Political Parties - Ms. Mills' AP US...

Political Parties

1. What did the Founding Fathers believe about political parties?

2. How has America’s two-party system changed over the past century and a half? How does it differ today from the party sys-tems of other representative democracies?

3. To what extent has the decline of mass attachment to the two major parties affected how Americans vote?

Enduring Questions

7

151

Parties—Here and AbroadPolitical Culture

The Rise and Decline of the PoliticalParty

The Founding • The Jacksonians • TheCivil War and Sectionalism • The Era ofReform • Party Realignments • PartyDecline

The National Party Structure TodayNational Conventions

State and Local PartiesThe Machine • Ideological Parties •Solidary Groups • Sponsored Parties •Personal Following

The Two-Party SystemMinor PartiesNominating a President

Are the Delegates Representative of theVoters? • Who Votes in Primaries? • WhoAre the New Delegates?

Parties Versus Voters

One of the reasons why voter turnout is higherabroad than in this country is that political par-

ties in other democratic nations are more effective atmobilizing voters than are those here. The sense ofbeing a party member and the inclination to vote theparty ticket are greater in France, Italy, and Swedenthan in the United States. From this fact you mightsuppose that political parties here are recent inven-tions with little experience at organizing and no his-tory of attracting voter identification.

Quite the contrary. American political parties arethe oldest in the world, and at one time being aDemocrat or a Republican was a serious commit-ment that people did not make lightly or abandoneasily. In those days it would have been hard to findanything in Europe that could match the vote-getting power of such party organizations as thosein Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia.

Parties in the United States are relatively weaktoday, not because they are old but because the lawsand rules under which they operate have takenaway much of their power at the same time thatmany voters have lost their sense of commitment toparty identification. This weakening has proceeded

Chapter 7 Political Parties152

unevenly, however, because our constitutional system has produced a decentralized party systemjust as it has produced a decentralized governmentalsystem, with the result that parties in some placesare strong and in other places almost nonexistent.

Parties—Here and Abroad

A political party is a group that seeks to elect can-didates to public office by supplying them with alabel—a “party identification”—by which they areknown to the electorate.1 This definition is purpose-fully broad so that it will include both familiar par-ties (Democratic, Republican) and unfamiliar ones(Whig, Libertarian, Socialist Workers) and will coverperiods in which a party is very strong (having anelaborate and well-disciplined organization that pro-vides money and workers to its candidates) as well asperiods in which it is quite weak (supplying nothingbut the label to candidates). The label by which acandidate is known may or may not actually beprinted on the ballot opposite the candidate’s name:in the United States it does appear on the ballot in allnational elections but in only a minority of munici-pal ones; in Australia and Israel (and in Great Britainbefore 1969) it never appears on the ballot at all.

This definition suggests the three political arenaswithin which parties may be found. A party exists asa label in the minds of the voters, as an organizationthat recruits and campaigns for candidates, and as aset of leaders who try to organize and control the leg-islative and executive branches of government. Apowerful party is one whose label has a strongappeal for the voters, whose organization can decidewho will be candidates and how their campaignswill be managed, and whose leaders can dominateone or all branches of government.

American parties have become weaker in all threearenas. As a label with which voters identify, the par-ties are probably much weaker than they were in thenineteenth century but only somewhat weaker thanthey were forty years ago (see Figure 7.1). In 1952, atotal of 36 percent of the electorate identified stronglyas Democrats (22 percent) or Republicans (14 per-cent), while a total of 23 percent of the electorateidentified as independents. By 2000, total strong partyidentifiers had dropped to 31 percent of the electorate,while all independents had risen to 40 percent of theelectorate. But the best evidence of weakening partyidentification is what voters do. As we shall see in thenext chapter, they have been increasingly voting splittickets—that is, supporting a president from one partyand members of Congress from the other.

Source: National Election Studies, The NES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior, 1952–2000,table 20.1.

Per

cent

age

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000

Strong Democrat Weak Democrat Independent Strong Republican Weak Republican

Figure 7.1 Decline in Party Identification, 1952–2000

Parties—Here and Abroad 153

As a set of leaders who organize government, espe-cially Congress, political parties remain somewhatstrong in ways that will be described in Chapter 11. Asorganizations that nominate and elect candidates, par-ties have become dramatically weaker since the 1960s.In most states parties have very little control over whogets nominated to office. The causes and consequencesof that change are the subject of this chapter.

In Europe things are very different. Almost theonly way a person can become a candidate for elec-tive office is to be nominated by party leaders.Campaigns are run by the party, using party fundsand workers, not by the candidate. Once in office theelected officials are expected to vote and act togetherwith other members of their party. The principal cri-terion by which voters choose among candidates istheir party identification or label. This has beenchanging somewhat of late: European parties, likeAmerican ones, have not been able to count as heav-ily as in the past on party loyalty among the voters.

Several factors explain the striking differencesbetween American and European political parties.First, the federal system of government in the UnitedStates decentralizes political authority and thusdecentralizes political party organizations. For nearlytwo centuries most of the important governmentaldecisions were made at the state and local levels—decisions regarding education, land use, business reg-ulation, and public welfare—and thus it was at thestate and local levels that the important strugglesover power and policy occurred. Moreover, most peo-ple with political jobs—either elective or appointive—worked for state and local government, and thus aparty’s interest in obtaining these jobs for its followersmeant that it had to focus attention on who con-trolled city hall, the county courthouse, and the statecapitol. Federalism, in short, meant that political par-ties would acquire jobs and money from local sourcesand fight local contests. This, in turn, meant that thenational political parties would be coalitions of localparties, and though these coalitions would have akeen interest in capturing the presidency (with it,after all, went control of large numbers of federaljobs), the national party leaders rarely had as muchpower as the local ones. The Republican leader ofCuyahoga County, Ohio, for example, could oftenignore the decisions of the Republican national chair-man and even of the Ohio state chairman.

Political authority in the United States has of latecome to be far more centralized: the federal govern-

ment now makes decisions affecting almost all aspectsof our lives, including those—such as schooling andwelfare—once left entirely in local hands. Yet thepolitical parties have not become more centralized asa result. If anything, they have become even weakerand more decentralized. One reason for this apparentparadox is that in the United States, unlike in mostother democratic nations, political parties are closelyregulated by state and federal laws, and these regula-tions have had the effect of weakening the power ofparties substantially. Perhaps the most important ofthese regulations are those that prescribe how aparty’s candidates are to be selected.

In the great majority of American states, the partyleaders do not select people to run for office; by lawthose people are chosen by the voters in primary elec-tions. Though sometimes the party can influence whowill win a primary contest, in general people runningfor state or national office in this country owe little toparty leaders. In Europe, by contrast, there is no suchthing as a primary election—the only way to become acandidate for office is to persuade party leaders to putyour name on the ballot. In a later section of this chap-ter, the impact of the direct primary will be discussed inmore detail; for now, it is enough to note that its useremoves from the hands of the party leadership itsmost important source of power over officeholders.

Furthermore, if an American political party winscontrol of Congress, it does not—as in most Europeannations with a parliamentary system of government—also win the right to select the chief executive of thegovernment. The American president, as we have seen,

*The Jeffersonian Republicans were not the party thattoday we call Republican. In fact, present-day Democratsconsider Jefferson to be the founder of their party.


is independently elected, and this means that he willchoose his principal subordinates not from amongmembers of Congress but from among persons out ofCongress. Should he pick a representative or senatorfor his cabinet, the Constitution requires that person toresign from Congress in order to accept the job. Thusan opportunity to be a cabinet secretary is not animportant reward for members of Congress, and so thepresident cannot use the prospect of that reward as a way of controlling congressional action. All thisweakens the significance and power of parties in termsof organizing the government and conducting its business.

Political CultureThe attitudes and traditions of American votersreinforce the institutional and legal factors thatmake American parties relatively weak. Politicalparties in this country have rarely played an impor-tant part in the life of the average citizen; indeed,one does not usually “join” a party here except byvoting for its candidates. In many European nations,on the other hand, large numbers of citizens willjoin a party, pay dues, and attend regular meetings.Furthermore, in countries such as France, Austria,and Italy, the political parties sponsor a wide rangeof activities and dominate a variety of associationsto which a person may belong—labor unions, youthgroups, educational programs, even chess clubs.

In the United States we tend to keep parties separatefrom other aspects of our lives. As Democrats orRepublicans, we may become excited by a presidentialcampaign, and a few of us may even participate inhelping elect a member of Congress or state senator.Our social, business, working, and cultural lives, how-ever, are almost entirely nonpartisan. Indeed, mostAmericans, unlike many Europeans, would resent par-tisanship’s becoming a conspicuous feature of otherorganizations to which they belong. All this is a way ofsaying that American parties play a segmental, ratherthan a comprehensive, role in our lives and that eventhis role is diminishing as more and more of us pro-claim ourselves to be “independents.”

The Rise and Decline of the Political Party

Our nation began without parties, and today’s par-ties, though far from extinct, are about as weak as at

any time in our history. In between the Foundingand the present, however, parties arose and becamepowerful. We can see this process in four broad peri-ods of party history: when political parties were cre-ated (roughly from the Founding to the 1820s);when the more or less stable two-party systememerged (roughly from the time of PresidentJackson to the Civil War); when parties developed acomprehensive organizational form and appeal(roughly from the Civil War to the 1930s); and final-ly when party “reform” began to alter the party sys-tem (beginning in the early 1900s but taking effectchiefly since the New Deal).

The FoundingThe Founders disliked parties, thinking of them as“factions” motivated by ambition and self-interest.George Washington, dismayed by the quarrelingbetween Hamilton and Jefferson in his cabinet,devoted much of his Farewell Address to condemn-ing parties. This hostility toward parties was under-standable: the legitimacy and success of the newlycreated federal government were still very much indoubt. When Jefferson organized his followers tooppose Hamilton’s policies, it seemed to Hamiltonand his followers that Jefferson was opposing not justa policy or a leader but also the very concept of anational government. Jefferson, for his part, thoughtthat Hamilton was not simply pursuing bad policiesbut was subverting the Constitution itself. Beforepolitical parties could become legitimate, it was nec-essary for people to be able to separate in their mindsquarrels over policies and elections from disputesover the legitimacy of the new government itself. Theability to make that distinction was slow in coming,and thus parties were objects of profound suspicion,defended, at first, only as temporary expedients.

The first organized political party in Americanhistory was made up of the followers of Jefferson,who, beginning in the 1790s, called themselvesRepublicans (hoping to suggest thereby that theiropponents were secret monarchists).* The followersof Hamilton kept the label Federalist, which once had been used to refer to all supporters of the new Constitution (hoping to imply that their oppo-

The Rise and Decline of the Political Party 155

nents were “Antifederalists,” or enemies of theConstitution).

These parties were loose caucuses of politicalnotables in various localities, with New Englandbeing strongly Federalist and much of the Southpassionately Republican. Jefferson and his ally JamesMadison thought that their Republican party was atemporary arrangement designed to defeat JohnAdams, a Federalist, in his bid to succeedWashington in 1796. (Adams narrowly defeatedJefferson, who, under the system then in effect,became vice president because he had the secondmost electoral votes.) In 1800 Adams’s bid to suc-ceed himself intensified party activity even more,but this time Jefferson won and the Republicansassumed office. The Federalists feared that Jeffersonwould dismantle the Constitution, but Jeffersonadopted a conciliatory posture, saying in his inaugu-ral address that “we are all Republicans, we are allFederalists.”2 It was not true, of course: theFederalists detested Jefferson, and some were plan-ning to have New England secede from the Union.

But it was good politics, expressive of the need thatevery president has to persuade the public that,despite partisan politics, the presidency exists toserve all the people.

