Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T13:33:49.222Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Voter Coordination and the Rise of the Republican Party: Evidence from New England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2015

Adam Chamberlain
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The development of the Republican Party is a significant event in American political history. While scholars describe its formation as a realignment caused by the slavery issue, this article reinterprets this perspective. Focusing on gubernatorial elections in New England from 1840 to the mid-1850s, I present evidence that the rise of the Republican Party in the region was due to a lack of strategic voting coupled with third-party, antislavery voting that did not consistently affect the Whigs across states. A counterfactual argument suggests that Whig elites would have sought to change the nature of party politics and, had the distribution of third-party voting affected the Whigs similarly across states, then the Republicans may not have formed. Thus, the distribution of antislavery, third-party voting was more important than the presence of antislavery sentiment. This finding is important for understanding American party development and how strategic voting fits into the study of US elections.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 38 , Issue 3-4 , Fall/Winter 2014 , pp. 311 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association, 2015 

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

Aldrich, John H. (1995) Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Baum, Dale (1978) “Know-Nothingism and the Republican majority in Massachusetts: The political realignment of the 1850s.” The Journal of American History 64 (4): 959–86.Google Scholar
Blake, Donald E., Elkins, David J., and Johnston, Richard (1985) Two Political Worlds: Parties and Voting in British Columbia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Burnham, Walter D. (1970) Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Canon, David T., and Sousa, David J. (1992) “Party system change and political career structures in the U.S. Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 17 (3): 347–63.Google Scholar
Capoccia, Giovanni, and Kelemen, R. Daniel (2007) “The study of critical junctures: Theory, narrative, and counterfactuals in historical institutionalism.” World Politics 59 (2): 341–69.Google Scholar
Chase, Salmon P., and Denison, George S. (1903) Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Full text available at: books.google.com/books?id= rbMOAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Salmon±P±Chase±Papers&hl=en&sa=X&ei= nNiLUY3BJo-k8gSZpoGQCg&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Salmon%20P%20Chase%20 Papers&f=false (accessed May 10, 2013).Google Scholar
Chhibber, Pradeep K., and Kollman, Ken (2004) The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Clubb, Jerome M., Flanigan, William H., and Zingale, Nancy H. (1980) Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publishing.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W. (1997) Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W. (2001) “Comment on Japan's multimember SNTV system and strategic voting: The ‘M+1’ rule and beyond.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 2 (2): 237–40.Google Scholar
Crisp, Brian F., Olivella, Santiago, and Potter, Joshua D. (2012) “Electoral contexts that impede voter coordination.” Electoral Studies 31 (2): 143–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dubin, Michael (2003) United States Gubernatorial Elections, 1776–1860: The Official Results by State and County. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland.Google Scholar
Duverger, Maurice (1954) Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Eaton, Horace (1846) Inaugural Address of Horace Eaton, As It Appears in the Journal of the House of Representative October Session, https://www.sec.state.vt.us/media/48626/Eaton1846.pdf (accessed September 3, 2012).Google Scholar
Foner, Eric (1970) Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gienapp, William E. (1987) The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Holt, Michael F. (1972) “The power of political frenzy,” in Silbey, J. H. and McSeveney, S. T. (eds.) Voters, Parties, and Elections: Quantitative Essays in the History of American Popular Voting Behavior. Lexington, MA: Xerox College Publishing: 121–37.Google Scholar
Holt, Michael F. (1978) The Political Crisis of the 1850s. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Holt, Michael F. (1999) The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Jeffery A., and Morris, Irwin L. (2006) “Running to lose? John C. Breckinridge and the presidential election of 1860.” Electoral Studies 25 (2): 306–28.Google Scholar
King, Gary, and Zeng, Langche (2007) “When can history be our guide? The pitfalls of counterfactual inference.” International Studies Quarterly 51 (1): 183–210.Google Scholar
