The Realignment of U.S. Presidential Voting

Traditional class voting hinges on the correspondence between the working class and parties of the Left and the middle classes and parties of the Center or Right. Total class voting is not tied to any specific correspondence of classes and parties. This fact is useful and informative when traditional class voting alliances may not be the strongest or most evident. The traditional pattern of class voting held in US presidential elections from 1948 to 1960, then gave way to one dominated by a cleavage separating business and the professions, with white-collar and blue-collar voters up for grabs. Less challenging to political sociology is the way "traditional," that is, self-interested, class voting appears in much of the rest of the data. American class coalitions realigned after the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Voters changed their expectations of presidential politics, and parties changed what they promised.