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Fifth Party System

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Fifth Party System
← Fourth
c. 1932–late 1960s or 1970s[a]
Sixth →
Presidential voting patterns from 1932 through 1976. Darker shades indicate a higher proportion of elections won by the Democratic Party (blue) or the Republican Party (red). The map summarizes state results and does not establish universally accepted dates for the party system.

The Fifth Party System, also called the New Deal Party System, is a periodization of United States party politics that began with the electoral realignment associated with the Great Depression, the 1932 election of Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the consolidation of the New Deal coalition in 1936. The system displaced the Republican ascendancy associated with the Fourth Party System and made the Democratic Party the leading national party for much of the mid-twentieth century. It did not produce uninterrupted Democratic control: Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won the presidency in 1952 and 1956, Republicans controlled Congress in 1947–1949 and 1953–1955, and a bipartisan conservative coalition often limited liberal legislation after 1938.[1][2][3]

The Democratic coalition brought together groups whose interests and ideologies did not always coincide: white southerners, northern urban political organizations, many Catholics and Jews, industrial workers and labor unions, portions of the farm vote, liberal intellectuals, and, increasingly during the 1930s, Black voters outside the disfranchising South. Republicans retained substantial support among businesspeople, many professionals and middle-class Protestants, and voters in smaller towns, suburbs, and parts of the Midwest and Northeast. Both parties contained liberal, moderate, and conservative factions. The resulting politics cannot accurately be described as a sudden exchange of party ideologies; rather, the parties' positions, constituencies, and regional bases changed unevenly over several decades.[4][5][6]

The central disputes of the system concerned the federal government's responsibility for economic security, regulation, labor relations and social welfare; the place of race and civil rights in national politics; and the conduct of World War II and the Cold War. Institutions created or enlarged during the period—including Social Security, federal labor law, agricultural supports, housing and veterans' programs, and later Medicare and Medicaid—continued to structure political conflict after the coalition that created them weakened.[7][8]

There is no scholarly consensus on the system's ending. Suggested turning points include the elections of 1964–1968, the 1972 election and party reforms, the 1980 election, and the Republican congressional breakthrough of 1994. The civil-rights realignment, decline of urban machines and organized labor, growth of suburbs and the Sun Belt, expansion of candidate-centered campaigning, and rising conflict over culture and national identity occurred at different rates. Consequently, some historians use the broader concept of a New Deal order lasting into the 1970s or 1980s, while some political scientists identify a successor Sixth Party System beginning in the late 1960s.[9][10][11]

Definition and periodization

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The numbered party-system model groups elections into periods of relatively durable competition between major-party coalitions. Political scientists William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham popularized the numbered terminology in American Party Systems (1967), building on earlier studies of critical elections and realignment. The model concerns party competition and voter alignment rather than every aspect of a historical era; the Fifth Party System overlaps the latter part of the Great Depression, World War II, the early Cold War, the civil rights movement, and much of the postwar economic expansion.[12][13]

Most accounts treat 1932 as the decisive break because the Depression discredited Republican stewardship, Roosevelt won a national landslide, and Democrats gained overwhelming congressional majorities. Others stress 1936, when the popularity of the New Deal and the integration of labor, Black northern voters and urban ethnic constituencies made the new alignment more durable. Democrats gained twelve Senate seats in 1932, ten more in 1934 and seven more in 1936, producing a Senate majority so large that conflicts inside the party became increasingly important.[3][4][14]

The ending is more difficult to date because no single election reversed every feature of the New Deal alignment. The Democratic presidential coalition began fracturing over race, war, crime, religion and social change during the 1940s and especially the 1960s. Republicans won five of the six presidential elections from 1968 through 1988, yet Democrats controlled the House continuously from 1955 through 1994 and retained many southern and working-class offices long after their presidential support declined. The transition was therefore both regional and institutional: presidential voting changed earlier than much congressional, state and local voting.[15][16][17]

Formation, 1928–1936

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Depression and the election of 1932

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The stock-market crash of 1929 was followed by banking panics, deflation, collapsing production and employment, and an international contraction. President Herbert Hoover approved public works, agricultural credit, emergency lending and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, but he opposed permanent federal direct relief and could not arrest the decline. Republican losses in the 1930 midterms foreshadowed the larger reversal of 1932.[18][19]

Roosevelt delivering his first fireside chat during the banking crisis on March 12, 1933. Radio allowed presidents to address a national audience directly while party organizations remained important to mobilization.

