Jeffrey M. Stonecash

Diverging Parties: Social Change, Realignment, and Party Polarization

Party polarization in the House of Representatives has increased in recent decades. Explaining this development has been difficult, given current interpretations of American elections. The dominant framework for interpreting elections has been to see them as candidate-centered, or individualistic. This framework may have seemed appropriate as a way to see elections during the 1970s and 1980s, when identification with parties declined and split-ticket voting increased. With increasing party differences, however, the presumptions that campaigns focus on candidates separate from parties, and that voters are less partisan in their voting, do not provide a satisfactory framework for understanding our current situation. This proposed book explains the emergence of party polarization by focusing on how the constituencies of House districts affect partisan outcomes and the subsequent voting behavior of House members. This proposed analysis is premised on the simple argument that members are elected from districts, and an explanation of polarization must begin with districts. The origins of polarization lie in the realignment of the electoral bases of the parties, and the shifting demographic composition of America. Liberal voting is more likely among members from urban, lower-income, largely non-white districts. Conservative voting is more likely among members from higher-income, largely white districts. Realignment has resulted in Democrats representing urban, lower-income, heavily non-white districts, while Republicans are more likely to come from suburban-rural, more affluent, white districts. Perhaps most important, the percentage of districts with a substantial proportion of non-whites is steadily increasing in the United States. The analysis will focus primarily on changes since the 1960s.

Class, Race Issues, and Declining White Support for the Democratic Party in the South

The Democratic Party in the South has experienced a major loss of white voters in recent decades. Two major hypotheses have been proposed to explain this change. The dominant explanation in recent years has been that race issues have driven whites from the Democratic Party in the South. In this view, defections from the Democratic Party have occurred because whites oppose the partys positions on race issues. In contrast, others have suggested that class divisions have emerged as important, with affluent whites increasingly supportive of the Republican Party because they find its positions more compatible with their interests. Using NES data, this article assesses the evidence for these hypotheses, examining the impact of income position and race issues on partisan behavior since 1952. While both factors affect partisan support, income has come to have a relatively greater effect on partisan support than race issues. The evidence clearly indicates that class divisions in the South have steadily increased and that affluent whites have steadily shifted to the Republican Party. The implications are significant for understanding the dramatic changes in the South in recent decades. Much has been made of the tensions over race issues, and the findings presented here lend further support to the importance of race issues in southern electoral politics. However, these findings also suggest that class divisions are a steadily increasing source of political cleavage in this region. The current state of electoral politics in the South cannot be properly understood unless both of these factors are taken into account.

Measuring Citizen Preferences for Public Services Using Surveys: Does a “Gray Peril” Threaten Funding for Public Education?

Given the rising share of senior citizens and their higher voter participation rates, seniors could represent a sizeable bloc of voters in many local elections. Concerns have been raised about a “gray peril,” where seniors vote against some local services, such as education. Preferences for education are examined using a contingent valuation survey method in the context of local school budget referenda. The results suggest for this district that elders are a heterogeneous group, and that block voting against schools is unlikely. The impact of age on preferences appears more likely to emerge in how these groups respond to changes in their economic circumstances.

Northern Democrats and Party Polarization in the U.S. House

: Over the last 25 years, there has been a steady increase in party voting in the U.S. House, with much of this increase attributed to changes in the South. We argue that changes in the North are also important. Democrats now win a higher percentage of elections in the North, and a larger percentage of the congressional party comes from the North. Northern Democrats became steadily more liberal in the 1980s and 1990s, which increased the liberal record of the entire party. We examine two factors in the rise in liberal voting in the North. First, Democrats now win more seats in urban, lower-income, nonwhite districts that tend to generate liberal voting records. Second, there has been an increase in the number of districts that tend to produce liberal-voting Democrats. Together, these changes have resulted in more liberal Democratic Party voting and greater polarization between the parties.

