Partisan alignments of the “old” and “new” middle classes in post-industrial America

A central topic in recent controversies over post-industrial political change has been whether traditional social cleavages-especially those based on class or religion-are declining in influence (e.g., Franklin et al. 1992; Dalton and Wattenberg 1993; Manza, Hout and Brooks 1995). A number of analysts (including some contributors to this volume) have argued that “the political expression of class interests has declined,” as the editors put it in their introduction (see also Clark and Lipset 1991; Clark, Lipset, and Rempel 1993; Rose and McAllister 1986; Inglehart 1990; Franklin et al. 1992; Pakulski and Waters 1996a, 1996b). Other analysts have claimed that class differences remain as salient as in previous decades (Heath, Jowell, and Curtice 1985, 1987; Heath et al. 1991; Hout, Brooks, and Manza 1993; Goldthorpe 1996; Evans 1998).