Roosevelt campaigned in 1932 on active national leadership, relief and institutional reform, although the precise content of the New Deal emerged during the transition and first months in office. He defeated Hoover with 57.4 percent of the popular vote and 472 electoral votes. Democrats won a nearly three-to-one House majority and fifty-nine Senate seats. The election was a repudiation of the incumbent administration, but the durability of the new alignment depended on what followed.[3][20]

During Roosevelt's first hundred days, Congress enacted emergency banking legislation, financial regulation, farm and industrial programs, public works and federal relief. The administration abandoned the domestic gold standard, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, created the Securities and Exchange Commission, and built agencies that joined federal money to state and local administration. The New Deal was not a single coherent blueprint: programs changed in response to litigation, political pressure, administrative experience and renewed economic crisis.[21][18]

Consolidation in 1934 and 1936

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Unlike the usual midterm pattern, Democrats gained seats in both chambers in 1934. Labor organizing, relief employment, farm programs and the administration's communication network strengthened Democratic loyalties, while critics on both left and right pushed Roosevelt toward the more redistributive "Second New Deal". Major enactments in 1935 included the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations Act and the Works Progress Administration.[21][22][23]

Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935. The law created old-age insurance, unemployment insurance and public-assistance programs, but its original occupational exclusions left many workers outside old-age coverage.

Roosevelt's 1936 reelection was one of the largest landslides in United States history: he carried every state except Maine and Vermont. Democrats also reached seventy-six Senate seats and 334 House seats. Survey and electoral research indicates that the victory combined continuing southern Democratic loyalty with large margins among urban workers, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, relief recipients and many farmers. Black voters outside the South moved sharply toward Roosevelt, although the change occurred unevenly and many remained attached to the party of Lincoln.[4][24][25]

County results in the 1936 presidential election. The landslide joined the Solid South to Democratic strength in industrial cities, mining districts, much of the West and many farm areas.

Coalitions, organizations and voter behavior

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The New Deal coalition

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The New Deal coalition was heterogeneous. Its principal components included the white South; big-city Democratic organizations; industrial workers and the growing Congress of Industrial Organizations; many Catholics and Jews; portions of the farm population; liberal reformers and intellectuals; and Black voters in northern and western cities. These groups did not hold identical views on race, religion, foreign policy or the power of organized labor. What united them most reliably was support for Roosevelt and for a federal government expected to provide relief, economic security and countervailing power against business.[5][26][27]

Southern Democrats were essential to New Deal congressional majorities, but their position rested on the disfranchisement of most Black citizens and many poor white citizens. Committee seniority gave long-serving southerners power over legislation. As a result, New Deal social programs were often decentralized or designed around occupational categories that permitted unequal administration. The original Social Security old-age program excluded agricultural and domestic employment, sectors containing large shares of Black, Mexican American and female workers, although it also excluded millions of white workers and several other occupational groups. Later amendments expanded coverage.[28][8][29]

Political machines remained important in cities such as Chicago, Jersey City and Kansas City, but they operated in a changed environment. Federal relief and public works could strengthen local organizations, while direct federal administration and mass communication also reduced machines' monopoly over benefits and information. Union political-action committees, civil-rights organizations and issue-based groups increasingly supplemented precinct organizations. Radio, public-opinion polling and later television made campaigns more national and more centered on candidates, though turnout and party identification remained strong.[5][7][30]

Republican constituencies and factions

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Republicans retained a national base despite their Depression-era losses. The party was strongest among business and professional groups, many middle-class Protestants, smaller towns and suburbs, and large parts of New England, the Midwest and interior West. It included conservative opponents of the New Deal, internationalists and isolationists, and an important moderate-to-liberal wing. Figures such as Robert A. Taft and Barry Goldwater represented different generations of conservatism; Thomas E. Dewey, Earl Warren, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jacob Javits, Nelson Rockefeller, George W. Romney and William Scranton represented varied forms of moderate or liberal Republicanism.[31][32]

Republican criticism of the New Deal focused on executive power, federal spending, regulation, organized labor and the constitutional limits of national authority. Yet Republican administrations did not simply repeal the New Deal. Eisenhower accepted Social Security, the minimum wage and the basic framework of collective bargaining while seeking balanced budgets, private development and administrative restraint. Nixon later combined appeals to conservative constituencies with wage-and-price controls, environmental legislation, expanded social benefits and proposed national health and welfare reforms. The party's conservative ascendancy was gradual and contested, not completed by Nixon's 1968 victory; moderate and liberal Republicans continued to hold major offices into and beyond the 1980s.[33][34][31]

Congress and the conservative coalition

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Roosevelt's proposal to enlarge the Supreme Court in 1937, the economic recession of 1937–1938, labor conflict and an unsuccessful presidential effort to defeat conservative Democratic incumbents intensified divisions within the majority party. Republicans gained eighty-one House seats in the 1938 midterms. Thereafter, conservative Republicans and southern Democrats frequently cooperated to block or modify further domestic liberal legislation. This conservative coalition was not a formal party and did not control every issue: different bipartisan coalitions enacted wartime measures, foreign-policy programs and, eventually, civil-rights laws.[35][36]