So successful were the Republicans that theFederalists virtually ceased to exist as a party.Jefferson was reelected in 1804 with almost noopposition; Madison easily won two terms; JamesMonroe carried sixteen out of nineteen states in1816 and was reelected without opposition in 1820.Political parties had seemingly disappeared, just asJefferson had hoped. The weakness of this so-calledfirst party system can be explained by the fact that itwas the first: nobody had been born a Federalist or aRepublican; there was no ancestral party loyalty todefend; the earliest political leaders did not think ofthemselves as professional politicians; and theFederalist party had such a limited sectional andclass base that it could not compete effectively innational elections. The parties that existed in theseearly years were essentially small groups of localnotables. Political participation was limited, andnominations for most local offices were arrangedrather casually.

Even in this early period, the parties, though theyhad very different views on economic policy andsomewhat different class bases, did not representclear, homogeneous economic interests. Farmers inVirginia were Republicans, but farmers in Delawarewere Federalists; the commercial interests of Bostonwere firmly Federalist, but commercial leaders inurban Connecticut were most likely to be Republican.

From the beginning to the present elections have created heterogeneous coalitions, as Madisonanticipated.

The JacksoniansWhat is often called the second party systememerged around 1824 with Andrew Jackson’s firstrun for the presidency and lasted until the Civil Warbecame inevitable. Its distinctive feature was thatpolitical participation became a mass phenomenon.For one thing, the number of voters to be reachedhad become quite large. Only about 365,000 popu-lar votes were cast in 1824. But as a result of lawsthat enlarged the number of people eligible to voteand of an increase in the population, by 1828 wellover a million votes were tallied. By 1840 the figurewas well over 2 million. (In England at this timethere were only 650,000 eligible voters.) In


addition, by 1832 presidential electors were selectedby popular vote in virtually every state. (As late as1816 electors were chosen by the state legislatures,rather than by the people, in about half the states.)Presidential politics had become a truly national,genuinely popular activity; indeed, in many commu-nities election campaigns had become the principalpublic spectacle.

The party system of the Jacksonian era was builtfrom the bottom up rather than—as during the peri-od of the Founding—from the top down. No changebetter illustrates this transformation than the aban-donment of the system of having caucuses com-posed of members of Congress nominate presiden-tial candidates. The caucus system was an effort tounite the legislative and executive branches by giv-ing the former some degree of control over whowould have a chance to capture the latter. The cau-cus system became unpopular when the caucuscandidate for president in 1824 ran third in a field offour in the general election, and it was completelydiscredited that same year when Congress deniedthe presidency to Jackson, the candidate with thegreatest share of the popular vote.

To replace the caucus, the party convention wasinvented. The first convention in American historywas that of the Anti-Masonic party in 1831; the firstconvention of a major political party was that of theanti-Jackson Republicans later that year (it nomi-nated Henry Clay for president). The Democrats helda convention in 1832 that ratified Jackson’s nomi-nation for reelection and picked Martin Van Burenas his running mate. The first convention to select aman who would be elected president and who wasnot already the incumbent president was held by theDemocrats in 1836; it chose Van Buren.

Considering the many efforts made in recentyears to curtail or even abolish the national nomi-nating convention, it is worth remembering that theconvention system was first developed in part as areform—a way of allowing for some measure oflocal control over the nominating process. Virtuallyno other nation adopted this method, just as noother nation was later to adopt the direct primaryafter the convention system became the object ofcriticism. It is interesting, but perhaps futile, to spec-ulate on how American government would haveevolved if the legislative caucus had remained themethod for nominating presidents.

The Civil War and SectionalismThough the party system created in the Jacksonianperiod was the first truly national system, withDemocrats (followers of Jackson) and Whigs (oppo-nents of Jackson) fairly evenly balanced in mostregions, it could not withstand the deep split in opin-ion created by the agitation over slavery. Both partiestried, naturally, to straddle the issue, since neither

The Donkey and the Elephant

Since 1874, whenThomas Nast pub-lished political car-toons using these fig-ures, the elephanthas been the symbolof the Republicanparty and the donkey(originally the jack-ass) the symbol of theDemocratic party.

The association ofthe Democrats withdonkeys may havebegun with a remarkby Ignatius Donnelly,a Republican in the Minnesota legislature, whosaid that the “Democratic party is like a mule—without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity.”An equally uncharitable explanation for the linkbetween Republicans and elephants was offeredby Democratic presidential candidate Adlai

Stevenson, who in the1950s made the observa-tion that “the elephanthas a thick skin, a headfull of ivory, and as every-one who has seen a circusparade knows, proceedsbest by grasping the tail ofits predecessor.”

Source: Adapted from Safire’sPolitical Dictionary by William Safire.Copyright © 1968, 1972, 1978 byWilliam Safire. Reprinted by permis-sion of Random House, Inc. and theauthor.

★ POLITICALLY SPEAKING ★


wanted to divide its followers and thus lose the elec-tion to its rival. But slavery and sectionalism wereissues that could not be straddled. The old partiesdivided and new ones emerged. The modernRepublican party (not the old Democratic-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson) began as athird party. As a result of the Civil War it came to bea major party (the only third party ever to gainmajor-party status) and to dominate national poli-tics, with only occasional interruptions, for three-quarters of a century.

Republican control of the White House, and to alesser extent of Congress, was in large measure theresult of two events that gave to Republicans amarked advantage in the competition for the loyal-ties of voters. The first of these was the Civil War.This bitter, searing crisis deeply polarized popularattitudes. Those who supported the Union sidebecame, for generations, Republicans; those whosupported the Confederacy, or who had opposed thewar, became Democrats.

As it turned out, this partisan division was, for awhile, nearly even: though the Republicans usuallywon the presidency and the Senate, they often lostcontrol of the House. There were many northernDemocrats. In 1896, however, another event—thepresidential candidacy of William Jennings Bryan—further strengthened the Republican party. Bryan, aDemocrat, alienated many voters in the populousnortheastern states while attracting voters in theSouth and Midwest. The result was to confirm anddeepen the split in the country, especially North ver-sus South, begun by the Civil War. From 1896 to the 1930s, with rare exceptions northern stateswere solidly Republican, southern ones solidlyDemocratic.

This split had a profound effect on the organiza-tion of political parties, for it meant that most stateswere now one-party states. As a result, competitionfor office at the state level had to go on within a sin-gle dominant party (the Republican party inMassachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,and elsewhere; the Democratic party in Georgia,Mississippi, South Carolina, and elsewhere).Consequently there emerged two major factionswithin each party, but especially within theRepublican party. One was composed of the partyregulars—the professional politicians, the “stal-warts,” the Old Guard. They were preoccupied withbuilding up the party machinery, developing party

loyalty, and acquiring and dispensing patronage—jobs and other favors—for themselves and theirfaithful followers. Their great skills were in organiza-tion, negotiation, bargaining, and compromise; theirgreat interest was in winning.

The other faction, variously called mugwumps orprogressives (or “reformers”), was opposed to theheavy emphasis on patronage; disliked the partymachinery, because it permitted only bland candi-dates to rise to the top; was fearful of the heavy influxof immigrants into American cities and of the abilityof the party regulars to organize them into“machines”; and wanted to see the party take unpop-ular positions on certain issues (such as free trade).Their great skills lay in the areas of advocacy andarticulation; their great interest was in principle.

At first the mugwumps tried to play a balance-of-power role, sometimes siding with the Republicanparty of which they were members, at other timesdefecting to the Democrats (as when they bolted theRepublican party to support Grover Cleveland, theDemocratic nominee, in 1884). But later, as the Re-publican strength in the nation grew, progressiveswithin that party became less and less able to play abalance-of-power role, especially at the state level.Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa were solidlyRepublican; Georgia, the Carolinas, and the rest ofthe Old South had by 1880 become so heavilyDemocratic that the Republican party in many areashad virtually ceased to exist. If the progressives wereto have any power, it would require, they came tobelieve, an attack on the very concept of partisan-ship itself.

The Era of ReformProgressives began to espouse measures to curtail oreven abolish political parties. They favored primaryelections to replace nominating conventions, becausethe latter were viewed as being manipulated by partybosses; they favored nonpartisan elections at the citylevel and in some cases at the state level as well; theyargued against corrupt alliances between parties andbusinesses. They wanted strict voter-registrationrequirements that would reduce voting fraud (butwould also, as it turned out, keep ordinary citizens whofound the requirements cumbersome from voting);they pressed for civil service reform to eliminatepatronage; and they made heavy use of the massmedia as a way of attacking the abuses of partisanshipand of promoting their own ideas and candidacies.


The progressives were more successful in someplaces than in others. In California, for example, pro-gressives led by Governor Hiram Johnson in1910–1911 were able to institute the direct primaryand to adopt procedures—called the initiative and

the referendum—so that citizens could vote directlyon proposed legislation, thereby bypassing the statelegislature. Governor Robert La Follette broughtabout similar changes in Wisconsin.

The effect of these changes was to reduce substan-tially the worst forms of political corruption and ulti-mately to make boss rule in politics difficult if notimpossible. But they also had the effect of makingpolitical parties, whether led by bosses or by statesmen,weaker, less able to hold officeholders accountable, andless able to assemble the power necessary for governingthe fragmented political institutions created by theConstitution. In Congress party lines began to growfainter, as did the power of congressional leadership.Above all, the progressives did not have an answer tothe problem first faced by Jefferson: if there is not astrong political party, by what other means will candi-dates for office be found, recruited, and supported?

Party RealignmentsThere have clearly been important turning points inthe strength of the major parties, especially in thetwentieth century, when for long periods we havenot so much had close competition between two par-ties as we have had an alternation of dominance byone party and then the other. To help explain thesemajor shifts in the tides of politics, scholars havedeveloped the theory of critical or realigningperiods. During such periods a sharp, lasting shiftoccurs in the popular coalition supporting one orboth parties. The issues that separate the two partieschange, and so the kinds of voters supporting eachparty change. This shift may occur at the time of theelection or just after, as the new administrationdraws in new supporters.3 There seem to have beenfive realignments so far, during or just after theseelections: 1800 (when the Jeffersonian Republi-cans defeated the Federalists), 1828 (when theJacksonian Democrats came to power), 1860 (whenthe Whig party collapsed and the Republicans under Lincoln came to power), 1896 (when theRepublicans defeated William Jennings Bryan), and1932 (when the Democrats under Roosevelt cameinto office). Some observers, noting that theserealignments have occurred with marked regularityevery twenty-eight to thirty-six years, have speculat-ed on whether they are the result of inevitable cyclesin American political life.

Such speculations need not concern us, for what ismore important is to understand why a realignment

FLORIDATERRITORY

SC8

VA 24

PA 28

NY

ME

MA15

RI 4CT 8

NJ 8DE 3MD

NHVT

1

5

6

88716

20

OH16

IN5

MICHIGAN TERR.

UNORGANIZEDTERRITORY

ARTERR.

MO3

NC 15

GA9

AL5

TN 11

KY14

MS3LA

6

Jackson (D)

Adams (Nat. R.)

178

83

647,286

508,064

Divided

Territory (no returns)

ELECTORAL POPULAR

IL3

The Election of 1828

Lincoln (R)

Douglas (No. D)

Divided

Territory(no returns)

180

12

1,866,452

1,375,157

Breckenridge (So. D) 76 847,953

Bell (Const. Union) 39 590,631

ELECTORAL POPULAR

CA4

OR3

WASHINGTON TERR.

UTAH TERRITORY

NEBRASKA TERRITORY

KANSAS TERRITORY

UNORG.TERR.

UNORG.TERR.

TX4

LA6

MS7

AL9

GA10

SC8

NC 10

AR4

MO9

IA4

MN4 WI

5

IL11

IN13

OH23

PA 27

MA13

RI 4CT 6

NJDE 8MD 8

FL3

TN 12

KY12

NY35

NHVT

5 5

43

ME8

VA15

MI6

NEW MEXICOTERRITORY



occurs at all. That is not entirely clear. For one thing,there are at least two kinds of realignments—one inwhich a major party is so badly defeated that it disap-pears and a new party emerges to take its place (thishappened to the Federalists in 1800 and to the Whigsin 1856–1860), and another in which the two existingparties continue but voters shift their support from one to the other (this happened in 1896 and 1932).Furthermore, not all critical elections have been care-fully studied.