Trends in the Partisan Composition of State Legislatures: A Response to Fiorina

The percentage of state legislative seats won by Democrats in nonsouthern states has increased steadily since World War II. Fiorina (1994) argues that this is because of the professionalization of state legislatures: Legislatures now meet longer and pay higher salaries; legislative positions which require more time are less attractive to Republicans, who can make more money elsewhere; higher salaries attract Democrats, who make less in the private sector. That analysis has several serious flaws. First, nonsouthern states have gradually become more Democratic at all levels as part of a long-term regional political realignment. The rise in Democrats in legislatures outside the South is due more to this realignment than to legislative professionalization. Second, trends in southern states contradict his hypothesis. Professionalization has increased, but state legislatures are becoming more Republican. Finally, Fiorinas analysis is worth careful reconsideration because it suggests that there is little connection between constituencies and partisan outcomes.

Campaign Finance in New York Senate Elections

While incumbents in legislative races generally raise more money than challengers do, the important question is how money is related to vote outcomes. This analysis explores that relationship in New York state Senate races and examines how change in control of a chamber might affect individual and party finance activities. Republicans control the New York Senate by a small margin; it is the only state institution that the Republicans have controlled since 1974, and their general position has been eroding in recent decades. Within this context, few legislative races are close, and therefore attention focuses on a few races. Because the political parties play a major role in the management of campaign resources, they can create an organized, coherent response to this situation, and the evidence indicates that they do.

The Income Gap

Political divisions based on class would seem to be central to contemporary American politics. Inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth have grown steadily over the last 30 years, creating greater differences in opportunity and challenging the longstanding American belief in equality of opportunity (Hochschild 1995 ). The two major parties differ sharply in their concern for class issues, making class political divisions all the more likely.

Class and Party: Secular Realignment and the Survival of Democrats outside the South

A common conclusion is that beginning in the late 1960s the policy stands of Democrats on civil rights and civil liberties issues alienated the white working class. Race is presumed to have driven a wedge between the white and non-white working class, and diminished class voting in American politics. The New Deal coalition has eroded, the South has moved into the Republican column, and class conflict is presumed to have steadily declined since the 1950s. These arguments, however, leave us unable to explain how the Democratic party managed to survive for over forty years as the majority party in Congress, even while it was losing the South. The party survived by steadily increasing its support outside the South. The focus of this analysis is whom the Democrats attracted over time, and what the evidence indicates about the presumed alienation of the white, working class. The conventional wisdom is largely based on analyses that assess class voting using self-identified class. We argue that measure does not capture the economic situation of the respondent. This analysis relies on the relative income situation of voters, which reflects the relative level of resources people have to live their lives. The focus is the relationship between relative income position and support for the Democratic party among non-Southern whites from 1952-1996. The results indicate a steady increase in support for the Democratic party among the less affluent since the 1950s. Differences in voting by income position are not decreasing, but, in fact, have been increasing since the 1970s.

Scaring the Democrats: What's the Matter with Thomas Frank's Argument?

Thomas Frank argues that Republicans are able to use cultural issues to suppress class divisions. They appeal to religiously conservative working class voters by opposing abortion and homosexuality. The difficulty is that the evidence of the last 40 years shows a growing class division in American politics, with less affluent whites more supportive of Democrats now than 20 - 30 years ago. Indeed, even in Kansas less affluent legislative districts are much more supportive of Democrats than affluent districts.

Emerging Party Cleavages in the House of Representatives, 1962-1996

Income has the potential to divide people politically. Most attempts to assess the impact of income focus on individual-level analyses. Representatives, however, are elected in districts, which have varying compositions of constituents. To assess the connection between income and party in congressional elections, we need to focus on income composition of districts and how partisan outcomes are related to these variations. This analysis assesses that relationship and how it has changed in recent decades. The focus is on U.S. House districts from 1962 to 1996. The relationship of district income and party outcomes is then examined by region. Since 1962, income has emerged as a significant source of political divisions in the South and North, whereas the remainder of the country has not developed a relationship. Finally, we analyze the 1994 and 1996 Congressional elections, and find that the relationship of income to party continues to be significant, but the 1994 election attenuated the relationship.