Democrats controlled the House from 1931 through 1947, 1949 through 1953, and continuously from 1955 through 1995. Republicans held both chambers only during the 80th Congress (1947–1949) and 83rd Congress (1953–1955) within the conventional Fifth Party System period. These facts distinguish presidential competition from congressional control and help explain why Republican presidents governed alongside durable Democratic committee majorities.[37][38]

Third parties and regional parties

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Minor parties affected particular states, movements and elections without replacing the national two-party structure. The Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party, the Wisconsin Progressive Party and North Dakota's Nonpartisan League won state and congressional offices and often cooperated with the New Deal. Minnesota Farmer–Laborites merged with state Democrats in 1944 to create the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, while Wisconsin Progressives returned largely to the major parties after 1946. New York's American Labor Party used electoral fusion to support Roosevelt and other candidates before internal conflict and anti-communism weakened it.[39][2]

Later protest candidacies exposed fractures in the major coalitions. Strom Thurmond's States' Rights Democratic Party carried four Deep South states in 1948 in opposition to the national Democratic civil-rights plank. Henry A. Wallace's Progressive Party challenged Truman from the left but won no electoral votes. George Wallace's American Independent Party carried five southern states in 1968 and sought to deny either major candidate an electoral majority. These campaigns differed in program and constituency and should not be treated as a single third-party realignment.[40][41]

National election chronology

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Presidential elections commonly associated with the Fifth Party System
ElectionWinnerPartyPrincipal opponent(s)Political significance
1932Franklin D. RooseveltDemocraticHerbert HooverDepression-era Democratic landslide and beginning of the New Deal realignment
1936Franklin D. RooseveltDemocraticAlf LandonConsolidation of the New Deal coalition; Roosevelt carried 46 of 48 states
1940Franklin D. RooseveltDemocraticWendell WillkieRoosevelt won an unprecedented third term amid debate over war and preparedness
1944Franklin D. RooseveltDemocraticThomas E. DeweyWartime election; Roosevelt won a fourth term
1948Harry S. TrumanDemocraticDewey; Strom Thurmond; Henry A. WallaceDemocratic victory despite left and segregationist defections
1952Dwight D. EisenhowerRepublicanAdlai Stevenson IIFirst Republican presidential victory since 1928; did not dismantle the New Deal state
1956Dwight D. EisenhowerRepublicanAdlai Stevenson IIEisenhower reelected while Democrats retained Congress
1960John F. KennedyDemocraticRichard NixonExtremely close election shaped by television, religion, region and party organization
1964Lyndon B. JohnsonDemocraticBarry GoldwaterDemocratic landslide and liberal congressional peak; Goldwater carried five Deep South states
1968Richard NixonRepublicanHubert Humphrey; George WallaceFrequently identified as a transition election amid war, unrest and regional change
1972Richard NixonRepublicanGeorge McGovernRepublican landslide accompanied by continued Democratic congressional control
1976Jimmy CarterDemocraticGerald FordPost-Watergate election; Carter combined southern support with traditional Democratic constituencies

Election returns: Office of the Historian, United States House of Representatives.[42]

Roosevelt and Truman, 1936–1952

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Roosevelt's third- and fourth-term victories preserved Democratic presidential control as international crisis displaced many Depression-era issues. The 1940 Republican nominee, Willkie, accepted important parts of the New Deal but criticized executive centralization and challenged Roosevelt's bid for a third term. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, wartime mobilization reduced unemployment, expanded industrial production and accelerated migration to defense centers. The federal government managed prices, production, labor disputes and military conscription on a scale greater than the peacetime New Deal.[18][36]

Truman succeeded to the presidency after Roosevelt's death in April 1945. Postwar strikes, inflation and shortages contributed to the Republican congressional victory of 1946. The 80th Congress enacted the Taft–Hartley Act over Truman's veto, limiting union practices and permitting state right-to-work laws. Truman then won an upset victory in 1948 while campaigning against the "do-nothing" Republican Congress and proposing the Fair Deal. His civil-rights program and the Democratic convention plank provoked the Dixiecrat revolt, while Wallace attacked the administration's Cold War policies from the left.[43][40]

The Korean War, inflation and corruption allegations weakened Truman's administration. Eisenhower, a celebrated World War II commander, ended twenty years of Democratic presidential control in 1952. His victory did not terminate the party system: he attracted cross-party personal support, Republicans held Congress only briefly, and Democratic identifiers remained numerous.[44][33]

Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, 1952–1968

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Eisenhower pursued what he called "modern Republicanism", accepting major social-insurance and labor institutions while favoring fiscal restraint and partnership with state, local and private institutions. Social Security coverage and benefits expanded, the federal minimum wage increased, and the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 created the Interstate Highway System. Democrats regained Congress in 1954 and expanded their majorities in the recession-year elections of 1958.[33][44]

