Was 2024 a realigning election?

that transformed the American party system?

As is typical following an American election, pundits have gone crazy speculating about the long-term historical significance of the 2024 American elections. As someone who used to teach university-level classes on American political history, I tend to think most of these are wild exaggerations.

I am not exactly sure why so many people were surprised by the election results, as they seemed fairly obvious to me as long as one year ago. All the fundamentals were in the Republicans favor.

In particular, President Biden’s approval rating tanked in August 2021, and his obviously diminishing mental state and the Democratic loss of control over the US House in 2022 made it very difficult for him to bounce back.

President Biden’s monthly approval rating

Then add on numerous Democratic own-goals:

• President Biden picking a VP based on DEI characteristics in 2020 rather than designating an electable successor. As I argue in my recent article, this is what happens when you value DEI over Merit.
  Kamala Harris’s approval ratings were among the worst in American history (and were widely acknowledged by Democrats and the media until Brat summer)

• President Biden’s decision to run for reelection in 2023, when everyone else should have known better.

• The DNC’s determination to clear out all opposition candidates to Biden on the Center-Left and Left.

• The mainstream media pretending that Biden’s cognition decline was just a right-wing conspiracy theory.

• The extremely early Biden-Trump Presidential debate when the truth became obvious to all.

• The sudden pivot of the media and Democratic insiders from “Biden is our man” to “Biden must go” in less than 1 hour. Everything that came after that was just damage control.

The combination of these huge strategic errors doomed Democratic chances of making up for the disadvantage in the fundamentals. I felt like the first 10 months of 2024 were like feeling an earthquake and then waiting for the inevitable tsunami to hit.

Despite being one of the most eventful campaigns in American political history, the 2024 campaign created virtually no movement in public opinion. Regardless of what the polls said, Trump was going to win in February 2024, March, April ….. November 2024. More than one billion dollars flushed down the toilet.

I do not consider myself a very good election outcome predictor, but a Republican victory seemed likely to me. I have learned from long hard experiences to ignore the rapid movements during the campaign and keep the focus on the fundamentals.

The campaign is the waves in the ocean; the fundamentals are the Tide.

I actually never thought Biden would be the Democratic nominee, even when everyone was sure that he was inevitable in the first half of 2024. The overthrow of President Biden by the Democratic party was not a surprise to me at all. On the contrary, I wondered why it took them so long. They should have done it in the summer of 2023, but they were too smart for their own good.

The 2024 Senate and House outcomes were also fairly predictable based on overall partisan identification polls and the contested states. If anything, the Republicans should have done far better in the Purple Senate races.

The Democrats:

• won 4 of the 5 closest Senate races in this election

• won 4 of the 6 closest Senate races in the 2022 midterm elections.

• won 6 of 7 closest Senate races in the 2020 Senate elections.

• won 4 of the 6 closest Senate races in the 2018 Senate elections.

Does anyone see a pattern here? Obviously, the RNC does not!

In case you think that I am pumping myself up about my amazing prognostication ability, I also did not think that Donald Trump would run again in 2024 (a prediction that looks pretty stupid in hindsight).

Oops!

2024 election results

Anyway, back to the main point…

The results of the 2024 elections, however, were quite impressive (though hardly a landslide).

The Republican party:

• Won a strong Electoral College majority (312 to 226)

• Won a majority of the popular vote for only the second time since 1988.

• Won a reasonably strong 53-47 governing majority in the US Senate

• Preserved their narrow majority in the US House (due to party discipline the margins matter much less in the House than in the Senate; running the US House is like being an officer in the military, while “running” the US Senate is like herding cats).

• And there is no reason to believe that Republican control over the federal judiciary won’t expand over the next four years, and they might make serious inroads in the federal bureaucracy.

All of the above gives Republicans the opportunity to implement their agenda.

Note that I bolded the word “opportunity.” I will come back to that. Whether the opportunity will lead to actual accomplishments that will impress the American people, however, is very much up in the air.

American Party systems

I believe the best way to conceptualize American political history is with the concept of “party systems.” A party system is a period of time, typically a few decades, where voting patterns, the relative balance between the parties, and governance are relatively stable. If you want to know more about the American party system, you should read my article on the subject.

In general, a party system is a time period when:

• One of the two major parties is dominant on the federal level

• The policy preferences of the two major parties are stable

• Partisan conflict revolving around a few key issues that the majority party eventually triumphs on.

