A Comparison of the 1964 & 2016 Presidential Elections

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To draw another picture, this time to illustrate today’s parties, the two bell curves would, instead of overlapping, have a noticeable amount of space between the point furthest left on the Republican bell curve and the point furthest right on the Democratic bell curve. Translation: even the most liberal Republican is more conservative than the most conservative Democrat. This has led to somewhat of a “me vs. you” attitude in Washington. According to Alan Abramowitz in his book The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy, this is not a case of one party disliking the other (although there is plenty of dislike between certain members of each party to go around). “The main reason it is so hard for Democrats and Republicans in Washington to cooperate is not that they don’t like each other, but that they disagree profoundly about the major issues facing the country, as do their politically engaged supporters in the electorate.”[3]

In the 1940s during the New Deal, the only major topic on which the parties disagreed was economics. Slowly but surely, they continued to drift apart. Trends like the transition of Southern whites to the Republican Party which began with the 1964 and 1968 elections during which the Republicans adopted the “Southern Strategy”, emphasizing states’ rights and pro segregation, to the Reagan era of conservatism, to now with the highest rates of Congressional party polarization in history,[4] we have seen our beloved American political system change from a rule by the people, for the people, to a rule by half the people, for half the people, over the other half.

Campaign finance is a hot button issue today, especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision to overturn Citizens United, effectively protecting political spending by corporations and other organizations under the First Amendment as Freedom of Speech. Since that time, nonparty independent expenditures just for congressional elections have skyrocketed from under $350 million to over $550 million between 2010 and 2014 alone.[5] Stephen J. Wayne offers even more staggering numbers regarding Super PACs in his book, Is This Any Way to Run a Democratic Election? “In the 2011-2012 election cycle, Super PACs reported independent expenditures of over $631 million while other nonparty groups spent an additional $400 million, amounts well in excess of what these groups spent in previous elections.”[6] The issue of campaign finance is a complicated one, with both sides having relevant arguments. One side, arguing for the maintenance of the current system, agrees with the Supreme Court that political spending is a form of Free Speech and should be protected. The other side argues that it allows too much room for corruption in the government, and should be done away with. Campaign finance is just one more issue for the parties to polarize themselves over.

The third aspect that has changed significantly is the media and the way that the elections are covered. Free press has always been an important part of election coverage, as its purpose is to inform the public in an unbiased manner, in a way that candidates and parties obviously cannot. As is evident by the way elections are covered today however, it is nearly impossible to find an unbiased media outlet, even now when there are so many sources. The popularization of the Internet as a media outlet has transformed the way voters follow the election. Between the 1970s and 1990s, people got their information on elections almost entirely from any combination of television, newspapers, radio and magazines. Since the enormous growth of the Internet however, the other four outlets have been trending down while the Internet has only been going up.[7] Media is now available at any given moment on a smartphone, and allows voters to get information from thousands of different sources anywhere, any time.

A lot has changed in the American political system since the 1970s. The parties have become significantly more polarized, campaign finance has skyrocketed, and media coverage has gone from a few sources to a seemingly infinite number. All of these topics have arguments on either side, trying to show them as being good or bad. More polarization can be seen as a strengthening of the individual parties, but at the cost of partisanship. Corporations being able to spend unlimited amounts of money supporting, or opposing, a candidate is an effective protection of Freedom of Speech, but makes the possibility of government corruption undeniable. Increased numbers of media sources with the growth of the Internet gives voters on demand access to information from a vast ocean of sources, but how reliable is the information? It seems that there is just no clear-cut correct answer to any of these questions, but one thing cannot be denied: the political landscape of the United States of America looks a whole lot different than it did 40 years ago.

Part II. A

Figure 1

In these four charts, we see that Democrats as a whole are much more likely commit party defection than Republicans, with strong Democrat defection rates frequently reaching between 15-25% compared to strong Republicans only going above 10% one time (1992) between 1952-2012. Similarly weak Democrats defect at a rate of between 40-50% several times while weak Republicans only get above 40% once. This shows that, in general, Republicans have stronger party loyalty than Democrats. Defection rates have been following a general downward trend for Democrats since 1972 and for Republicans since 1992.

Figure 2

These two maps depicting the partisan breakdown of the United States between 1896-1944 and 1964-2012 show a near total flip in state-by-state party identification (only 8 states remained the same, all Republican). This be best explained by changing national sentiment over certain issues combined with changing party emphasis on those issues. One example would be the Republican Party’s emphasis on states’ rights, most notably the 1964 and 1968 elections which had Republicans opposing desegregation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which brought the traditionally Democratic South to the Republicans, as well as the beginning of the Reagan era and conservative emphasis in 1980.

Figure 3

This chart shows how partisan feelings in both parties have followed similar downward trends in partisan feelings towards the opposing party. The GOP held at 45 until the transition from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton in 1992 when they dropped to 39, then to 36 from Clinton to George W. Bush, then down to around 19 from W. to Obama. Democrats dropped by approximately