Kennedy defeated Vice President Nixon narrowly in 1960. His coalition depended on large margins among Black voters, Catholics and union households, together with continued support in much of the South; Nixon won many western and suburban areas. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 brought Johnson to the presidency. Johnson combined presidential persuasion, public sympathy and enlarged Democratic congressional majorities to enact civil-rights, health, education, immigration and anti-poverty legislation.[45][46]

The 1964 election produced a landslide for Johnson and historically large liberal majorities in Congress. Goldwater carried his home state of Arizona and five Deep South states; he opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on constitutional grounds after supporting earlier civil-rights measures. The result revealed both the strength of New Deal–Great Society liberalism and the possibility of a conservative Republican coalition in the South and West. It did not instantly realign southern politics: many white southerners continued voting Democratic in state and congressional contests for years.[47][16]

Nixon, Ford and Carter, 1968–1976

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Nixon at a 1968 campaign rally in Pennsylvania. His appeal joined calls for order, criticism of the Johnson administration and a promise to represent a "silent majority"; the resulting coalition was broader than a single southern strategy.

By 1968, the Vietnam War, urban uprisings, assassinations, campus protest and divisions over civil rights fractured the Democratic coalition. Johnson withdrew from the presidential race. Nixon narrowly defeated Humphrey, while George Wallace won five southern states and 46 electoral votes. Nixon pursued a "New Majority" that appealed to southern whites, northern working- and middle-class voters, Catholics, suburbanites and anti-communists, but the administration also courted established New Deal constituencies and governed through a Democratic Congress.[34][48][49]

Nixon's 1972 landslide was personal and presidential rather than a complete down-ballot realignment: Democrats retained both chambers of Congress. Reforms following the divisive 1968 Democratic convention transferred power over nominations from party leaders toward primaries and caucuses, accelerating candidate-centered politics. The Watergate scandal led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974 and heavy Republican losses in the 1974 midterms. Ford's pardon of Nixon and continuing inflation damaged him, but he lost narrowly to Carter in 1976 rather than in a repudiation comparable to 1932.[50][51]

Nixon departing the White House on August 9, 1974. Watergate weakened public trust and helped produce the Democratic congressional landslide of 1974, but it did not restore the original New Deal coalition.

Carter carried every former Confederate state except Virginia while also winning much of the traditional Democratic industrial base. His victory demonstrated the continued importance of favorite-son, evangelical and Democratic loyalties in the South. Those ties proved fragile: economic malaise, conflict within the Democratic Party and the Iran hostage crisis contributed to Ronald Reagan's 1980 victory. Scholars who date the Sixth Party System from 1980 emphasize Reagan's ideological leadership and the Republican capture of the Senate; those who choose the late 1960s emphasize the earlier transformation of race, region, nominations and presidential voting.[52][10][53]

Public policy and political economy

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The New Deal state

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The New Deal permanently enlarged federal responsibility but did not create an all-purpose centralized welfare state. It combined national regulation and insurance with grants, loans and programs administered through states, localities, banks, employers and private organizations. Banking reform, securities regulation, agricultural supports, public works, rural electrification and mortgage institutions reshaped markets as well as government. The Supreme Court invalidated several early measures, but upheld major labor and social-security laws after 1937.[21][54]

The National Labor Relations Act protected collective bargaining for most private-sector workers covered by the statute and established the National Labor Relations Board. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 created federal minimum-wage, overtime and child-labor rules. Union membership rose rapidly, particularly with CIO organization in mass-production industries. Nevertheless, agricultural and domestic workers were excluded from important labor protections, southern resistance limited union growth, and racial and gender discrimination persisted within many workplaces and unions.[22][55]

Dorothea Lange's 1936 portrait of Florence Owens Thompson and three of her children became an enduring image of Depression-era hardship. The Farm Security Administration used documentary photography to publicize rural conditions and government programs.

Social Security originally combined federal old-age insurance with federal-state unemployment insurance and public assistance. The initial old-age program covered employees in commerce and industry but excluded about half the workforce, including agricultural and domestic workers, many self-employed people, public employees and nonprofit workers. Amendments in 1939 added survivors' benefits, and the 1950 and 1954 amendments greatly expanded coverage. The program's broad constituency helped make it politically durable.[23][29][56]

War, veterans and the postwar economy

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World War II mobilization ended mass unemployment and created a military-industrial administrative system far larger than the peacetime New Deal. War production strengthened major corporations and unions, while wage controls encouraged employers to offer health and pension benefits. The federal government financed scientific research, relocated workers, interned Japanese Americans and maintained racial segregation in the armed forces until after the war. These policies distributed opportunity and coercion unequally.[18][57]

