Political Parties & Realignment
This occurs when major shifts in voter coalitions dramatically change political alignment.
What are Critical Elections?
This campaign focuses on an individual rather than the party.
What is a Candidate-Centered Campaign?
A political party built around one specific issue.
What is a Single-Issue Party?
Channels that link people with government.
What are Linkage Institutions?
When a portion of the electorate abandons its partisan loyalty without forming a new one.
What is Party Dealignment?
This 1800 event marked the first major realignment, with Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans defeating the Federalists.
What is the First Party Realignment?
This alignment began in 1800 with Jeffersonians replacing the Federalists.
What is the First Party Realignment?
A political system where the person with the most votes wins the district.
What are Single Member Districts?
Parties that break off from a larger established party.
What are Splinter Parties?
The committee that rewrote Democratic convention rules to give more representation to minorities, women, and youth.
What is the McGovern-Fraser Commission?
When voters shift their long-term party loyalty to a new party.
What is Party Realignment?
This political party, technically a third party at the time, won the presidency in 1860 and began dominating national politics.
What is the Republican Party?
This 1930s realignment created a powerful Democratic coalition under FDR.
What is the New Deal Realignment?
A state that could be won by either major party.
What is a Swing State?
Parties driven by a comprehensive set of ideological beliefs.
What are Ideological Parties?
Unelected Democratic delegates who may vote for any candidate at the national convention.
What are Superdelegates?
Automated prerecorded messages sent to voters during campaigns.
What are Robocalls?
The 1896 election realigned voters around this type of major issue.
What are economic issues, especially big business vs. agricultural populism?
In 1964, passing this legislation contributed to Democrats losing the South for a generation.
What is the Civil Rights Act?
A system in which the highest-vote getter receives all electoral votes in a state.
What is Winner-Take-All?
This category of third party forms during major financial downturns.
What are Economic Protest Parties?
When one party controls Congress and the other controls the White House.
What is Divided Government?
The Republican Party formed from former Whigs, abolitionists, and dissatisfied Democrats in this decade.
What are the 1850s?
This 1930s realignment occurred during the Great Depression and created a powerful Democratic coalition including labor unions, minorities, and white Southerners.
What is the Fourth Realignment, also known as the New Deal Realignment?
Explain the 1896 realignment.
What is the shift toward economic-based voting patterns during the era of big business and expansion, featuring William Jennings Bryan?
This historical party opposed the expansion of slavery and was later absorbed into the Republican Party.
What is the Free-Soil Party?
Give two examples of ideological third parties in U.S. history.
What are the Socialist Party and the Libertarian Party?
A party’s written list of beliefs and political goals.
What is the Party Platform?
Describe the Whig Party’s constitutional views.
What is favoring loose interpretation of the Constitution and supporting national government spending to expand the country?
This major 1964 law helped trigger the Fifth Realignment, causing the Democratic Party to lose Southern support for a generation.
What is the Civil Rights Act of 1964?