Please contact me at lee.hannah@psu.edu for original files.

1. Day 16 – Dynamics of Party Change
In Congress
July 25, 2013

2. Realigning or Critical Elections
 “Even the most fleeting inspection of American elections
suggests the existence of a category of elections in which
voters are, at least from impressionistic evidence,
unusually deeply concerned, in which the extent of
electoral involvement is relatively quite high, and in which
the decisive results of the voting reveal a sharp alteration
of the pre-existing cleavage within the electorate.”
 V.O. Key in “A Theory of Critical Elections” (1955)
 What do they lead to?
 Party Systems
 Parties’ issue positions shift along with voters’ behavior every few
decades.
 Periodic build-up of societal pressure (roughly once a generation)
overthrows “politics as usual” system.

3. How Do Party Alignments Change Over
Time?
 Realignment Theory (Key 1955, Burnham 1970)
 Issue Evolution (Carmines and Stimson 1989)
 Certain issues can restructure the political system (e.g.
race)
 Party Position Change (Karol 2009)

4. Election of 1800
 Federalist Party: John Adams, Charles C. Pickney
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeHepBjAyS0&list=PL0
FwQejmr_tdPzPFRpOP8zIwj-Bf8NiYk
 Democratic-Republican Party: Thomas Jefferson,
Aaron Burr
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQmtEc-6E-Y

5. Election of 1828
 Whig Party: John Q. Adams (Incumbent)
 Democratic Party: Andrew Jackson
 Rematch of 1824
 The “Corrupt Bargain”
Source: http://www.270towin.com/1824_Electio

6. Jacksonian Democracy
 Expanded suffrage
 Universal white male suffrage
 Manifest Destiny
 Patronage
 Strict Constructionism
 Federal government of limited powers’
 Laissez-fair Economics
 Anti-Banking

7. The Secession Crisis of the 1850s
 “Men had been talking more and more since 1852 of
a great new party that would not only unite Whigs
and Free-Soilers but bring in half or more of the
northern Democrats who could not stomach their
party’s constant compromises with slavery.”
- James Sundquist (1983)

8. 1850

9. 1852

10. 1854

11. 1856

12. 1858

13. 1860

15.  Republican Party Platform
 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29620
 Results by State
 http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/datagraph.php?year=
1860&fips=0&f=0&off=0&elect=0

17. 2012 in Comparison