The G.I. Bill supported veterans' education, home loans and unemployment benefits. It expanded the middle class and higher education, but local administration, segregated institutions and discrimination in housing and lending often limited Black veterans' access. Federal mortgage guarantees and highways subsidized suburban development, while exclusionary zoning and racially discriminatory real-estate practices reinforced metropolitan segregation.[58][59]

Postwar policymakers generally accepted a mixed economy in which private enterprise operated alongside monetary and fiscal management, social insurance and defense spending. The Employment Act of 1946 declared a federal responsibility to promote employment and created the Council of Economic Advisers, although it did not guarantee a job. Economic growth raised real incomes and consumption through much of the 1950s and 1960s, but poverty, racial inequality, regional underdevelopment and unequal bargaining power remained politically salient.[60][44]

Great Society and regulatory expansion

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Johnson's Great Society extended the New Deal tradition into health, education, civil rights, urban development and environmental policy. Congress created Medicare and Medicaid, federal aid to elementary and secondary education, food-assistance and anti-poverty programs, and new departments for housing and transportation. The 1965 immigration law abolished the national-origins quota system and gave priority to family reunification and certain occupational skills, reshaping later immigration without producing its demographic effects all at once.[61][62]

Later Republican administrations did not simply reverse this expansion. Nixon signed legislation creating the Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Supplemental Security Income, and he imposed temporary wage-and-price controls in 1971. His administration also sought revenue sharing and administrative decentralization. These combinations of conservative electoral rhetoric and policy continuity complicate efforts to place a clean ideological boundary at 1968.[34][63]

Race, civil rights and regional realignment

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Black voters had been a core Republican constituency after the Civil War. The Great Migration increased Black voting power in northern cities, where the Depression and New Deal relief programs weakened inherited Republican loyalty. In 1934 Chicago Democrat Arthur W. Mitchell defeated Republican Oscar De Priest to become the first Black Democrat elected to Congress; by 1936, Black voters in northern cities supported Roosevelt by large margins. This shift preceded the national Democratic Party's full embrace of civil-rights legislation and reflected economic policy, local organization and the increasing influence of Black activists within the coalition.[25][64]

The New Deal administration depended on segregationist southern Democrats and did not endorse federal anti-lynching legislation. New Deal programs could provide material benefits while reproducing discrimination through local control and occupational exclusions. Pressure from A. Philip Randolph's threatened March on Washington led Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, prohibiting discrimination in defense employment and creating the Fair Employment Practice Committee. In 1948 Truman issued Executive Order 9981, directing equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, and campaigned on a civil-rights platform despite the Dixiecrat revolt.[28][65][66]

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), mass activism and national media attention forced civil rights to the center of party politics. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and enforced school desegregation at Little Rock, although he was cautious about federal activism. Kennedy's administration initially moved slowly, then proposed major legislation in 1963. Johnson and a bipartisan congressional coalition secured the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after the Senate invoked cloture against a sixty-day filibuster; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 attacked literacy tests and authorized federal enforcement in jurisdictions with histories of discrimination.[44][67][68]

Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as Martin Luther King Jr. and congressional leaders look on. The law passed through a bipartisan coalition: most northern Democrats and Republicans supported it, while most southern members opposed it.

The national parties' divergence over civil rights changed their coalitions, but the often-used metaphor of a party "switch" is misleading. The Democratic Party became more consistently supportive of federal civil-rights enforcement through pressure from Black voters, labor, liberal organizations and movement activism. Conservative white southerners moved toward Republican presidential candidates at different times, while many remained Democrats in state and local politics. Republicans divided over enforcement, federal power and strategy: large majorities of Republican members of Congress supported the 1964 act, even as Goldwater's opposition helped him carry the Deep South. Race subsequently interacted with class, religion, region, crime, welfare and school policy rather than operating as an isolated issue.[6][69][15]

Civil-rights, religious and labor leaders at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The movement joined demands for desegregation and voting rights to employment and economic justice.

The Voting Rights Act transformed southern registration and officeholding, increasing Black influence within the Democratic Party and making biracial competition possible. At the same time, Republican presidential support grew among many southern white voters. The change was not uniform: the Deep South, peripheral South, border states and growing metropolitan South followed different trajectories. A durable Republican advantage in southern congressional and state politics emerged later than the presidential shift and was not complete during the conventional Fifth Party System.[16][15]

Labor, religion, gender and social change

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Organized labor was an institutional anchor of the Democratic coalition. The CIO's industrial unions mobilized workers, financed campaigns and connected workplace organization to national social policy. The AFL–CIO merger in 1955 consolidated much of the movement, and unions remained influential in Democratic politics through the 1960s. Their power was limited by Taft–Hartley, right-to-work laws, racial and craft divisions, relocation of industry, and the increasing share of employment in less-unionized service and suburban sectors. Private-sector union density began a sustained decline after the mid-1950s.[55][70]

