Study Guide #14
The Breakdown of the New Deal Coalition and
The Rise of the Gender Gap,
Many political scientists study how Americans change their party allegiances over time. American political history is punctuated by massive shifts in party attachments in which regional, ethnic and religious groups change their party loyalties, and new issues take center stage. For most of the 20th century, American politics was dominated by the "New Deal Coalition" that rose to political power in the early 1930s, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal program brought poor and middle-class people around the nation into the Democratic Party.
Since the fall of the New Deal Coalition (dated by some political scientists to 1968, others to the 70s, and still others to the 90s) political scientists have been waiting for the creation of a new majority party coalition, but instead we seem to be in a period of political flux and intense, close competition between the parties. The New Deal Coalition made the Democratic party dominant for most of the period between 1932 and 1994, but since then no ruling coalition has replaced it.
That's not to say that there aren't any loyal voters left; in fact, as we’ll see in the next section, party-based voting has been on the rise at least since the 1980s, a little-followed story that most journalists and even some political scientists have missed. Despite all the hype about independent voters, most voters most of the time still vote the party line. And there are groups--African-Americans and Jews, for example--who are still extremely loyal party voters. (African-Americans today are loyal Democrats. But before the New Deal, those African-Americans who were able to vote were loyal Republicans. That should give you an idea of how much party alignments can change through history.)
In addition, new groups of voters seem to be emerging, creating new party alignments. The biggest change in American politics has been the movement of southerners, especially southern white men, to the Republican Party. (Yes, the gender gap is at least as much about men as it is women, maybe more because men have been the ones switching parties. Kaufman's article may seem a bit too statistical to you but it thoroughly probes the causes of the gender gap--and its narrowing in 2004.)
When you finish the articles, you should be able to answer the following questions:
Carmines, "Issue Evolution"
1. What issues did American politics revolve around in the period immediately following the New Deal? How did Republicans and Democrats differ?
2. What new set of issues disrupted the Democratic Party beginning in the 1948 presidential election and so began the destruction of the New Deal Coalition?
3. What new set of issues that arose in the 1960s further split the New Deal Coalition?
4. According to the authors, what three "issue dimensions" structure American politics today?
5. What does figure 5.1 show about the views of Democrats and Republicans on social welfare issues?
6. What does figure 5.2 show about the views of Democrats and Republicans on racial issues?
7. What does figure 5.3 show about the views of Democrats and Republicans on cultural issues?
8. Which groups in the New Deal Coalition have remained loyal to the Democrats? Which groups have become less supportive? What has caused these shifts?
9. According to figure 5.5, which groups have become less supportive of Republicans? Which have become more Republican? What has caused these shifts?
10. How has the rise of racial issues hurt the Democratic Party?
11. How has the rise of cultural issues caused trouble for both Democrats and Republicans?
12. Why has it become difficult for either party to establish a permanent majority coalition like the New Deal Coalition?
Black and Black, "Rise of Southern Republicans"
1. According to Black and Black, what events stimulated the move from a "Solid South" to a competitive South in party politics? What changes in the southern economy facilitated this change?
2. What issues drove moderate and conservative southern whites out of the Democratic Party?
Stark, "Gender Gap"
1. How do (white) women and men differ in their voting patterns? When did they begin to differ? (Which group changed its behavior?)
2. What are the causes of the gender gap according to the article?
3. On what issues do white men and women (on average) differ?
4. How does the history of womens' participation in politics foreshadow the gender gap?
5. Remember that my lecture (and the articles by Huntington and Hertzke) identified "individualism" as a dominant American value, and "community" as a countervalue. How does the gender gap relate to this conflict between an emphasis on the individual and an emphasis on the community? (Which side are white men on, according to the article?)
Kaufman, "The Gender Gap"
1. Based on figure 2, in what sense could you say that the gender gap from 1964 to 1988 was mostly "about men"? In what sense could you say changes in the gender gap since then have been "about women?"
2. Table I suggests that party identification, war and national security strongly affected voting in the 2004 presidential election. If war and national security were so important for both women and men, on what bases does Kaufman reject the "security moms" explanation for the diminishing gender gap in 2004?
3. Where did the gender gap "collapse"? (See Figure 5.) How does Kaufman explain the collapse? (According to her very preliminary conclusions, what did Bill Clinton do that John Kerry couldn't?)