The three clearest cases seem to be 1860, 1896,and 1932. By 1860 the existing parties could nolonger straddle the fence on the slavery issue. TheRepublican party was formed in 1856 on the basis ofclear-cut opposition to slavery; the Democratic partysplit in half in 1860, with one part (led by StephenA. Douglas and based in the North) trying to waffleon the issue and the other (led by John C.Breckinridge and drawing its support from theSouth) categorically denying that any governmenthad any right to outlaw slavery. The remnants of theWhig party, renamed the Constitutional Unionparty, tried to unite the nation by writing no plat-form at all, thus remaining silent on slavery. Lincolnand the antislavery Republicans won in 1860;Breckinridge and the proslavery SouthernDemocrats came in second. From that moment on,the two major political parties acquired differentsources of support and stood (at least for a decade)for different principles. The parties that had tried tostraddle the fence were eliminated. The Civil Warfixed these new party loyalties deep in the popularmind, and the structure of party competition was setfor nearly forty years.

In 1896 a different kind of realignment occurred.Economics rather than slavery was at issue. A seriesof depressions during the 1880s and 1890s fell espe-cially hard on farmers in the Midwest and parts ofthe South. The prices paid to farmers for their com-modities had been falling more or less steadily sincethe Civil War, making it increasingly difficult forthem to pay their bills. A bitter reaction against thetwo major parties, which were straddling this issue asthey had straddled slavery, spread like a prairie fire,leading to the formation of parties of economicprotest—the Greenbackers and the Populists.Reinforcing the economic cleavages were culturalones: Populists tended to be fundamentalistProtestants; urban voters were increasingly Catholic.Matters came to a head in 1896 when William

Jennings Bryan captured the Democratic nominationfor president and saw to it that the party adopted aPopulist platform. The existing Populist partyendorsed the Bryan candidacy. In the election anti-Bryan Democrats deserted the party in droves to sup-port the Republican candidate, William McKinley.Once again a real issue divided the two parties: theRepublicans stood for industry, business, hard

WA4

OR4 ID

3

MT3

WY3

CO4

UT3

ARIZONATERR.

NEWMEXICOTERR.

TXLA8

MS9

AL11

GA13

SC9

NC 11TN 12

KY12

IN15

OH23

PA 32

ME6

NJ 10CT 6RI 4

MA 15

VTNH

NY36

4

1

6

4

MI14

WVVA 12

FL4

AR8

MO17

IA13

MN9 WI

12

IL24

OKTERR. IND.

TERR.

KS10

NE8

SD4

ND3

NV3

CA8

DE 3MD 8

1

Bryan (D)

McKinley (R)

Territory (no returns)

Divided

176

271

6,502,925

7,104,779

ELECTORAL POPULAR


WA8

OR5 ID

4

MT4

WY3

CO6

UT4

AZ3

NM3

TX23

OK11

LA10

MS9

AL11

GA12

SC8

NC 13TN 11

KY11

IN14

OH26

PA 36

ME5

NJ 16CT 7RI 5

MA 17

VTNH

NY47

3

8

4

MI19

WVVA 11

FL7

AR9

MO15

IA11

MN11 WI

12

IL29

KS9

NE7

SD4

ND4

NV3

CA22

DE 3MD 8

Hoover (R)

F.D. Roosevelt (D)

59

472

15,761,841

22,821,857

ELECTORAL POPULAR


money, protective tariffs, and urban interests; theDemocrats for farmers, small towns, low tariffs, andrural interests. The Republicans won, carrying thecities, workers and businesspeople alike; theDemocrats lost, carrying most of the southern andmidwestern farm states. The old split between Northand South that resulted from the Civil War was nowreplaced in part by an East versus West, city versusfarm split.4 It was not, however, only an economiccleavage—the Republicans had been able to appeal toCatholics and Lutherans, who disliked fundamental-ism and its hostility toward liquor and immigrants.

This alignment persisted until 1932. Againchange was triggered by an economic depression;again more than economic issues were involved. TheNew Deal coalition that emerged was based onbringing together into the Democratic party urbanworkers, northern blacks, southern whites, andJewish voters. Unlike in 1860 and 1896, it was notpreceded by any third-party movement; it occurredsuddenly (though some groups had begun to shifttheir allegiance in 1928) and gathered momentum

throughout the 1930s. The Democrats, isolatedsince 1896 as a southern and midwestern sectionalparty, had now become the majority party by findinga candidate and a cause that could lure urban work-ers, blacks, and Jews away from the Republicanparty, where they had been for decades. It was obvi-ously a delicate coalition—blacks and southernwhites disagreed on practically everything excepttheir liking for Roosevelt; Jews and the Irish bosses ofthe big-city machines also had little in common. Butthe federal government under Roosevelt was able tosupply enough benefits to each of these disparategroups to keep them loyal members of the coalitionand to provide a new basis for party identification.

These critical elections may have involved notconverting existing voters to new party loyalties butrecruiting into the dominant party new voters—young people just coming of voting age, immigrantsjust receiving their citizenship papers, and blacksjust receiving, in some places, the right to vote. Butthere were also genuine conversions—northernblacks, for example, had been heavily Republican



before Roosevelt but became heavily Democraticafter his election.

In short an electoral realignment occurs when anew issue of utmost importance to the voters (slav-ery, the economy) cuts across existing party divi-sions and replaces old issues that were formerly thebasis of party identification. Some observers havespeculated that we are due for a new party realign-ment as the tensions within the New Deal coalitionbecome more evident. As the memory of Rooseveltand the Great Depression fades and as new voterscome of age, the ability of the Democrats to hold onto both people who are liberal and those who areconservative on social issues may decline.

Some people wondered whether the election of1980, since it brought into power the most conser-vative administration in half a century, signaled anew realignment. Many of President Reagan’s sup-porters began talking of their having a “mandate” toadopt major new policies in keeping with the viewsof the “new majority.” But Reagan won in 1980 lessbecause of what he stood for than because he wasnot Jimmy Carter, and he was reelected in 1984 pri-marily because people were satisfied with how thecountry was doing, especially economically.5

Just because we have had periods of one-partydominance in the past does not mean that we willhave them in the future. Reagan’s election could nothave been a traditional realignment, because it leftCongress in the hands of the Democratic party.Moreover, some scholars are beginning to questionthe theory of critical elections, or at least the theorythat they occur with some regularity.

Nevertheless, one major change has occurred oflate—the shift in the presidential voting patterns of theSouth. From 1972 through 1996 the South was moreRepublican than the nation as a whole. The proportionof white southerners describing themselves to pollstersas “strongly Democratic” fell from more than one-thirdin 1952 to about one-seventh in 1984. There has beena corresponding increase in “independents.” As itturns out, southern white independents have votedoverwhelmingly Republican in recent presidential elec-tions.6 If you lump independents together with the par-ties for which they actually vote, the party alignmentamong white southerners has gone from six-to-oneDemocratic in 1952 to about fifty-fifty Democrats andRepublicans. If this continues, it will constitute amajor realignment in a region of the country that isgrowing rapidly in population and political clout.

In general, however, the kind of dramatic realign-ment that occurred in the 1860s or after 1932 maynot occur again, because party labels have lost theirmeaning for a growing number of voters. For thesepeople politics may dealign rather than realign.

Party DeclineThe evidence that the parties are decaying, notrealigning, is of several sorts. We have already notedthat the proportion of people identifying with one orthe other party declined between 1960 and 1980.Simultaneously, the proportion of those voting asplit ticket (as opposed to a straight ticket)increased. Figure 7.2, for example, shows the steepincrease in the percentage of congressional districtscarried by one party for the presidency and by theother for Congress. Whereas in the 1940s one partywould carry a given district for both its presidentialand congressional candidates, today about a quarterof the districts split their votes between one party’spresidential candidate and the other’s congressionalcandidate.

In 1988 more than half of all House Democratswere elected in districts that voted for RepublicanGeorge Bush as president. This ticket splitting wasgreatest in the South, but it was common every-where. If every district that voted for Bush had alsoelected a Republican to Congress, the Republicanparty would have held a two-to-one majority in the

\


House of Representatives. Ticket splitting createsdivided government—the White House andCongress are controlled by different parties (seeChapter 12). Ticket splitting helped the Democratskeep control of the House of Representatives from1954 to 1994.

Ticket splitting was almost unheard-of in thenineteenth century, and for a very good reason. Inthose days the voter was either given a ballot by theparty of his choice and he dropped it, intact, into the ballot box (thereby voting for everybody listedon the ballot), or he was given a government-print-ed ballot that listed in columns all the candidates ofeach party. All the voter had to do was mark the topof one column in order to vote for every candidatein that column. (When voting machines camealong, they provided a single lever that, whenpulled, cast votes for all the candidates of a particu-lar party.) Progressives around the turn of the cen-tury began to persuade states to adopt the office-bloc (or “Massachusetts”) ballot in place of theparty-column (or “Indiana”) ballot. The office-bloc ballot lists all candidates by office; there is noway to vote a straight party ticket by making onemark. Not surprisingly, states using the office-blocballot show much more ticket splitting than thosewithout it.7

The National Party StructureToday

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that par-ties have declined simply because many voters nowsplit tickets in national elections. Despite manychanges and challenges (see Figure 7.3), America’stwo-party system remains strong. In most elec-tions—national, state, and local—voters registeredas Democrats still vote for Democratic candidates,and voters registered as Republicans still vote forRepublican candidates. In Congress, state legisla-tures, and city councils, members still normally votealong party lines. Local political machines have died,but, as we shall now explain, national party struc-tures remain alive and well.

Since political parties exist at the national, state,and local levels, you might suppose that they arearranged like a big corporation, with a nationalboard of directors giving orders to state managers,who in turn direct the activities of rank-and-fileworkers at the county and city level.

Nothing could be further from the truth. At eachlevel a separate and almost entirely independentorganization exists that does pretty much what itwants, and in many counties and cities there is vir-tually no organization at all.

On paper the national Democratic andRepublican parties look quite similar. In both partiesultimate authority is in the hands of the nationalconvention that meets every four years to nomi-nate a presidential candidate. Between these con-ventions party affairs are managed by a nationalcommittee, made up of delegates from each stateand territory. In Congress each party has a con-gressional campaign committee that helps mem-bers of Congress who are running for reelection orwould-be members running for an open seat or chal-lenging a candidate from the opposition party. Theday-to-day work of the party is managed by a full-time, paid national chairman, who is elected bythe committee.

For a long time the two national parties were alikein behavior as well as description. The nationalchairman, if his party held the White House, wouldhelp decide who among the party faithful would getfederal jobs. Otherwise the parties did very little.

But beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970sthe Republicans began to convert their national

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Figure 7.2 Trends in Split-Ticket Voting for President andCongress, 1920–1996

The National Party Structure Today 163

party into a well-financed, highly staffed organiza-tion devoted to finding and electing Republican can-didates, especially to Congress. At about the sametime, the Democrats began changing the rules gov-erning how presidential candidates are nominatedin ways that profoundly altered the distribution ofpower within the party. As a consequence the Re-publicans became a bureaucratized party and theDemocrats became a factionalized one. After theRepublicans won four out of five presidential elec-tions from 1968 to 1984 and briefly took control ofthe Senate, the Democrats began to suspect thatmaybe an efficient bureaucracy was better than acollection of warring factions, and so they made aneffort to emulate the Republicans.