Religious and ethnic identities continued to shape voting. Catholics and Jews became strongly Democratic during the New Deal, while many white evangelical and mainline Protestants remained Republican or divided by region. Anti-Catholic prejudice hurt Al Smith in 1928, but Kennedy's 1960 victory demonstrated both continuing resistance and the electoral mobilization of Catholic voters. By the 1970s, abortion, school prayer, feminism, sexuality and private-school policy were creating cross-pressures that did not fit the older economic alignment.[27][71]

Women were indispensable to New Deal administration, wartime mobilization and postwar reform but remained underrepresented in party leadership and elected office. Labor secretary Frances Perkins was a principal architect of Social Security and federal labor standards. After World War II, women's organizations pursued equal employment, child care, peace and civil rights. The President's Commission on the Status of Women reported in 1963; Congress enacted the Equal Pay Act and included sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The women's liberation movement, the National Organization for Women, and conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment later made gender a more visible partisan issue.[72][73]

Population moved from rural areas and central cities toward suburbs and from the Northeast and Midwest toward the South and West. Federal housing and transportation policies supported metropolitan decentralization, while discrimination and municipal fragmentation produced unequal access to homes, schools and public services. Suburban voters could support Social Security, highways and defense spending while opposing urban spending, compulsory integration or higher taxes. These patterns helped reshape both parties and the geography of presidential campaigning.[59][49][74]

Foreign policy, war and national security

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Foreign policy did not map consistently onto party lines. Before World War II, internationalists and non-interventionists existed in both parties. Roosevelt gradually expanded aid to the Allies and won congressional approval of Lend-Lease before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war. Wartime leadership strengthened Roosevelt, but debates over executive power, military strategy and the postwar settlement continued.[18]

After 1945, the Truman administration adopted containment, the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO and military intervention in Korea. A broad bipartisan internationalist coalition supported much of this policy, while Republicans and Democrats disputed spending, strategy and the administration's handling of China and Korea. Anti-communism also shaped domestic politics through loyalty programs, congressional investigations and McCarthyism, constraining labor, civil-rights and left-wing organizations.[75][76]

Eisenhower maintained containment while relying on nuclear deterrence, covert action and alliances. Kennedy increased defense commitments and confronted crises in Cuba and Berlin. Johnson's escalation in Vietnam initially drew bipartisan support, but mounting casualties, the draft and the Tet Offensive widened divisions within the Democratic Party and public opinion. Nixon pursued Vietnamization, bombing in Indochina, détente with the Soviet Union and an opening to the People's Republic of China. War and protest weakened the consensus politics associated with the mature New Deal order.[75][44][77]

Transformation and disputed end

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The Fifth Party System eroded through several overlapping processes rather than one exact critical election. Civil-rights conflict weakened the Democrats' combination of Black voters and segregationist white southerners. Suburbanization and migration shifted electoral power toward the Sun Belt. Deindustrialization and declining union density reduced organized labor's reach. Vietnam, inflation, crime, taxation and disputes over gender, sexuality and religion created issue alignments different from those of the Depression.[11][70][73]

Institutional reforms changed how parties worked. The McGovern–Fraser Commission and parallel Republican changes expanded presidential primaries, diminished the nominating power of party leaders and required more open delegate-selection rules. Television, polling, direct-mail fundraising and professional consultants encouraged candidates to build personal organizations. The Federal Election Campaign Act and its post-Watergate amendments regulated contributions, spending and disclosure, but also reinforced national campaign organizations outside traditional local machines.[50][78]

Scholars therefore identify different successors. One interpretation places a sixth system between 1964 and 1972, emphasizing civil rights, the South, candidate-centered nominations and Nixon's coalition. Another uses 1980, when Reagan won the presidency, Republicans captured the Senate and movement conservatism gained control of the national Republican agenda. Still others emphasize the 1990s, when party voting in Congress became more consistently polarized and Republicans ended forty years of Democratic House control. Critics of realignment theory question whether post-1932 changes fit any regular cycle at all.[53][10][9]

No interpretation supports the claims that Nixon's election caused every liberal Republican to become a Democrat or that Democrats held the presidency continuously for four decades. Moderate and liberal Republicans remained influential after 1968, while conservative Democrats persisted in Congress and state politics. The lasting transformation was a gradual sorting of activists, officeholders and voters by ideology and region, combined with changes in institutions and campaign technology.[31][79]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ↑ The beginning of the Fifth Party System is conventionally associated with the elections of 1932 and 1936. Scholars disagree about its ending: proposed transition dates range from the late 1960s through 1980.

