Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T08:10:12.766Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ten More Years of Republican Rule?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2005

Sarah A. Binder
Affiliation:
George Washington University ([email protected])

Extract

If history is any judge, Republicans should lose control of Congress or the White House during one of the five elections to come between now and 2015. Since Democrats and Republicans became national competitors in 1855, unified party control has lasted on average just 5.9 years. Unified Republican control has endured a bit longer, averaging 6.3 years. Even at its longest (with the onset of the 1896 realignment), Republican control of government has lasted just fourteen years. With the current Republican regime emerging from the elections of 2000, Republican control of Congress and the White House should have run its course by the elections of 2014.Sarah A. Binder is professor of political science at George Washington University ([email protected]) and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.

Type
SYMPOSIUM: TEN YEARS FROM NOW
Copyright
© 2005 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, Alan. 2005. The time-for-change model and the 2004 presidential election: A post-mortem and a look ahead. Available at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/forecast/Political/PDFs/Abramowitz%202004%20post-mortem.pdf.
Abramson, Paul R., John H. Aldrich, and David W. Rohde. 2005. The 2004 presidential election: The emergence of a permanent majority? Political Science Quarterly. 120 (1): 3357.
Binder, Sarah A. 1996. The disappearing political center. Brookings Review 14 (4): 3639.Google Scholar
Binder, Sarah A. 1997. Minority rights, majority rule: Partisanship and the development of Congress. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Brookings Institution. 2004. Elections, mandates, and governance. http://www.brookings.edu/comm/events/20041112.pdf.
Dion, Douglas. 1997. Turning the legislative thumbscrew. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Fiorina, Morris, Samuel Abrams, and Jeremy Pope. 2004. Culture war? The myth of a polarized America. New York: Pearson Longman.
Hacker, Jacob, and Paul Pierson. 2005. Abandoning the middle: The Bush tax cuts and the limits of democratic control. Perspectives on Politics. 3 (1): 3353.
Jacobson, Gary. 2004. The politics of congressional elections. 6th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.
McCarty, Nolan, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 1997. Income redistribution and the realignment of American politics. Washington: AEI Press.
White House. 2004. President holds press conference. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/11/20041104-5.html.
Wolfensberger, Donald R. 2005. A reality check on the Republican House reform revolution at the decade mark. Available at http://wwics.si.edu/events/docs/repub-rev-essay.pdf.