Counter Realignment: Political Change in the Northeastern United States

In Counter Realignment, Howard L. Reiter and Jeffrey M. Stonecash analyze data from the early 1900s to the early 2000s to explain how the Republican Party lost the northeastern United States as a region of electoral support. Although the story of how the “Solid South” shifted from the Democratic to the Republican parties has received extensive consideration from political scientists, far less attention has been given to the erosion of support for Republicans in the Northeast. Reiter and Stonecash examine who the Republican Party lost as it repositioned itself, resulting in the shift of power in the Northeast from heavily Republican in 1900 to heavily Democratic in the 2000s.

Howard L. Reiter is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, where he taught for 35 years. He received his BA from Cornell University and his AM and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has also taught at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Essex (UK), the University of Tartu (Estonia), and Uppsala University (Sweden). He is the author of Selecting the President (1985) and Parties and Elections in Corporate America (1987, 1993), as well as numerous book chapters and articles in such journals as the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Theoretical Politics, on the subject of political parties and elections. Among his academic honors are a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Western Europe (1987), a Fulbright Distinguished Chair (2001–02) in Uppsala, Sweden, and an Outstanding Academic Book award from Choice magazine (1986–87). He has lectured widely in Europe, Asia and Latin America. In 2010–2011 he will be President of the New England Political Science Association.

Jeffrey M. Stonecash is Maxwell Professor in the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. He does research on political parties, changes in their electoral bases, and how these changes affect political polarization and public policy debates. His recent books are Class and Party in American Politics (2000), Diverging Parties (2002), Political Polling (2003), Parties Matter (2005), Split: Class and Cultural Divisions in American Politics (2007), Reassessing the Incumbency Effect (2008), Dynamics of American Political Parties (2009), Understanding American Political Parties (2012) and Party Pursuits and the Presidential-House Election Connection, 1900–2008 (2013). He has done polling and consulting for political candidates for over twenty-five years.