What the Republicans had done was to take advan-tage of a new bit of technology—computerized mail-ings. They built up a huge file of names of people whohad given or might give money to the party, usually insmall amounts, and used that list to raise a big budgetfor the national party. In 1983 the RepublicanNational Committee (RNC) raised $35 million fromover 1.7 million individual donors; by the time of the1994 election, the Republican party committees—theNational Committee, the Senatorial Committee, andthe Congressional Committee—had raised $246 mil-lion from 2.8 million donors. By the time of the 1999election, the national Republican party had raised$132 million.

The RNC used this money to run, in effect, anational political consulting firm. Money went torecruit and train Republican candidates, give themlegal and financial advice, study issues and analyzevoting trends, and conduct national advertisingcampaigns on behalf of the party as a whole. No onecan be sure how much political success this moneybought (after all, the Republicans lost control of theSenate in 1986), but many observers believed thatRepublican losses in Congress in 1982 and 1986would have been even greater if the RNC had notworked so vigorously on behalf of its candidates.

When the Democratic National Committee (DNC)decided to play catch-up, it followed the RNC strate-gy. Using the same computerized direct-mail tech-niques, the Democratic party committees—theNational Committee, Senatorial Committee, andCongressional Committee—raised $131 millionfrom 2.2 million contributors, about half of whatthe Republican equivalents had raised. This was agreat improvement over what it had managed to do

Republicans

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States’ RightsDemocrats

George Wallace Democratsa Democrats

aAmerican Independent party.bUnited We Stand America or Reform Party.

John AndersonIndependents

Ross PerotIndependentsb

Ralph Nader, Pat BuchananIndependents

Figure 7.3 Cleavages and Continuity in the Two-Party System


just ten years earlier. The Democrats, like theRepublicans, ship a lot of their national party moneyto state organizations to finance television ads sup-porting their parties. By doing this the national par-ties sidestep a restriction on how their money can beused. By law the national parties can spend only $12million each directly on their presidential candi-dates. But by sending money to state parties tospend, they can get around this limitation.

A lot of RNC money goes to commission publicopinion polls, not only to find out which candidate islikely to win an election but also, more importantly,to find out what issues are troubling the voters, howdifferent segments of the population respond to dif-ferent kinds of issues and news stories, and how peo-ple react to the campaign efforts of specific candi-dates. During the Reagan administration the RNC’sprincipal pollster, Richard Wirthlin, was taking pollsat least monthly and sometimes daily.8 For reasonsexplained in Chapter 5, these polls can take you justso far; they are helpful, but they are not a sure-fireguide to public opinion or how to change it.

In 1996 both Democrats and Republicans redou-bled their efforts to raise what is called soft money—that is, funds to aid parties (and their ads and polls).Both totals were two or three times larger than thesoft money raised in 1992. Afterward a Senateinvestigating committee found evidence that illegalforeign contributions were funneled through inter-mediaries into both parties, that President Clinton

and Vice President Gore made many White Housephone calls to raise funds, and that big donors wereinvited to spend the night in the White House’sLincoln Bedroom.

National ConventionsThe national committee selects the time and place ofthe next national convention and issues a “call” forthe convention that sets forth the number of dele-gates each state and territory is to have and also therules under which delegates must be chosen. Thenumber of delegates and their manner of selectioncan significantly influence the chances of variouspresidential candidates, and considerable attentionis thus devoted to these matters. In the Democraticparty, for example, a long struggle took placebetween those who wished to see southern statesreceive a large share of delegates to the convention,in recognition of their firm support of Democraticcandidates in presidential elections, and those whopreferred to see a larger share of delegates allotted tonorthern and western states, which, though lesssolidly Democratic, were larger or more liberal. Asimilar conflict within the Republican party has pit-ted conservative Republican leaders in the Midwestagainst liberal ones in the East.

A compromise formula is usually chosen; never-theless, over the years these formulas have gradual-ly changed, shifting voting strength in theDemocratic convention away from the South andtoward the North and West and in the Republicanconvention away from the East and toward theSouth and Southwest. These delegate allocation for-mulas are but one sign (others will be mentionedlater in this chapter) of the tendency of the two par-ties’ conventions to move in opposite ideologicaldirections—Democrats more to the left, Republicansmore to the right.

The exact formula for apportioning delegates isextremely complex. For the Democrats it takes intoaccount the vote each state cast for Democratic can-didates in past elections and the number of electoralvotes of each state; for the Republicans it takes intoaccount the number of representatives in Congressand whether the state in past elections cast its elec-toral votes for the Republican presidential candidateand elected Republicans to the Senate, the House,and the governorship. Thus the Democrats give extradelegates to large states while the Republicans giveextra ones to loyal states.

The National Party Structure Today 165

The way in which delegates are chosen can beeven more important than their allocation. TheDemocrats, beginning in 1972, have developed anelaborate set of rules designed to weaken the controlover delegates by local party leaders and to increasethe proportion of women, young people, AfricanAmericans, and Native Americans attending theconvention. These rules were first drafted by a partycommission chaired by Senator George McGovern(who was later to make skillful use of these new pro-cedures in his successful bid for the Democratic pres-idential nomination). They were revised in 1974 byanother commission, chaired by Barbara Mikulski,whose decisions were ratified by the 1974 midtermconvention. After the 1976 election yet a third com-mission, chaired by Morley Winograd, produced stillanother revision of the rules, which took effect in1980. Then a fourth commission, chaired by NorthCarolina governor James B. Hunt, recommended in1981 yet another set of rules, which became effec-tive with the 1984 convention.

The general thrust of the work of the first threerules commissions was to broaden the antipartychanges started by the progressives at the beginningof this century. Whereas the earlier reformers hadtried to minimize the role of parties in the electionprocess, those of the 1970s sought to weaken theinfluence of leaders within the party. In short thenewer reforms were aimed at creating intrapartydemocracy as well as interparty democracy. This was done by rules that, for the 1980 convention,required:

• Equal division of delegates between men and women• Establishment of “goals” for the representation of

African Americans, Hispanics, and other groupsin proportion to their presence in a state’sDemocratic electorate

• Open delegate selection procedures, with advancepublicity and written rules

• Selection of 75 percent of the delegates at the levelof the congressional district or lower

T•R•I•V•I•A


• No “unit rule” that would require all delegates tovote with the majority of their state delegation

• Restrictions on the number of party leaders andelected officials who could vote at the convention

• A requirement that all delegates pledged to a can-didate vote for that candidate

In 1981 the Hunt Commission changed some ofthese rules—in particular, the last two—in order toincrease the influence of elected officials and tomake the convention a somewhat more deliberativebody. The commission reserved about 14 percent ofthe delegate seats for party leaders and elected offi-

cials, who would not have to commit themselves inadvance to a presidential candidate, and it repealedthe rule requiring that delegates pledged to a candi-date vote for that candidate.

Rules have consequences. Whereas in 1980 onlyone-seventh of the Democratic senators and represen-tatives got to be delegates to the national convention,in 1984 more than half were delegates. In the 1984presidential primaries, Walter Mondale was the chiefbeneficiary of the delegate selection rules. He won thesupport of the overwhelming majority of elected offi-cials—the so-called superdelegates—and he didespecially well in those states that held winner-take-all primaries. Had different rules been in effect (if, forexample, the delegates had been allocated strictly inproportion to the primary votes that the candidateswon), Mondale probably would not have entered theDemocratic convention with an assured majority.

But the “reform” of the parties, especially theDemocratic party, has had far more profound conse-quences than merely helping one candidate oranother. Before 1968 the Republican party repre-sented, essentially, white-collar voters and theDemocratic party represented blue-collar ones. Aftera decade of “reform” the Republican and theDemocratic parties each represented two ideologi-cally different sets of upper-middle-class voters (seeTable 7.1). In the terminology of Chapter 5, theRepublicans came to represent the more conserva-tive wing of the traditional middle class and theDemocrats the more leftist wing of the liberal middleclass (or the “new class”).

This was more troubling to the Democrats than tothe Republicans, because the traditional middleclass is somewhat closer to the opinions of most citi-zens than is the liberal middle class (and thus theRepublican national convention more closelyreflected public opinion than did the Democraticnational convention). And for whatever reason, theRepublicans won five out of six presidential racesbetween 1968 and 1988.

Before the 1988 convention the Democrats took along, hard look at their party procedures. Under theleadership of DNC chairman Paul Kirk, they decidedagainst making any major changes, especially onesthat would increase the power of grassroots activistsat the expense of elected officials and party leaders.The number of such officials (or superdelegates) tobe given delegate seats was increased. For example,80 percent of the Democratic members of Congress

Political PartiesFirst national political Anti-Masonic party, 1831, in convention Baltimore

First time incumbent Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio,governors were nominated by Republicans in 1876for president Samuel J. Tilden of New York,

by Democrats in 1876

First African American to Frederick Douglass, at receive a vote at a national Republican convention in party convention 1888

First year in which women 1900 (one woman at bothattended conventions as Democratic and Republican delegates conventions)

Most ballots needed to choose 103, by Democrats in 1924 a presidential nominee to select John W. Davis

Closest vote in 5433⁄20 to 5427⁄20, defeatingconvention history a motion to condemn the

Ku Klux Klan at 1924 Democratic convention

First Catholic nominated for Al Smith, by Democrats in president by a major party 1928

Only person nominated for Franklin D. Roosevelt, bypresident four times by a Democrats in 1932, 1936,major political party 1940, and 1944

First presidential nominee to Franklin D. Rooseveltmake an acceptance speech at the party convention

State and Local Parties 167

and all Democratic governors were automaticallymade convention delegates in 1988. The official sta-tus of some special-interest caucuses (such as thoseorganized to represent African Americans, homo-sexuals, and various ethnic groups) was reduced inorder to lessen the perception that the Democratswere simply a party of factions.

The surface harmony was a bit misleading, how-ever, as some activists, notably supporters of JesseJackson, protested that the rules made it harder forcandidates like Jackson to win delegates in propor-tion to their share of the primary vote. (In 1984Jackson got 18 percent of the primary vote but only12 percent of the delegates.) The DNC responded bychanging the rules for the 1992 campaign. FormerDNC chairman Ronald H. Brown (later PresidentClinton’s secretary of commerce) won approval forthree important requirements:

• The winner-reward systems of delegate distribu-tion, which gave the winner of a primary or cau-cus extra delegates, were banned. (In 1988 fifteenstates used winner-reward systems, includingsuch vote-rich states as Florida, Illinois, NewJersey, and Pennsylvania.)

• The proportional representation system was putinto use. This system divides a state’s publiclyelected delegates among candidates who receive atleast 15 percent of the vote.

• States that violate the rules are now penalizedwith the loss of 25 percent of their national con-vention delegates.

Even though the Democrats have retreated a bitfrom the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, the con-ventions of both parties have changed fundamental-ly, and probably permanently. Delegates once selectedby party leaders are now chosen by primary electionsand grassroots caucuses. As a result the nationalparty conventions are no longer places where partyleaders meet to bargain over the selection of theirpresidential candidates; they are instead placeswhere delegates come together to ratify choicesalready made by party activists and primary voters.

Most Americans dislike bosses, deals, and manip-ulation and prefer democracy, reform, and openness.These are commendable instincts. But such in-stincts, unless carefully tested against practice, maymislead us into supposing that anything carried outin the name of reform is a good idea. Rules must bejudged by their practical results as well as by theirconformity to some principle of fairness. Rules affectthe distribution of power: they help some people winand others lose. Later in this chapter we shall try toassess delegate selection rules by looking more close-ly at how they affect who attends conventions andwhich presidential candidates are selected there.

State and Local Parties

While the national party structures have changed,the grassroots organizations have withered. Inbetween, state party systems have struggled to re-define their roles.

In every state there is a Democratic and aRepublican state party organized under state law.Typically each consists of a state central committee,below which are found county committees andsometimes city, town, or even precinct committees.The members of these committees are chosen in avariety of ways—sometimes in primary elections,sometimes by conventions, sometimes by a building-block process whereby people elected to serve onprecinct or town committees choose the members of

Characteristics of delegates to Democratic and Republicannational conventions in 2000.

