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The “Onward March of Party Decomposition” in the American Electorate: An Empirical Examination, 1876–1984

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

William Claggett  and
John Van Wingen
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Extract

Walter Dean Burnham (1965, 1970) demonstrated that non-voting and various measures of aggregate electoral instability increased between 1900 and the late 1920s, declined somewhat during the New Deal and its aftermath, and increased thereafter. To Burnham, the behavior of these measures implied a similar evolution in the partisan strength of the electorate since individuals without strong partisan ties are characterized by lower levels of turnout and more inconsistent turnout and partisan choices, both over time for the same office and across different offices in the same year. In short, he argued that the entire twentieth century, save for the New Deal, was marked by an “onward march of party decomposition.”

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Spring 1993 , pp. 37 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1993 

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