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9 - Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2015

Ryan L. Claassen
Affiliation:
Kent State University, Ohio
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Summary

Since 1978 the Christian Right has devoted most of its energies to influencing and perhaps even capturing the Republican Party.

– Rozell and Wilcox, 1996, 259, emphasis added

Some suggest that the [Republican] party has been ‘captured’ by the Christian Right…

– Conger 2009, 1–2

[I]n 1972 … the Democratic party was captured by a faction whose cultural reform agenda was perceived by many (both inside and outside the convention) as antagonistic to traditional religious values.

– Bolce and DeMaio, 2002, 7, emphasis added

A careful examination of the parties’ activist pools raises many questions about the forces behind the rise of Evangelical activists in the Republican Party and the rise of Secular activists in the Democratic Party. While it is true that Evangelicals and Seculars are now more influential in the Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively, it is equally clear that neither party is captured. In the first place, neither group is a majority in either party's activist pool. In the second, the word “capture” suggests that the groups in question out-mobilized other groups in order achieve dominance in the activist pools beyond their numbers in the electorate. But the previous chapters demonstrate that the assumption that mobilization drives changes in the activist pools is flawed. Specifically, for Evangelicals and Seculars, long-term variation in rates of campaign activism (e.g., mobilization) fails to explain their increased influence within the Republican and Democratic Parties – as measured by a group's size within a partisan activist pool (see Chapter 7). The representation-based model provides a new way of understanding the rise and fall of different groups in the activist pools and explains why partisan activist pools tend to move with their respective electorates. In addition to mobilization of activists, the rise and fall of groups in the activist pools reflects basic demographic and political trends, thus reinforcing connections between activist pools and electorates. As such, the rise of Evangelical activists on the right and Secular activists on the left need not be characterized as “capture” because neither group outmobilized other groups and, consequently, neither group is dramatically overrepresented.

Type
Chapter
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Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans?
Party Activists, Party Capture, and the 'God Gap'
, pp. 158 - 166
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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  • Conclusion
  • Ryan L. Claassen, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans?
  • Online publication: 05 June 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316104873.010
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  • Conclusion
  • Ryan L. Claassen, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans?
  • Online publication: 05 June 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316104873.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • Ryan L. Claassen, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans?
  • Online publication: 05 June 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316104873.010
Available formats
×