The Realignment of U.S. Presidential Voting

American presidential elections since the 1960s have supplied ample material for study by political scientists and political sociologists, who have contended that the stable class politics of the industrial era-roughly 1932-1964 (or perhaps as late as 1976)-gave way to new, “postmaterial” politics (e.g., Inglehart 1977; Lipset 1981; Clark and Lipset 1991). Scholars who subscribe to this view point to newer cleavages based on gender, identity, concern for the environment, and family values, which they argue have displaced class from its central place in American politics. When Democrats appeal to middle-class voters and the British Labour Party touts a “third way” in twenty-first-century politics, some of these ideas ring true.