References

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  1. ↑ Kleppner, Paul; Burnham, Walter Dean; Clubok, Alfred J.; Flanigan, William H., eds. (1981). "The Last Party System: Decay of Consensus, 1932–1980". The Evolution of American Electoral Systems. Greenwood Press. pp. 219–225.
  2. 1 2 Sundquist, James L. (1983). Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (rev. ed.). Brookings Institution.
  3. 1 2 3 "A Momentous Political Realignment". United States Senate Historical Office. November 8, 1932. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 Andersen, Kristi (1979). The Creation of a Democratic Majority, 1928–1936. University of Chicago Press.
  5. 1 2 3 Cohen, Lizabeth (1990). Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939. Cambridge University Press.
  6. 1 2 Schickler, Eric (2016). Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965. Princeton University Press.
  7. 1 2 Milkis, Sidney M. (1993). The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal. Oxford University Press.
  8. 1 2 Mettler, Suzanne (1998). Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy. Cornell University Press.
  9. 1 2 Mayhew, David R. (2002). Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre. Yale University Press.
  10. 1 2 3 Maisel, L. Sandy; Brewer, Mark D. (2011). Parties and Elections in America: The Electoral Process (6th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 41–44.
  11. 1 2 Fraser, Steve; Gerstle, Gary, eds. (1989). The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980. Princeton University Press.
  12. ↑ Chambers, William Nisbet; Burnham, Walter Dean, eds. (1967). American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development. Oxford University Press.
  13. ↑ Burnham, Walter Dean (1970). Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. W. W. Norton.
  14. ↑ Sternsher, Bernard (1984). "The New Deal Party System: A Reappraisal". Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 15 (1): 53–81. doi:10.2307/203594. JSTOR 203594.
  15. 1 2 3 Shafer, Byron E.; Johnston, Richard (2006). The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar American South. Harvard University Press.
  16. 1 2 3 Black, Earl; Black, Merle (2002). The Rise of Southern Republicans. Harvard University Press.
  17. ↑ Craig, Stephen C., ed. (1996). Broken Contract? Changing Relationships Between Americans and Their Government. Westview Press. pp. 103–108.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 Kennedy, David M. (1999). Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. Oxford University Press.
  19. ↑ McElvaine, Robert S. (1984). The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941. Times Books.
  20. ↑ Leuchtenburg, William E. (1963). Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940. Harper & Row.
  21. 1 2 3 Badger, Anthony J. (1989). The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933–1940. Hill and Wang.
  22. 1 2 "1935 passage of the Wagner Act". National Labor Relations Board. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  23. 1 2 "Legislative History: 1935 Social Security Act". Social Security Administration. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  24. ↑ Robinson, Edgar Eugene (1947). They Voted for Roosevelt: The Presidential Vote, 1932–1944. Stanford University Press.
  25. 1 2 Weiss, Nancy J. (1983). Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR. Princeton University Press.
  26. ↑ Allswang, John M. (1978). The New Deal and American Politics: A Study in Political Change. Wiley.
  27. 1 2 Manza, Jeff; Brooks, Clem (1999). Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions. Oxford University Press.
  28. 1 2 Katznelson, Ira (2013). Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. Liveright.
  29. 1 2 DeWitt, Larry (2010). "The Decision to Exclude Agricultural and Domestic Workers from the 1935 Social Security Act". Social Security Bulletin. 70 (4): 49–68. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  30. ↑ Gosnell, Harold F. (1937). Machine Politics: Chicago Model. University of Chicago Press.
  31. 1 2 3 Kabaservice, Geoffrey (2012). Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party. Oxford University Press.
  32. ↑ Patterson, James T. (1972). Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft. Houghton Mifflin.
  33. 1 2 3 Greenstein, Fred I. (1982). The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader. Basic Books.
  34. 1 2 3 Mason, Robert (2004). Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority. University of North Carolina Press.
  35. ↑ Patterson, James T. (1967). Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–1939. University Press of Kentucky.
  36. 1 2 Brinkley, Alan (1995). The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. Alfred A. Knopf.
  37. ↑ "Party Divisions of the House of Representatives, 1789 to Present". Office of the Historian, United States House of Representatives. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  38. ↑ "Party Division". United States Senate. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  39. ↑ Valelly, Richard M. (1989). Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy. University of Chicago Press.
  40. 1 2 Sitkoff, Harvard (1971). "Harry Truman and the Election of 1948: The Coming of Age of Civil Rights in American Politics". Journal of Southern History. 37 (4): 597–616. doi:10.2307/2206548. JSTOR 2206548.
  41. ↑ Carter, Dan T. (1995). The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. Simon & Schuster.
  42. ↑ "Election Statistics, 1920 to Present". Office of the Historian, United States House of Representatives. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  43. ↑ Hamby, Alonzo L. (1973). Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism. Columbia University Press.
  44. 1 2 3 4 5 Patterson, James T. (1996). Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. Oxford University Press.
  45. ↑ White, Theodore H. (1961). The Making of the President 1960. Atheneum.