Lebow, Richard N. (2000) “What's so different about a counterfactual?” World Politics 52 (4): 550–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markowtiz, Debra (n.d.) Untitled document on the 1853 Election and the selection of Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Treasurer, vermont-archives.org/govhistory/governance/Majority/pdf/1853.pdf (accessed June 11, 2009).Google Scholar
Marshall, Lynn L. (1967) “The strange stillbirth of the Whig Party.” The American Historical Review 72 (2): 445–68.Google Scholar
Mayhew, David (1974) Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Moser, Robert G., and Scheiner, Ethan (2009) “Strategic voting in established and new democracies: Ticket splitting in mixed-member electoral systems.” Electoral Studies 28 (1): 51–61.Google Scholar
Mowry, Arthur M. (1901) The Dorr War, or the Constitutional Struggle in Rhode Island. Providence, RI: Preston and Rounds Co. Full text available at: books.google.com/books?id=Vog6AQAAIAAJ& printsec=frontcover&dq=mowry±the±dorr±war&hl=en&sa=X&ei=S2DvUPWtIInC9QS29YCAD A&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA (accessed October 23, 2012).Google Scholar
Ostrogorski, Moisei I. (1974 [1910]) Democracy and the Party System in the United States: A Study in Extra-Constitutional Government. New York: Arno Press.Google Scholar
Purcell, Richard J. (1918) Connecticut in Transition: 1775–1818. Washington, DC: The American Historical Association.Google Scholar
Reiter, Howard L. (1996) “Why did the Whigs die?” Studies in American Political Development 10 (2): 185–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reiter, Howard L. (2004) “Factional persistence within parties in the United States.” Party Politics 10 (3): 251–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renda, Lex (1997) Running on the Record: Civil War-Era Politics in New Hampshire. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Reynolds, John F., and McCormick, Richard L. (1986) “Outlawing ‘treachery’: Split tickets and ballot laws in New York and New Jersey, 1880–1910.” The Journal of American History 72 (4): 835–58.Google Scholar
Roemer, John E. (2009) “Why does the Republican Party win half the votes?,” in Shapiro, I., Stokes, S. C., Wood, E. J., and Kirshner, A .S. (eds.) Political Representation. New York: Cambridge University Press: 304–23.Google Scholar
Rosenstone, Steven J., Behr, Roy L., and Lazarus, Edward H. (1996) Third Parties in America. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Slade, William (1844) Inaugural Address of William Slade, As It Appears in the Journal of the House of Representative October Session, vermont-archives.org/govhistory/gov/govinaug/inaugurals/pdf/Slade1844.pdf (accessed September 3, 2012).Google Scholar
Slade, William (1845) Inaugural Address of William Slade, As It Appears in the Journal of the House of Representative October Session, vermont-archives.org/govhistory/gov/govinaug/inaugurals/pdf/Slade1845.pdf (accessed September 3, 2012).Google Scholar
Silbey, Joel H. (1967) The Transformation of American Politics, 1840–1860. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Silbey, Joel H. (1985) The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics Before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stoll, Heather, King, Gary, and Zeng, Langche (2006) “WhatIf: R software for evaluating counterfactuals.” Journal of Statistical Software 15 (4): 1–18.Google Scholar
Sundquist, James L. (1973) Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute.Google Scholar
Tabarrok, Alexander, and Spector, Lee (1999) “Would the Borda count have avoided the Civil War?” Journal of Theoretical Politics 11 (2): 261–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tetlock, Philip, and Belkin, Aaron (1996) Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Uslaner, Eric (1990) “Splitting image: Partisan affiliations in Canada's ‘two political worlds.’” American Journal of Political Science 34 (4): 961–81.Google Scholar
Voss-Hubbard, Mark (2002) Beyond Party: Cultures of Antipartisanship in Northern Politics before the Civil War. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Ware, Alan (2000) “Anti-partism and party control of political reform in the United States: The case of the Australian ballot.” British Journal of Political Science 30 (1): 1–29.Google Scholar
Wattenberg, Martin P. (1991) The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Whig Party of Massachusetts (1849) Address and Resolutions, Adopted at the Whig State Convention. Boston: Eastburn's Press. Full text available at: books.google.com/books?id=nH1FX79cRsgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=address±to±the±1849±Whig&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oxfvUI6oOZOc8wS3hoHoDg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA (accessed October 28, 2012).Google Scholar