• The demographic groups who support each party are stable. Contrary to what many historians and activists believe, class was rarely very important. The key partisan cleavages among voters were dominated by:

  • ethnicity

  • religion, particularly Protestant vs Catholic

  • region, particularly North vs. South

The party systems in American history can be broken down into these six periods:

1. The Revolutionary era (1763-1787) when there were no real political parties.

2. The First Party System (1792-1824): Democratic-Republicans vs Federalists

3. The Second Party System (1828-1860): Democrats vs Whigs

4. The Third Party System (1860-1896): Republican dominance

5. The Fourth Party System (1896-1932): More Republican dominance

6. The Fifth Party System (1932-1968): Dominance of the New Deal Democrats

7. The Sixth Party system (1968-??): Here it gets really complicated…

Examples of realigning Elections

A realigning election marks a sudden break between two party systems. Typically, the previous minority party wins a smashing victory by focusing on a few newly salient issues and becomes the majority party going forward. Here are a few elections that most political scientists consider to be “realigning.”

1. Election of 1800. Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans permanently removed the Federalist party from influence on the federal level.

2. Election of 1832. Andrew Jackson and his remodeled Democratic party beat what would become the Whig party and dominate federal politics for almost 30 years

3. Election of 1860. Abraham Lincoln and his fledgling Republican party beat the previously dominant Democratic party, largely over the issue of the extension of slavery. The Civil War and 70 years of Republican dominance on the federal level resulted.

4. Election of 1896. William McKinley and his VP Teddy Roosevelt reinforced Republican dominance over the Democratic party.

5. Election of 1932. Franklin Roosevelt and his Democratic party finally won back power after 70 years of being the minority party (except under Woodrow Wilson. The Democrats implemented the New Deal and dominated the federal government for the next 36 years.

Political scientists argue over whether the following elections were realigning elections. Note that all these elections took place within the last 60 years.

1. Election of 1964: Lyndon Johnson and his Democrats win a smashing victory and use it to implement the Great Society.

2. Election of 1968: Richard Nixon won in a backlash against crime, riots, and anti-Vietnam war protests, but still had to work with massive Democratic majorities in Congress.

3. Election of 1980: Ronald Reagan and his Republican party win the Presidency and the US Senate, but still must confront a massive Democratic majority in the US House.

4. Election of 1994: Newt Gingrich and his Republican party captured the US Congress for the first time since 1952 (briefly) or 1930 (for a long period. This is the only midterm election on this list.

5. Election of 2008: Barack Obama and his Democratic party win powerful majorities in the US Congress.

I include the last five elections because I want to illustrate a key point:

A “realigning election” is really a realigning series of elections that can only be identified in hindsight. A key part is governance by the winning party after the election and implementing a transformative legislative agenda.

Realigning Decades

Typically, a realigning series of elections consists of:

1. A midterm election before the “realigning election” where the party of the President loses an unusual number of seats in the US Congress. This is typically because the American people perceive the Presidential party has lost popularity.

2. A realigning Presidential election, where the President later is judged to be a great President by historians. The Presidential party typically increases its lead in the US Congress.

3. Using personal charisma and substantial Congressional majorities, the governing party implements major legislation on a few key issues.

4. A subsequent midterm election where the Presidential party either increases its Congressional majority or only suffers narrow losses. Midterm elections almost always result in the Presidential party losing seats, so any deviation from this pattern should be considered a victory.

5. The new majority party wins three Presidential elections in a row and maintains governing majorities in the US Congress throughout. This institutionalizes all the legislative reforms that took place immediately after the “realigning election.” This also gives the majority time to reshape the federal judiciary and bureaucracy.

So, a realigning election is really only one part of the story. It is really about winning:

• Winning three straight Presidential elections, plus

• Winning or at least not losing three straight mid-term elections, plu

• Substantial legislative accomplishments during that period.

So instead of calling them “realigning elections,” we should really call them “realigning decades.”

The shock of 2016

This helps to explain the shock of Donald Trump winning the 2016 Presidential election. The Democratic party had dominated the Presidency, the US Senate, the federal judiciary appointments, and federal bureaucracy appointments (but not the US House) for almost 10 years. They thought of 2008 as a realigning election and themselves as the natural governing party.

Then along comes the Donald…

So what is 2024?

So let’s go down the checklist:

1. A big win in the 2022 midterm elections? Pretty disappointing. The predicted Red Wave was able to take back the US House and block the Democrats in Congress, but they also lost seats in the US Senate.

2. A big win in the 2024 election? Check. It was impressive. Not a landslide, but a very solid start, but the Republicans are only about 25% of the way towards a realigning decade.
   The Republicans still need to do the following:

3. Significant legislation passed in 2025-26? Stay tuned. We will soon know.
   A recent article that I wrote gives President Trump unwanted advice on how to do it. A key theme is that he has about 15 months to pass his agenda before Congress shifts focus to getting ready for the 2026 midterm elections.

4. A Republican win (or at least only a mild loss) in the 2026 midterm elections?

5. A Republican win in the 2028 Presidential election plus governing majorities in the US Congress?

6. Another round of significant legislation passed in 2029-30?

7. A Republican win (or at least only a mild loss) in the 2030 midterm elections?

8. A Republican win in the 2032 Presidential election plus governing majorities in the US Congress?

So, the answer to the original question: Was 2024 a realigning election?

It is far too soon to tell.