Democrats Republicans

Sex and RaceWomen 48% 35%Blacks 19 4

ReligionProtestant 47 63Catholic 31 27Jewish 8 2

EducationCollege degree and 74 77

beyondPost graduate 49 46

Family IncomeUnder $50,000 18 10$100,000 and over 36 41

Belong to union 31 4

Born-again Christian 12 27

Gun owner in household 35 57

Source: New York Times (August 14, 2000): A17.

Table 7.1 Who Are the Party Delegates?


county committees, who in turn choose state com-mittee members.

Knowing these formal arrangements is much lesshelpful than knowing the actual distribution ofpower in each state party. In a few places strongparty bosses handpick the members of these com-mittees; in other places powerful elected officials—key state legislators, county sheriffs, or judges—con-trol the committees. And in many places no one is incharge, so that either the party structure is largelymeaningless or it is made up of the representatives ofvarious local factions.

To understand how power is distributed in aparty, we must first know what incentives motivatepeople in a particular state or locality to becomeactive in a party organization. Different incentiveslead to different ways of organizing parties.

The MachineA political machine is a party organization thatrecruits its members by the use of tangible incen-tives—money, political jobs, an opportunity to getfavors from government—and that is characterized by a high degree of leadership control over memberactivity. At one time many local party organizationswere machines, and the struggle over political jobs—patronage—was the chief concern of their mem-bers. Though Tammany Hall in New York City beganas a caucus of well-to-do notables in the localDemocratic party, by the late nineteenth century ithad become a machine organized on the basis ofpolitical clubs in each assembly district. These clubswere composed of party workers whose job it was toget out the straight party vote in their election dis-tricts and who hoped for a tangible reward if theywere successful.

And there were abundant rewards to hope for.During the 1870s it was estimated that one out ofevery eight voters in New York City had a federal,state, or city job.9 The federal bureaucracy was oneimportant source of those jobs. The New YorkCustomhouse alone employed thousands of people,virtually all of whom were replaced if their partylost the presidential election. The postal system wasanother source, and it was frankly recognized assuch. When James N. Tyner became postmaster gen-eral in 1876, he was “appointed not to see that themails were carried, but to see that Indiana was car-ried.”10 Elections and conventions were so frequentand the intensity of party competition so great that

being a party worker was for many a full-time paidoccupation.

Well before the arrival of vast numbers of poorimmigrants from Ireland, Italy, and elsewhere, old-stock Americans had perfected the machine, run upthe cost of government, and systematized votingfraud. Kickbacks on contracts, payments extractedfrom officeholders, and funds raised from business-people made some politicians rich but also paid thehuge bills of the elaborate party organization. Whenthe immigrants began flooding the eastern cities, theparty machines were there to provide them with allmanner of services in exchange for their support atthe polls: the machines were a vast welfare organiza-tion operating before the creation of the welfare state.

The abuses of the machine were well known andgradually curtailed. Stricter voter registration lawsreduced fraud, civil service reforms cut down thenumber of patronage jobs, and competitive-biddinglaws made it harder to award overpriced contracts to favored businesses. The Hatch Act (passed byCongress in 1939) made it illegal for federal civilservice employees to take an active part in politicalmanagement or political campaigns by serving asparty officers, soliciting campaign funds, running forpartisan office, working in a partisan campaign,endorsing partisan candidates, taking voters to thepolls, counting ballots, circulating nominating peti-tions, or being delegates to a party convention. (Theymay still vote and make campaign contributions.)

These restrictions gradually took federal employ-ees out of machine politics, but they did not end themachines. In many cities—Chicago, Philadelphia,and Albany—ways were found to maintain themachines even though city employees were techni-cally under the civil service. Far more importantthan the various progressive reforms that weakenedthe machines were changes among voters. As votersgrew in education, income, and sophistication, theydepended less and less on the advice and leadershipof local party officials. And as the federal govern-ment created a bureaucratic welfare system, the par-ties’ welfare systems declined in value.

It is easy either to scorn the political partymachine as a venal and self-serving organization orto romanticize it as an informal welfare system. Intruth it was a little of both. Above all it was a frankrecognition of the fact that politics requires organi-zation; the machine was the supreme expression ofthe value of organization. Even allowing for voting

State and Local Parties 169

fraud, in elections where party machines wereactive, voter turnout was huge: more people participated in politics when mobilized by a partymachine than when appealed to by television orgood-government associations.11 Moreover, becausethe party machines were interested in winning, theywould subordinate any other consideration to thatend. This has meant that the machines were usuallywilling to support the presidential candidate withthe best chance of winning, regardless of his policyviews (provided, of course, that he was not deter-mined to wreck the machines once in office).Republican machines helped elect Abraham Lincolnas well as Warren G. Harding; Democratic machineswere of crucial importance in electing Franklin D.Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

The old-style machine is almost extinct, thoughimportant examples still can be found in the Demo-cratic organization in Cook County (Chicago) andthe Republican organization in Nassau County (NewYork). But a new-style machine has emerged in afew places. It is a machine in the sense that it usesmoney to knit together many politicians, but it isnew in that the money comes not from patronageand contracts but from campaign contributions sup-plied by wealthy individuals and the proceeds ofdirect-mail campaigns.

The political organization headed by Democraticcongressmen Henry A. Waxman and Howard L.Berman on the west side of Los Angeles is one suchnew-style machine. By the astute use of campaignfunds, the “Waxman-Berman organization” buildsloyalties to it among a variety of elected officials atall levels of government. Moreover, this new-stylemachine, unlike the old ones, has a strong interest inissues, especially at the national level. In this sense itis not a machine at all, but a cross between amachine and an ideological party.

Ideological PartiesAt the opposite extreme from the machine is theideological party. Where the machine values win-ning above all else, the ideological party values prin-ciple above all else. Where the former depends onmoney incentives, the latter spurns them. Where theformer is hierarchical and disciplined, the latter isusually contentious and factionalized.

The most firmly ideological parties have beenindependent “third parties,” such as the Socialist,Socialist Workers, Libertarian, and Right-to-Lifeparties. But there have been ideological factionswithin the Democratic and Republican parties aswell, and in some places these ideological groupshave taken over the regular parties.


In the 1950s and 1960s these ideological groupswere “reform clubs” within local Democratic andRepublican parties. In Los Angeles, New York, andmany parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota issue-oriented activists fought to take over the party fromelection-oriented regulars. Democratic reform clubsmanaged to defeat the head of Tammany Hall inManhattan; similar activist groups became the dom-inant force in California state politics.12 Democraticclub leaders were more liberal than rank-and-fileDemocrats, and Republican club leaders were oftenmore conservative than rank-and-file Republicans.

The 1960s and 1970s saw these “reform” move-ments replaced by more focused social movements.The “reform” movement was based on a generalizedsense of liberalism (among Democrats) or conser-vatism (among Republicans). With the advent ofsocial movements concerned with civil rights, peace,feminism, environmentalism, libertarianism, andabortion, the generalized ideology of the clubs wasreplaced by the specific ideological demands ofsingle-issue activists.

The result is that in many places the party hasbecome a collection of people drawn from varioussocial movements. For a candidate to win the party’ssupport, he or she often has to satisfy the “litmustest” demands of the ideological activists in theparty. Democratic senator Barbara Mikulski put itthis way: “The social movements are now our farmclubs.”

With social movements as their farm clubs, thebig-league teams—the Democrats and Republicansat the state level—behave very differently than theydid when political machines were the farm clubs.Internal factionalism is more intense, and the free-dom of action of the party leader (say, the chairper-son of the state committee) has been greatlyreduced. A leader who demands too little or gives uptoo much, or who says the wrong thing on a keyissue, is quickly accused of having “sold out.” Underthese circumstances many “leaders” are that inname only.

Solidary GroupsMany people who participate in state and local poli-tics do so not in order to earn money or vindicatesome cause, but simply because they find it fun. Theyenjoy the game, they meet interesting people, andthey like the sense of being “in the know” and rub-bing shoulders with the powerful. When people get

together out of gregarious or game-loving instincts,we say that they are responding to solidary incen-tives; if they form an organization, it is a solidaryassociation.

Some of these associations were once machines.When a machine loses its patronage, some of itsmembers—especially the older ones—may continueto serve in the organization out of a desire for cama-raderie. In other cases precinct, ward, and districtcommittees are built up on the basis of friendshipnetworks. One study of political activists in Detroitfound that most of them mentioned friendships anda liking for politics, rather than an interest in issues,as their reasons for joining the party organization.13

Members of ward and town organizations in St.Louis County gave the same answers when askedwhy they joined.14 Since patronage has declined invalue and since the appeals of ideology are limited toa minority of citizens, the motivations for participat-ing in politics have become very much like those forjoining a bowling league or a bridge club.

The advantage of such groups is that they areneither corrupt nor inflexible; the disadvantage isthat they often do not work very hard. Knocking ondoors on a rainy November evening to try to talkpeople into voting for your candidate is a choreunder the best of circumstances; it is especiallyunappealing if you joined the party primarilybecause you like to attend meetings or drink coffeewith your friends.15

Sponsored PartiesSometimes a relatively strong party organizationcan be created among volunteers without heavyreliance on money or ideology and without depend-ing entirely on people’s finding the work fun. Thistype of sponsored party occurs when anotherorganization exists in the community that can cre-ate, or at least sponsor, a local party structure. Theclearest example of this is the Democratic party inand around Detroit, which has been developed, led,and to a degree financed by the political-action armof the United Auto Workers union. The UAW hashad a long tradition of rank-and-file activism, stem-ming from its formative struggles in the 1930s, andsince the city is virtually a one-industry town, it wasnot hard to transfer some of this activism fromunion organizing to voter organizing.

By the mid-1950s union members and leadersmade up over three-fourths of all the Democratic

The Two-Party System 171

party district leaders within the city.16 On electionday union funds were available for paying workers tocanvass voters; between elections political work onan unpaid basis was expected of union leaders.Though the UAW-Democratic party alliance inDetroit has not always been successful in city elec-tions (the city is nonpartisan), it has been quite suc-cessful in carrying the city for the Democratic partyin state and national elections.

Not many areas have organizations as effective oras dominant as the UAW that can bolster, sponsor, oreven take over the weak formal party structure.Thus sponsored local parties are not common in theUnited States.

Personal FollowingBecause most candidates can no longer count on thebacking of a machine, because sponsored parties arelimited to a few unionized areas, and because sol-idary groups are not always productive, a personwanting to get elected will often try to form a per-sonal following that will work for him or her dur-ing a campaign and then disband until the next elec-tion rolls around. Sometimes a candidate tries tomeld a personal following with an ideological group,especially during the primary election campaign,when candidates need the kind of financial backingand hard work that only highly motivated activistsare likely to supply.

To form a personal following, the candidate musthave an appealing personality, a lot of friends, or a

big bank account. The Kennedy family has all three,and the electoral success of the personal followingsof John F. Kennedy, Edward M. Kennedy, RobertKennedy, and Joseph P. Kennedy II are legendary.President George Bush also established such a fol-lowing. After he left office, one son (Jeb) became gov-ernor of Florida and another one (George W.)became governor of Texas and forty-third presidentof the United States.

Southern politicians who have to operate in one-party states with few, if any, machines have becomegrand masters at building personal followings, suchas those of the Talmadge family in Georgia, the Longfamily in Louisiana, and the Byrd family in Virginia.But the strategy is increasingly followed whereverparty organization is weak. The key asset is to have aknown political name. That has helped the electoralvictories of the son of Hubert Humphrey inMinnesota, the son and daughter of Pat Brown inCalifornia, the son of Birch Bayh in Indiana, the sonof George Wallace in Alabama, and the son andgrandson of Robert La Follette in Wisconsin.

