Party Realignment and State Politics

This collection of original articles examines change in voter party identification and its impact on state politics in fourteen states representing every region of the country. Party realignment - a gradual shift from Democrats to Republicans - has been most noticeable in presidential elections and in the shift to a Republican-controlled Senate in Ronald Reagan's first term. This volume considers the autonomous parties within each state as a way of studying transformations in the party system. Each state study uses comparable data and similar measurements to consider four major factors in party realignment: political and social indicators, including long-term economic and demographic changes; trends in party identification, with a summary of the general shifts in partisan attachments and ideological orientations of voters over at least a ten-year period; electoral trends, including a summary of presidential, congressional, legislative, and local results; and politics and power, with an emphasis on the impact of partisan and electoral developments on party realignment. Among other conclusions, these studies of realignment patterns within states suggest that, while regional trends emerge, demographic and economic factors within states are more important than national issues and candidate personalities.
An essential work for scholars and students in political science, Party Realignment and State Politics will be of particular interest to those who wish to better understand how party politics will come into play on a national and state level in the 1992 presidential election.