many Americans. American voters frequently express their priorities, and alternatively their grievances, through the political party they join.
That means that abandoning a chosen party can be a big deal, but it happens, often en masse. A massive shift in party affiliation is known as realignment, in which a high number of people abandon one political party and join the other.
The result is almost always a change in power in both the federal executive and legislature, as well as within state governments. Very often, realignment occurs around a single and crucial presidential election, or critical elections, in which an issue of extreme importance galvanizes the electorate.
Examples of Realignment
So when have we seen realignment in history? Many political scientists claim that realignment happens in American society roughly every 30 to 40 years, although some argue that this drama of partisan switching has only occurred a small handful of times.
Either way, two examples stand out and are agreed upon by everyone. The first was in 1860, when Republicans won the presidency with Abraham Lincoln, toppling about 40 years of Democrat control of both Congress and the Oval Office. Republicans went on to dominate the government for decades as many abandoned the Democratic Party during and after the Civil War.
The other major period of realignment came in 1932, when the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression ushered in an era of Democrat control that would last for decades.
In both cases, realignment was motivated by major national crises, although historically there can be many reasons for large numbers of people to switch their political affiliations. Sometimes a party embarrasses itself through scandal or supporting an unpopular law or event (as when the Federalist Party opposed the War of 1812 and were reviled as traitors). In any case, there generally needs to be a reason for realignment to occur on a massive scale. Something needs to shake a lot of people's faith in their party.
Dealignment
So what happens when one party manages to alienate its voters, but the other party looks just as bad? Sometimes, when people leave a political party, they aren't realigning. They're dealigning.
In American politics, dealignment refers to a widespread movement of people abandoning all political parties. They leave the party with which they were affiliated but don't affiliate with any other party.
This means that dealignment is revealed through a major increase in independent voters. In general, we take this as a sign of discontent with the government at large, or at least with the options presented by political parties.
In some cases dealignment reveals that people think the two parties are too similar to represent different options beyond the status quo, while in other instances dealignment seems to be strongly motivated by increased bickering between political parties, resulting in a loss of trust in each.
Examples of Dealignment
Dealignment is interesting because it's not traditionally common throughout American history, and yet it's been a growing trend for a while now.
After the realignment that thrust Democrats into power in 1932, that party remained a majority for about 30 years until losing a clear majority with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. However, Republicans didn't gain a clear majority. From that point on, realignment was not an obvious trend.
Republicans and Democrats both gained and lost power, but neither did so in a way that indicated a clear shift in national preferences. People weren't realigning; they were steadily dealigning.
This has gotten to the point where independent voters are as dominant a faction in American politics as any political party. In fact, as recently as December of 2017, a Gallup poll found that only 25% of respondents identified as Republicans and only 27% identified as Democrats, while 46% were registered as independents.
This is a big change in the way that American politics has historically operated. Political parties either have to adjust and figure out what Americans are looking for, or a loss in alignment may just steer them right off a cliff.
Lesson Summary
In American politics, alignment, or affiliation with a political party, has been a historically significant trait. American citizens join political parties to express support for issues or consolidate their grievances, and political parties have been powerful outlets of expression.
Still, affiliation is something that must be constantly earned. In times of national crisis, realignment has been common, which is when a high number of people switch political parties. This is accompanied by the transition of majority status from one party to the other.
However, since the 1960s, more and more Americans have been registering as independents, and engaging in a process called dealignment, a widespread movement of people abandoning all political parties. Both cases indicate major changes in national priorities and attitudes about the government.
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Political Party Realignment | Definition & Examples
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