The traditional party organization—one that ishierarchical, lasting, based on material incentives,and capable of influencing who gets nominated foroffice—exists today, according to political scientistDavid Mayhew, in only about eight states, mostly theolder states of the Northeast. Another five states, hefeels, have faction-ridden versions of the traditionalparty organization.17 The states in the rest of thecountry display the weak party system of solidaryclubs, personal followings, ideological groups, andsponsored parties. What that means can be seen inthe composition of Democratic national conventions.More than half of the delegates have been drawn fromthe ranks of the AFL-CIO, the National EducationAssociation, and the National Organization forWomen.18

The Two-Party System

With so many different varieties of local party organ-izations (or nonorganizations), and with such a greatrange of opinion found within each party, it isremarkable that we have had only two major politicalparties for most of our history. In the world at large atwo-party system is a rarity; by one estimate onlyfifteen nations have one.19 Most European democra-cies are multiparty systems. We have only two parties

Number of StatesNumber of Number of Number of Voting for

Representatives Senators Governors Presidential Nominee

Year Dem. Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem. Rep.

1956 99 7 22 0 11 0 6 51958 99 7 22 0 11 0 — —1960 99 7 22 0 11 0 8a 21962 95 11 21 1 11 0 — —1964 89 17 21 1 11 0 6 51966 83 23 19 3 9 2 — —1968 80 26 18 4 9 2 1 5b

1970 79 27 16 (1)c 5 9 2 — —1972 74 34 14 (1)c 7 8 3 0 111974 81 27 15 (1)c 6 8 3 — —1976 82 26 16 (1)c 5 9 2 10 11978 77 31 15 (1)c 6 8 3 — —1980 55 53 11 (1)c 10 6 5 1 101982 80 33 11 11 11 0 — —1984 72 41 11 11 10 1 0 111986 77 39 16 6 6 5 — —1988 80 36 15 7 6 5 0 111990 77 39 15 7 8 3 — —1992 82 43 14 8 8 3 4 71994 61 64 9 13 5 6 — —1996 54 71 9 13 4 7 4 71998 54 71 8 14 4 7 — —2000 54 71 7 15 6 5 0 112002 86(1)d 64 8 14 6 5 — —

aEight Mississippi electors voted for Harry Byrd.

bGeorge Wallace won five states on the American Independent ticket.

cHarry Byrd, Jr., was elected in Virginia in 1970 and 1976 as an independent.

cVirgil H. Goode, Jr., was elected in Virginia in 1996 as an independent.

Table 7.2 The Rise of Republican Politics in the South, 1956–2002


with any chance of winning nationally, and theseparties have been, over time, rather evenly bal-anced—between 1888 and 2000, the Republicanswon sixteen presidential elections and the Democratsthirteen. Furthermore, whenever one party hasachieved a temporary ascendancy and its rival hasbeen pronounced dead (as were the Democrats in thefirst third of this century and the Republicans duringthe 1930s and the 1960s), the “dead” party has dis-played remarkable powers of recuperation, comingback to win important victories.

At the state and congressional district levels,however, the parties are not evenly balanced. For along time the South was so heavily Democratic at alllevels of government as to be a one-party area, while

upper New England and the Dakotas were stronglyRepublican. All regions are more competitive todaythan once was the case, but even now one partytends to enjoy a substantial advantage in at least halfthe states and in perhaps two-thirds of the congres-sional districts. Nevertheless, though the parties arenot as competitive in state elections as they are inpresidential ones, states have rarely had, at least forany extended period, political parties other than theDemocratic and Republican (see Table 7.2).

Scholars do not entirely agree on why the two-partysystem should be so permanent a feature of Americanpolitical life, but two explanations are of major impor-tance. The first has to do with the system of elections,the second with the distribution of public opinion.

The Two-Party System 173

Elections at every level of government are basedon the plurality, winner-take-all method. The plu-rality system means that in all elections for repre-sentative, senator, governor, or president, and inalmost all elections for state legislator, mayor, or citycouncillor, the winner is that person who gets themost votes, even if he or she does not get a majorityof all votes cast. We are so familiar with this systemthat we sometimes forget that there are other waysof running an election. For example, one couldrequire that the winner get a majority of the votes,thus producing runoff elections if nobody got amajority on the first try. France does this in choosingits national legislature. In the first election candi-dates for parliament who win an absolute majorityof the votes cast are declared elected. A week laterremaining candidates who received at least one-eighth but less than one-half of the vote go into arunoff election; those who then win an absolutemajority are also declared elected.

The French method encourages many politicalparties to form, each hoping to win at least one-eighth of the vote in the first election and then toenter into an alliance with its ideologically nearestrival in order to win the runoff. In the United Statesthe plurality system means that a party must makeall the alliances it can before the first election—thereis no second chance. Hence every party must be asbroadly based as possible; a narrow, minor party hasno hope of winning.

The winner-take-all feature of American elec-tions has the same effect. Only one member ofCongress is elected from each district. In manyEuropean countries the elections are based on pro-portional representation. Each party submits a list ofcandidates for parliament, ranked in order of prefer-ence by the party leaders. The nation votes. A partywinning 37 percent of the vote gets 37 percent ofthe seats in parliament; a party winning 2 percent ofthe vote gets 2 percent of the seats. Since even thesmallest parties have a chance of winning some-thing, minor parties have an incentive to organize.

The most dramatic example of the winner-take-all principle is the electoral college (see Chapter 12,page 334). In every state but Maine and Nebraska,the candidate who wins the most popular votes in astate wins all of that state’s electoral votes. In 1992,for example, Bill Clinton won only 45 percent of thepopular vote in Missouri, but he got all of Missouri’seleven electoral votes because his two rivals (George

Bush and Ross Perot) each got fewer popular votes.Minor parties cannot compete under this system.Voters are often reluctant to “waste” their votes on aminor-party candidate who cannot win.

The United States has experimented with otherelectoral systems. Proportional representation wasused for municipal elections in New York City at onetime and is still in use for that purpose in Cambridge,Massachusetts. Many states have elected more thanone state legislator from each district. In Illinois, forexample, three legislators have been elected fromeach district, with each voter allowed to cast twovotes, thus virtually guaranteeing that the minorityparty will be able to win one of the three seats. Butnone of these experiments has altered the nationaltwo-party system, probably because of the existenceof a directly elected president chosen by a winner-take-all electoral college.

The presidency is the great prize of American pol-itics; to win it you must form a party with as broadappeal as possible. As a practical matter that meansthere will be, in most cases, only two serious par-ties—one made up of those who support the partyalready in power, and the other made up of every-body else. Only one third party ever won the presi-dency—the Republicans in 1860—and it had bythen pretty much supplanted the Whig party. Nothird party is likely to win, or even come close to win-ning, the presidency anytime soon. Despite thedecline in mass party attachment, among Americanswho actually vote in presidential elections, party vot-ing is almost as strong today as it was in the early1950s. As Table 7.3 shows, in the presidential elec-tions of 1984 through 2000, the vast majority ofDemocrats voted for the Democrat, and the vastmajority of Republicans voted for the Republican.Meanwhile, most independents voted for the winningRepublican in 1984, 1988, and 2000, and pluralitiesof independents voted for the winning Democrat in1992 and 1996.

The second explanation for the persistence of thetwo-party system is to be found in the opinions ofthe voters. There remains a kind of rough paritybetween the two parties regarding which of themmost citizens think is likely to govern best on givenissues. For example, in public opinion surveys con-ducted in 1997 and 1998, respondents favored theRepublicans over the Democrats on national defenseand crime, favored the Democrats over theRepublicans on poverty and the environment, and

Question Do you think the Republican party or the Democratic party woulddo a better job of dealing with each of the following issues andproblems?

Democrats Republicans

Advantage RepublicansNational defense* 37% 53%Foreign trade 35 48Crime 36 43Campaign finance reform 31 37

Split Between the PartiesEconomic prosperity 44 42Taxes 43 42

Advantage DemocratsPoverty* 61 27Environment 54 31Health care 51 34Social Security 46 35

*Question on this item asked as “Which party, the Democrats or theRepublicans, do you trust to do a better job on . . . ?”

Source: The Public Perspective (April/May 1998): 13, reporting the resultsof a survey by the Gallup Organization for CNN/USA Today, October27–28, 1997, and a survey by ABC News/Washington Post, January15–19, 1998.

Table 7.4 The Public Rates the Two Parties


were split evenly between the two parties on taxesand economic prosperity (see Table 7.4).

Though there have been periods of bitter dissent,most of the time most citizens have agreed enoughto permit them to come together into two broadcoalitions. There has not been a massive and persist-ent body of opinion that has rejected the prevailingeconomic system (and thus we have not had aMarxist party with mass appeal); there has not been

in our history an aristocracy or monarchy (and thusthere has been no party that has sought to restorearistocrats or monarchs to power). Churches andreligion have almost always been regarded as mat-ters of private choice that lie outside politics (andthus there has not been a party seeking to create orabolish special government privileges for one churchor another). In some European nations the organiza-tion of the economy, the prerogatives of the monar-chy, and the role of the church have been majorissues with long and bloody histories. So divisivehave these issues been that they have helped preventthe formation of broad coalition parties.

But Americans have had other deep divisions—between white and black, for example, and betweenNorth and South—and yet the two-party system hasendured. This suggests that our electoral proceduresare of great importance—the winner-take-all, plu-rality election rules have made it useless for anyoneto attempt to create an all-white or an all-blacknational party except as an act of momentary defi-ance or in the hope of taking enough votes awayfrom the two major parties to force the presidentialelection into the House of Representatives. (Thatmay have been George Wallace’s strategy in 1968.)

For many years there was an additional reasonfor the two-party system: the laws of many statesmade it difficult, if not impossible, for third parties toget on the ballot. In 1968, for example, theAmerican Independent party of George Wallacefound that it would have to collect 433,000 signa-tures (15 percent of the votes cast in the laststatewide election) in order to get on the presidentialballot in Ohio. Wallace took the issue to the SupremeCourt, which ruled, six to three, that such a restric-tion was an unconstitutional violation of the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.20

1984 1988 1992 1996 2000

Party Affiliation of Voter Dem. Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem. Rep. Ind. Dem. Rep. Ind. Dem. Rep. Ind.

Democrat 79% 21% 85% 15% 82% 8% 10% 84% 10% 5% 85% 10% 3%Republican 4 96 7 93 7 77 16 13 80 6 7 91 1Independent 33 67 43 57 39 30 31 43 35 17 37 42 9

Source: Gallup poll, as reported in Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi, Vital Statistics on American Politics, 6th ed. (Washington,D.C.:Congressional Quarterly Press, 1998), 128; and data for 2000 compiled by Lia Fantuzzo.

Table 7.3 Party Voting in Presidential Elections

Minor Parties 175

Wallace got on the ballot. In 1980 John Anderson,running as an independent, was able to get on theballot in all fifty states; in 1992 Ross Perot did thesame. But for the reasons already indicated, the two-party system will probably persist even without theaid of legal restrictions.

Minor Parties

The electoral system may prevent minor partiesfrom winning, but it does not prevent them fromforming. Minor parties—usually called, erroneously,“third parties”—have been a permanent feature ofAmerican political life. Four major kinds of minorparties, with examples of each, are described in thebox above.

The minor parties that have endured have beenthe ideological ones. Their members feel themselvesto be outside the mainstream of American politicallife and sometimes, as in the case of various Marxistparties, look forward to a time when a revolution orsome other dramatic change in the political systemwill vindicate them. They are usually not interestedin immediate electoral success and thus persistdespite their poor showing at the polls. One suchparty, however, the Socialist party of Eugene Debs,won nearly 6 percent of the popular vote in the1912 presidential election and during its heydayelected some twelve hundred candidates to localoffices, including seventy-nine mayors. Part of theSocialist appeal arose from its opposition to munici-pal corruption, part from its opposition to Americanentry into World War I, and part from its critique of

Types of Minor PartiesIdeological parties: Parties professing a comprehen-sive view of American society and government that isradically different from that of the established parties.Most have been Marxist in outlook, but some are quitethe opposite, such as the Libertarian party.