  46. ↑ Caro, Robert A. (2012). The Passage of Power. The Years of Lyndon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf.
  47. ↑ Donaldson, Gary A. (2003). Liberalism's Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964. M. E. Sharpe.
  48. ↑ Gould, Lewis L. (1993). 1968: The Election That Changed America. Ivan R. Dee.
  49. 1 2 Lassiter, Matthew D. (2006). The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South. Princeton University Press.
  50. 1 2 Ceaser, James W. (1979). Presidential Selection: Theory and Development. Princeton University Press.
  51. ↑ Kutler, Stanley I. (1990). The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon. Alfred A. Knopf.
  52. ↑ Gillon, Steven M. (1987). Politics and Vision: The ADA and American Liberalism, 1947–1985. Oxford University Press.
  53. 1 2 Paulson, Arthur (2009). "Party Change and the Shifting Dynamics in Presidential Nominations: The Lessons of 2008". Polity. 41 (3): 312–330. doi:10.1057/pol.2009.3.
  54. ↑ Novak, William J. (2022). New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. Harvard University Press.
  55. 1 2 Dubofsky, Melvyn; Dulles, Foster Rhea (1994). Labor in America: A History (5th ed.). Harlan Davidson.
  56. ↑ "Social Security Amendments of 1950: A Summary and Legislative History". Social Security Administration. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  57. ↑ Hooks, Gregory (1991). Forging the Military-Industrial Complex: World War II's Battle of the Potomac. University of Illinois Press.
  58. ↑ Mettler, Suzanne (2005). Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation. Oxford University Press.
  59. 1 2 Kruse, Kevin M. (2005). White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton University Press.
  60. ↑ Collins, Robert M. (2000). More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America. Oxford University Press.
  61. ↑ Zelizer, Julian E. (2015). The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society. Penguin Press.
  62. ↑ Tichenor, Daniel J. (2002). Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America. Princeton University Press.
  63. ↑ Small, Melvin (1999). The Presidency of Richard Nixon. University Press of Kansas.
  64. ↑ "The 'Fulfillment of White's Prophecy': African-American Voters Shift to the Democratic Party". Office of the Historian, United States House of Representatives. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  65. ↑ "Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry (1941)". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  66. ↑ "Executive Order 9981: Desegregation of the Armed Forces (1948)". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  67. ↑ "Civil Rights Filibuster Ended". United States Senate Historical Office. June 10, 1964. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  68. ↑ "Voting Rights Act (1965)". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved August 6, 2026.
  69. ↑ Carmines, Edward G.; Stimson, James A. (1989). Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton University Press.
  70. 1 2 Cowie, Jefferson (2010). Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. The New Press.
  71. ↑ Williams, Daniel K. (2010). God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. Oxford University Press.
  72. ↑ Cobble, Dorothy Sue (2004). The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America. Princeton University Press.
  73. 1 2 Self, Robert O. (2012). All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s. Hill and Wang.
  74. ↑ Nicolaides, Becky M. (2002). My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920–1965. University of Chicago Press.
  75. 1 2 Gaddis, John Lewis (2005). Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (rev. ed.). Oxford University Press.
  76. ↑ Schrecker, Ellen (1998). Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Little, Brown.
  77. ↑ Logevall, Fredrik (1999). Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam. University of California Press.
  78. ↑ Aldrich, John H. (1995). Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America. University of Chicago Press.
  79. ↑ Karol, David (2009). Party Position Change in American Politics: Coalition Management. Cambridge University Press.

Further reading

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  • Allswang, John M. The New Deal and American Politics: A Study in Political Change (1978).
  • Andersen, Kristi. The Creation of a Democratic Majority, 1928–1936 (1979).
  • Black, Earl, and Merle Black. The Rise of Southern Republicans (2002).
  • Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995).
  • Burnham, Walter Dean. Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (1970).
  • Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (1989).
  • Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (1990).
  • Fraser, Steve, and Gary Gerstle, eds. The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (1989).
  • Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (1999).
  • Kleppner, Paul, et al., eds. The Evolution of American Electoral Systems (1981).
  • Maisel, L. Sandy, and Mark D. Brewer. Parties and Elections in America: The Electoral Process, 6th ed. (2011).
  • Manza, Jeff, and Clem Brooks. Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions (1999).
  • Mayhew, David R. Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (2002).
  • Milkis, Sidney M. The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (1993).
  • Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (1996).
  • Schickler, Eric. Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965 (2016).
  • Shafer, Byron E., and Richard Johnston. The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar American South (2006).
  • Sundquist, James L. Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, revised ed. (1983).
  • Weiss, Nancy J. Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR (1983).
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