The study of critical elections in American politics has been marked by a steady growth of knowledge and a remarkable consensus among practitioners in the field. Although minor quibbles have appeared from time to time, the work within each generation has set the agenda for the work of the next. The pioneering efforts of Key (1955, 1959), Schattschneider (1960), and MacRae and Meldrum (1960) produced clear descriptions of the phenomenon of critical elections, as well as operational definitions of the concepts. This group of studies paved the way for the systematic analysis and classification of elections in the work of Campbell et al. (1960), Sellers (1965), Pomper (1967), and Burnham (1968). The election patterns discovered in these studies, however, required explanation. The next wave of interest in critical elections, ushered in by the theoretical works of Burnham (1970) and Sundquist (1973), identified the essential variables governing electoral dynamics, but still did not explain precisely how these variables worked. That explanation is the next obvious step in the theory of critical elections, and it is the subject of this discussion.

During the 1820s and early 1830s, two largely different populations of working people lived alongside each other in the region surrounding Manchester. Today, they represent, in an important and clear contrast, the social foundations which have supported distinctive directions of popular protest and collective action. The theory of working-class radicalism, as developed by Marx and others, has tended to confound the two. The necessary radicalism and fundamental opposition to the growth of capitalist industry of more traditional communities of craft workers was wedded to the concentrated numbers of new industrial workers and the clarity of their exploitation by capitalists. This marriage took place in theory, but not in concrete social movements. The working class emerged as a foundation for basically reformist collective actions, while the radical and reactionary populist craftsmen lost the war of the industrial revolution.

A decade ago, Richard Hofstadter wrote that historians were approaching consensus on the political origins of the War of 1812. Blending elements of the work during the early 1960s of Norman K. Risjord, Bradford Perkins, and Roger H. Brown, Hofstadter (1969: 181) concluded that Republicans were convinced “the Republic itself and the fate of republican government had come to rest on the ability of the Republican party to take a forceful stand against foreign incursions on American rights.” Republicans, in other words, melded national with partisan goals and pursued war to save national honor and the Republican party.

Today, however, one would have to conclude that Hofstadter’s prediction was premature, based upon the spate of articles published since 1972 addressing the partisan nature of the vote for war in the House of Representatives, the role of the War Hawks in the debates and legislation of the war session, and the leadership (or lack thereof) supplied by James Madison (Hatzenbuehler, 1972b, 1976; Egan, 1974; Stagg, 1976; Hickey, 1976; Fritz, 1977; Bell, 1979).

Internal migration plays an important role in the redistribution of the population which normally accompanies industrialization. This was clearly the case in nineteenth-century England, where a major redistribution of the population occurred during the Industrial Revolution. Despite its potential theoretical importance, however, relatively little attention has been paid to the dynamics of internal migration in this classic example of industrialization.