Examples:Socialist party (1901 to 1960s)Socialist Labor party (1888 to present)Socialist Workers party (1938 to present)Communist party (1920s to present)Libertarian party (1972 to present)Green party (1984 to present)

One-issue parties: Parties seeking a single policy,usually revealed by their names, and avoiding otherissues.

Examples:Free-Soil party—to prevent the spread of slavery

(1848–1852)American or “Know-Nothing” party—to oppose

immigration and Catholics (1856)Prohibition party—to ban the sale of liquor (1869 to

present)Woman’s party—to obtain the right to vote for

women (1913–1920)

Economic-protest parties: Parties, usually based in aparticular region, especially involving farmers, thatprotest against depressed economic conditions.These tend to disappear as conditions improve.

Examples:Greenback party (1876–1884)Populist party (1892–1908)

Factional parties: Parties that are created by a split ina major party, usually over the identity and philoso-phy of the major party’s presidential candidate.

Examples:Split off from the Republican party:

“Bull Moose” Progressive party (1912)La Follette Progressive party (1924)

Split off from the Democratic party:States’ Rights (“Dixiecrat”) party (1948)Henry Wallace Progressive party (1948)American Independent (George Wallace) party(1968)

Split off from both Democrats and Republicans:Reform party (Ross Perot)

HOW THINGS WORK


American society. No ideological party has ever car-ried a state in a presidential election.

Apart from the Republicans, who quickly becamea major party, the only minor parties to carry statesand thus win electoral votes were one party of eco-nomic protest (the Populists, who carried five statesin 1892) and several factional parties (most recent-ly, the States’ Rights Democrats in 1948 and theAmerican Independent party of George Wallace in1968). Though factional parties may hope to causethe defeat of the party from which they split, theyhave not always been able to achieve this. HarryTruman was elected in 1948 despite the defectionsof both the leftist progressives, led by Henry Wallace,and the right-wing Dixiecrats, led by J. StromThurmond. In 1968 it seems likely that HubertHumphrey would have lost even if George Wallacehad not been in the race (Wallace voters would prob-ably have switched to Nixon rather than toHumphrey, though of course one cannot be cer-

tain). It is quite possible, on the other hand, that aRepublican might have beaten Woodrow Wilson in1912 if the Republican party had not split in two(the regulars supporting William Howard Taft, theprogressives supporting Theodore Roosevelt).

What is striking is not that we have had so manyminor parties but that we have not had more. Therehave been several major political movements that didnot produce a significant third party: the civil rightsmovement of the 1960s, the antiwar movement ofthe same decade, and, most important, the labormovement of the twentieth century. AfricanAmericans were part of the Republican party afterthe Civil War and part of the Democratic party afterthe New Deal (even though the southern wing ofthat party for a long time kept them from voting). Theantiwar movement found candidates with whom itcould identify within the Democratic party (EugeneMcCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy, George McGovern),even though it was a Democratic president, Lyndon

Nominating a President 177

B. Johnson, who was chiefly responsible for the U.S.commitment in Vietnam. After Johnson only nar-rowly won the 1968 New Hampshire primary, hewithdrew from the race. Unions have not tried to cre-ate a labor party—indeed, they were for a long timeopposed to almost any kind of national politicalactivity. Since labor became a major political force inthe 1930s, the largest industrial unions have beencontent to operate as a part (a very large part) of theDemocratic party.

One reason why some potential sources of minorparties never formed such parties, in addition to thedim chance of success, is that the direct primary andthe national convention have made it possible for dis-sident elements of a major party, unless they becomecompletely disaffected, to remain in the party andinfluence the choice of candidates and policies. Theantiwar movement had a profound effect on theDemocratic conventions of 1968 and 1972; AfricanAmericans have played a growing role in theDemocratic party, especially with the candidacy ofJesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988; only in 1972 did theunions feel that the Democrats nominated a presiden-tial candidate (McGovern) unacceptable to them.

The impact of minor parties on American politics ishard to judge. One bit of conventional wisdom holdsthat minor parties develop ideas that the major partieslater come to adopt. The Socialist party, for example, issupposed to have called for major social and economicpolicies that the Democrats under Roosevelt laterembraced and termed the New Deal. It is possible thatthe Democrats did steal the thunder of the Socialists,but it hardly seems likely that they did it because theSocialists had proposed these things or proved thempopular. (In 1932 the Socialists got only 2 percent ofthe vote and in 1936 less than one-half of 1 percent.)Roosevelt probably adopted the policies he did in partbecause he thought them correct and in part becausedissident elements within his own party—leaders suchas Huey Long of Louisiana—were threatening to boltthe Democratic party if it did not move to the left. EvenProhibition was adopted more as a result of the effortsof interest groups such as the Anti-Saloon Leaguethan as the consequence of its endorsement by theProhibition party.

The minor parties that have probably had thegreatest influence on public policy have been the fac-tional parties. Mugwumps and liberal Republicans,by bolting the regular party, may have made thatparty more sensitive to the issue of civil service

reform; the Bull Moose and La Follette Progressiveparties probably helped encourage the major partiesto pay more attention to issues of business regula-tion and party reform; the Dixiecrat and Wallacemovements probably strengthened the hands ofthose who wished to go slow on desegregation. Thethreat of a factional split is a risk that both majorparties must face, and it is in the efforts that eachmakes to avoid such splits that one finds the greatestimpact, at least in this century, of minor parties.

In 1992 and again in 1996, Ross Perot led themost successful recent third-party movement. Itbegan as United We Stand America and was laterrenamed the Reform party. Perot’s appeal seemed toreflect a growing American dissatisfaction with theexisting political parties and a heightened demandfor bringing in a leader who would “run the govern-ment without politics.” Of course it is no more possible to take politics out of governing than it is totake churches out of religion. Though unrealistic,people seem to want policies without bargaining.

Nominating a President

The major parties face, as we have seen, two con-trary forces: one, generated by the desire to win thepresidency, pushes them in the direction of nomi-nating a candidate who can appeal to the majority ofvoters and who will thus have essentially middle-of-the-road views. The other, produced by the need tokeep dissident elements in the party from boltingand forming a third party, leads them to compromise

Liberal Ideology 1984 1988 1992 1996

DemocratsDelegates 66% 39% 47% 43%Voters 31 25 28 27

RepublicansDelegates 2 1 1 0Voters 15 12 12 7

Sources: For 1984: Los Angeles Times (August 19, 1984); for 1988: NewYork Times/CBS News poll, in New York Times (August 14, 1988); for1992: New York Times (July 13 and August 17, 1992) and unpublishedCBS News poll, “The 1992 Republican Convention Delegates”; for 1996:New York Times (August 12 and 26, 1996).

Table 7.5 How Party Delegates and Party Voters Differin Liberal Ideology


with dissidents or extremists in ways that may dam-age the party’s standing with the voters.

The Democrats and Republicans have always facedthese conflicting pressures, but of late they havebecome especially acute. When the presidential nomi-nation was made by a party convention that was heav-ily influenced, if not controlled, by party leaders andelected officials, it was relatively easy to ignore dissi-dent factions and pick candidates on the basis of whocould win. The electoral objectives of the party werepredominant. The result was that often a faction leftthe party and ran a separate ticket—as in 1912, 1924,1948, 1968, and 1980. Today the power of partyleaders and elected officials within the parties is great-ly diminished, with most delegates now selected by pri-mary elections. A larger proportion of the delegates islikely to be more interested in issues and to be lessamenable to compromise over those issues than for-merly. In these circumstances the policy interests of theparty activists are likely to be important.

Are the Delegates Representative of the Voters?There would be no conflict between the electoral andpolicy interests of a political party if the delegates toits nominating convention had the same policyviews as most voters, or at least as most party sup-porters. In fact this is not the case: in parties, as inmany organizations, the activists and leaders tend tohave views different from those of the rank andfile.21In American political parties in recent yearsthis difference has become very great.

In 1964 the Republican party nominated thehighly conservative Barry Goldwater for president.We have no opinion data for delegates to that con-vention as detailed and comprehensive as thoseavailable for subsequent conventions, but it seemsclear that the Republican delegates selected as theirnominee a person who was not the most popularcandidate among voters at large and thus not thecandidate most likely to win.

At every Democratic national convention since1972 the delegates have had views on a variety ofimportant issues that were vastly different from thoseof rank-and-file Democrats. On welfare, military pol-icy, school desegregation, crime, and abortion,Democratic delegates expressed opinions almost dia-metrically opposed to those of most Democrats. Thedelegates to the 1980, 1984, and (to a lesser extent)1988, 1992, and 1996 conventions were ideological-

ly very different from the voters at large. The Demo-cratic delegates were more liberal than the Democraticvoters, and the Republican delegates were more con-servative than the Republican voters (see Table 7.5).22

What accounts for the sharp disparity between del-egate opinion (and often delegate candidate prefer-ence) and voter attitudes? Some blame the discrepancyon the rules, described earlier in this chapter, underwhich Democratic delegates are chosen, especiallythose that require increased representation forwomen, minorities, and the young. Close examinationsuggests that this is not a complete explanation. Forone thing, it does not explain why the Republicansnominated Goldwater in 1964 (and almost nominatedRonald Reagan instead of Gerald Ford in 1976). Foranother, women, minorities, and youth have amongthem all shades of opinions: there are many middle-of-the-road women and young people, as well as very lib-eral or very conservative ones. (There are not manyvery conservative African Americans, at least on raceissues, but there are certainly plenty who are moderateon race and conservative on other issues.) The ques-tion is why only certain elements of these groups areheavily represented at the conventions.

Who Votes in Primaries?Maybe delegates are unrepresentative of the partyrank and file because they are chosen in caucusesand primary elections whose participants are unrep-resentative. Before 1972 most delegates were pickedby party leaders; primaries were relatively unimpor-tant, and voter caucuses were almost unheard-of.

Parties Versus Voters 179

Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and Hubert Humphrey in1968 won the Democratic presidential nominationswithout even entering a primary. Harry Trumanonce described primaries as “eyewash.”23

After 1972 they were no longer eyewash. Thevast majority of delegates were selected in primariesand caucuses. In 1992 forty states and territoriesheld primaries, and twenty held caucuses (someplaces had both primaries and caucuses).

Only about half as many people vote in primariesas in general elections. If these primary voters havemore extreme political views than do the rank-and-file party followers, then they might support presi-dential delegates who also have extreme views.However, there is not much evidence that such is thecase. Studies comparing the ideological orientationsof primary voters with those of rank-and-file partyvoters show few strong differences.24

When it comes to presidential primaries, a goodfight draws a crowd. For example, in twelve of the firsteighteen Republican presidential primaries in 2000,voter turnout hit record highs as Governor George W.Bush battled state by state to stay ahead of SenatorJohn McCain. But the “crowd” represented only 13.6percent of the voting-age population, up 4.3 percentfrom the 1996 turnout, and the highest since SenatorBarry Goldwater’s campaign for the nominationdivided Republicans in 1964.25 In the states that votedafter Bush had the nomination all but won, turnoutwas considerably lower. Likewise, the contest betweenVice President Al Gore and Senator Bill Bradley result-ed in the second-lowest Democratic presidential pri-mary turnout since 1960.

Primaries differ from caucuses. A caucus is ameeting of party followers, often lasting for hoursand held in the dead of winter in a schoolhousemiles from home, in which party delegates arepicked. Only the most dedicated partisans attend.For the Democrats these have been liberals; for theRepublicans conservatives. In 1988 the most liberalDemocratic candidate, Jesse Jackson, got more dele-gates in the Alaska, Delaware, Michigan, andVermont caucuses than did Michael Dukakis, theeventual nominee. Republican evangelist PatRobertson did not win any primary, but he won thecaucuses in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington.

Who Are the New Delegates?However delegates are chosen, they are a differentbreed today than they once were. Whether picked by

caucuses or primaries, and whatever their sex andrace, a far larger proportion of convention delegates,both Republican and Democratic, are issue-orientedactivists—people with an “amateur” or “purist” viewof politics. Far fewer delegates are in it for the money(there is no longer much patronage to pass around)or to help their own reelection prospects. For exam-ple, in 1980 only 14 percent of the Democratic sena-tors and 15 percent of the Democratic members ofthe House were delegates to the national convention.In 1956, by contrast, 90 percent of the senators and33 percent of the representatives were delegates.26

Party activists, especially those who work withoutpay and who are in politics out of an interest inissues, are not likely to resemble the average citizen,for whom politics is merely an object of observation,discussion, and occasional voting.

The changing incentives for participation inparty work, in addition to the effects of the primarysystem, have contributed to the development of anational presidential nominating system differentfrom that which once existed. The advantage of thenew system is that it increases the opportunity forthose with strong policy preferences to play a role inthe party and thus reduces the chance that they willbolt the party and form a factional minor party. Thedisadvantage of the system is that it increases thechances that one or both parties may nominate pres-idential candidates who are not appealing to theaverage voter or even to a party’s rank and file.

In sum, presidential nominating conventions arenow heavily influenced by ideologically motivatedactivists. Democratic conventions have heavy repre-sentation from organized feminists, unionizedschoolteachers, and abortion rights activists;Republican conventions have large numbers ofantiabortion activists, Christian conservatives, andsmall-government libertarians. As a result the presi-dential nominating system is now fundamentallydifferent from what it was as late as the mid-1960s.

Parties Versus Voters

Since 1968 the Democratic party has had no troublewinning congressional elections but great difficultywinning presidential contests. Except for 1980–1986and since 1994, the Democrats have controlled bothhouses of Congress; except for 1976, 1992, and1996, they have lost every presidential election. The


Republican party has had the opposite problem:though it won five out of seven presidential electionsbetween 1968 and 1992, it did not control Congressfor the forty years preceding its big win in 1994.

There are many reasons for this odd state ofaffairs, most of which will be discussed later. But onerequires attention here. The difficulty the Democratshave had in competing for the presidency is in partbecause their candidates for the presidency havehad, on certain issues—chiefly social and taxationissues—views very different from those of the aver-age voter. That disparity to a large degree mirrors(and may be caused by) the gulf that separates theopinions of delegates to Democratic nominatingconventions from the opinions of most citizens.

The Republicans have not been immune to thisproblem. In 1964 they nominated a candidate,Barry Goldwater, whose beliefs placed him well tothe right of most voters. Not surprisingly, he lost.And the delegates to recent Republican conventionshave held opinions on some matters that continue tobe very different from most people’s. Still, the prob-lem has been more acute for the Democrats.

The problem can be seen in Table 7.6. A lot ofinformation is shown there; to understand it, studythe table step by step. First, look at the middle col-umn, which summarizes the views of voters in2000. (Because there are about the same number ofDemocratic and Republican voters, the opinion ofthe average voter is about halfway between those

of the followers of the two parties.) Now look at thecolumns on the far left and the far right. These showthe views of delegates to the 2000 Democratic andRepublican conventions. On almost every issue thedelegates are in sharp disagreement. There werehardly any conservatives at the Democratic conven-tion or liberals at the Republican convention. Onevery social issue and every tax or spending issue,the delegates were at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Still, either party can win if its delegates nomi-nate a candidate whose views put him or her closerto the average citizen than to the average delegate orif the campaign is fought out over issues on whichthe delegates and the voters agree. For example, ifthe election turned on what to do about an econom-ic recession, the delegates, the voters, and the candi-date would probably all agree: do whatever is neces-sary to end the recession. Exactly that happened in1992, and the Democrats won.

Of course, even without a scandal, recession, orsome other unifying issue, the need to win an elec-tion will lead all candidates to move toward the mid-dle of the road. That is where the votes are. But thiscreates a dilemma for a candidate of either party.The stance one takes to win support from partyactivists in the caucuses and primaries will often bequite different from the stance one should take towin votes from the general public. In the next chap-ter we shall look more closely at how politicians tryto cope with that dilemma.

Democratic RepublicanDelegates Voters Delegates

Who They AreMale 52% 46% 65%Female 48 54 35African American 19 10 4Income over $75,000 57 19 57

What They ThinkGovernment should do more to solve national problems. 73 33 4Favor affirmative action. 83 51 29Should ban soft money (unregulated gifts to political parties). 47 64 24Support vouchers for private religious schools. 10 47 71

Source: New York Times/CBS News polls as reported in Adam Nagourney with Janet Elder, “The Republicans: Poll of Delegates ShowsConvention Solidly on Right,” New York Times, July 31, 2000; and Adam Clymer with Marjorie Connelly, “The Democrats: Poll FindsDelegates to the Left of Both Public and Party,” New York Times, August 14, 2000.

Table 7.6 Political Opinions of Delegates and Voters, 2000

MEMORANDUM

To: Harry Bower, president ofRepublicans for LifeFrom: Patricia Nucanon, politicalconsultantSubject: Forming a third party

Without regard to your organization’sparticular cause or issue, I have been employed to brief you on the general prosand cons of backing independent candidates and forming a third party.

Arguments for:

1. Independent and third-party candidates can garner votes and even win. In1992 independent candidate Ross Perot won nearly a fifth of the vote forpresident. In 1998 the Reform party candidate Jesse Ventura became governorof Minnesota.2. Even losing independent candidates (Eugene Debs, Robert La Follette, andGeorge Wallace, to name just three) have made real marks on Americanpolitics. “Unsuccessful” third parties were the first to advocate policy positionslater championed by the two main parties: abolishing slavery (Free-Soil party),giving women the vote (Woman’s party), the direct election of senators(Progressive party), and many others.3. Splitting off from a major party courts public attention and eventually getspolicy results.

Arguments against:

1. The two-party system is supported by more than 150 years of politicaltradition featuring winner-take-all, single-member election districts. Since the1850s more than 100 third parties and thousands of independent candidateshave come, gone, and been forgotten by all except historians.2. Usually the two main parties adapt and co-opt, not adopt, third-party ideasand positions. In the 1930s the Democrats watered down the Socialist party’splan and gave birth to the Social Security system. In the 1980s the Republicanposition on tax relief was but a faint echo of the Libertarian party’s.3. Splitting off from a major party courts political oblivion and reduces thechances that the issue or cause will be raised or represented even halfheartedlyby either main party.

Your decision:Favor a third party Oppose third party

Pro-Life Group Threatens to Bolt GOPFebruary 1HARRISBURG, PA

At a televised press conference last week severaltop Republican officials called for “moderating” theirparty’s pro-life platform. Yesterday a leading antiabor-tion political action committee responded by runningfull-page newspaper ads calling for “independent can-didates and a third party to represent the views of pro-life Republicans and Democrats alike” . . .


Reconsidering the Enduring Questions

1. What did the Founding Fathers believe aboutpolitical parties?

The nation’s founders did not think much of polit-ical parties—for a while. George Washingtondenounced “factions,” but as soon as it was time toselect his replacement, political leaders realizedthey had to organize their followers in order to winthe election, and so parties were born.

2. How has America’s two-party system changedover the past century and a half? How does it dif-fer today from the party systems of other repre-sentative democracies?

American parties during the nineteenth and thefirst half of the twentieth centuries were strongorganizations that picked their candidates for office.

Parties in European democracies still do that, butAmerica has changed. Now, candidates are usuallypicked by direct primary elections as the Americanvoters’ loyalty to parties has weakened.

3. To what extent has the decline of mass attach-ment to the two major parties affected howAmericans vote?

The declining attachment of voters to parties andtheir weakness as organizations have led candi-dates to run more as individuals than as partymembers. They try to develop personal followings;among presidential candidates this has been quitesuccessful, as we can see with the Kennedy andBush families. We will see this in greater detail inthe next chapter.

Apolitical party exists in three arenas: among thevoters who psychologically identify with it, as a

grassroots organization staffed and led by activists,and as a group of elected officials who follow its leadin lawmaking. In this chapter we have looked at theparty primarily as an organization and seen the var-ious forms it takes at the local level—the machine,the ideological party, the solidary group, the spon-sored party, and the personal following.

The spread of the direct primary has made it hard-er for parties to control who is nominated for electiveoffice, thus making it harder for the parties to influ-ence the behavior of these people once elected.Delegate selection rules, especially in the Democraticparty, have helped shift the center of power in thenational nominating convention. Because of thechanges in rules, power has moved away from office-

holders and party regulars and toward the more ideo-logical wings of the parties.

Minor parties have arisen from time to time, butthe only ones that have affected the outcome of presi-dential elections have been those that represented asplinter group within one of the major parties (suchas the Bull Moose Progressives). The two-party systemis maintained, and minor parties are discouraged, byan election system (winner-take-all, plurality elec-tions) that makes voters reluctant to waste a vote on aminor party and by the ability of potential minor par-ties to wield influence within a major party by meansof the primary system.

In the next chapter we shall look at the role of par-ties in shaping voter attitudes, and in Chapter 11 weshall look at the role of parties in Congress. In each ofthese areas we will find more evidence of party decay.

Summary

World Wide Web Resources

• Democratic National Committee: www.democrats.org

• Republican National Committee: www.rnc.org

• Green party: www.greens.org• Libertarian party: www.lp.org• Reform party: www.reformparty.org

Suggested Readings 183

political party p. 152mugwumps or progressives p. 157critical or realigning periods p. 158split ticket p. 161straight ticket p. 161office-bloc ballot p. 162party-column ballot p. 162national convention p. 162national committee p. 162congressional campaign committee p. 162

national chairman p. 162superdelegates p. 166political machine p. 168ideological party p. 169solidary incentives p. 170sponsored party p. 170personal following p. 171two-party system p. 171plurality system p. 173caucus p. 179

Key Terms

Chambers, William Nisbet, and Walter Dean Burnham, eds. TheAmerican Party Systems: Stages of Political Development. 2nd ed.New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. Essays tracing the riseof the party system since the Founding.

Goldwin, Robert A., ed. Political Parties in the Eighties. Washington,D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1980. Essays evaluating par-ties and efforts at reform.

Kayden, Xandra, and Eddie Mahe, Jr. The Party Goes On. New York:Basic Books, 1985. How the two major parties have adjusted tonew political conditions.

Key, V. O., Jr. Southern Politics. New York: Knopf, 1949. A classicaccount of the one-party South.

Mayhew, David R. Placing Parties in American Politics. Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press, 1986. A state-by-state description ofstate party organizations.

Polsby, Nelson W. Consequences of Party Reform. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1983. Fine analysis of how changed party ruleshave affected the parties and the government.

Ranney, Austin. Curing the Mischiefs of Faction: Party Reform inAmerica. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. History

and analysis of party “reforms,” with special attention to the1972 changes in the Democratic party rules.

Riordan, William L. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. New York: Knopf,1948. (First published in 1905.) Insightful account of how anold-style party boss operated.

Schattschneider, E. E. Party Government. New York: Holt, Rinehartand Winston, 1942. An argument for a more disciplined and cen-tralized two-party system.

Shafer, Byron E. Quiet Revolution: The Struggle for the Democratic Partyand the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics. New York: Russell SageFoundation, 1983. Detailed, insightful history of how theDemocratic party came to be reformed.

Sundquist, James L. Dynamics of the Party System. Rev. ed.Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1983. History of theparty system, emphasizing the impact of issues on voting.

Wilson, James Q. The Amateur Democrat. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1962. Analysis of the issue-oriented political clubsthat rose in the 1950s and 1960s.

Suggested Readings

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