When did the parties switch platforms?

[Skill and Chance]

The one bug I have in your analysis is the omission of the Pacific Northwest (at least that area west of the Cascades). This region has been the most socially liberal of the nation since long before party vote correlations reversed at a state level in the 1960s. Washington, Oregon and California (also Hawaii which was far from statehood at this stage) were single-party Republican bastions between the Panic of 1893 and the New Deal. However, these states turned overwhelmingly to FDR in 1932 and 1936 (Landon was a terrible fit for these states even vis-à-vis most of the rest of the nation) but until a major Democratic revolution in 1954 remained strongly Republican at the state level. Especially in Washington, the GOP was frequently threatened by leftist third party movements, up to William Hope Harvey in 1932 reaching 20 percent in Thurston County. Big-government New Deal Democrats were – despite their social conservatism and Catholic influence – a better fit than a free-market GOP.

Well I have since refined some of my knowledge and have read "The Emerging Republican Majority" by Kevin Phillips.

Oregon was the most stable of the states and the most pro-Republican, conservative in a Burkean sense, it resisted a lot of the populist surges and radical impulses, that swept over Washington and California. The reason for this was that it was largely dominated by Protestant Yankees in the Portland area, and while the eastern part had a large number of Southerners move in, it was not enough to fundamentally erode that power bastion. At least not until the New Deal Era, especially the 1950's.

Northern California was impact by this same trend, but Southern California was exploding in Population and So-cal was basically an extension of the sunbelt. Half of Iowa basically picked up and moved to Orange county in the mid 20th century, as well as large number from all of the Midwestern states. The industries, demographics and ethos meant that these counties were solidly Republican and fast growing. So even if the Republicans lost ground in Norcal, they would replace it in Socal, which is what enabled them win CA from 1952 until 1988 with the exception of 1964.

California from 1888-1988 is really fascinating.  It was consistently R+2ish for 40 years, then it had a massive crush on FDR and voted more for him than the nation every time, then right back to R+2 for another 40 years as soon as FDR is off the ballot.  And it stayed that stable while experiencing a massive influx of people!

A lot of Yankee Republican bastions saw shifts towards the Democrats and away from the Republicans in the 1950's midterms. Conservatives found themselves being replaced by liberals or by Democrats in Vermont and UES New York (though in migration and other demographic changes were always a factor as well). In the 1960's, many of the remaining Representatives of these "Yankee" districts, raced to left to try and catch up to their electorates. They supported Rockefeller over Nixon and their voting records in Congress surged to the left as well. This was a Quixotic and doomed strategy because the GOP basically broke away from its Yankee base by 1964 to become a Southern, German and Irish middle class party, with a declining but still solid contingent of Yankee whites. This was the case in 1968, which is when the book was written about. All they accomplished was to alienate themselves from the new base and lead to formation of the concept of "Liberal or RINO Republicanism".

Wasn't this primarily where the GOP congressional votes for various New Deal measures were already coming from, though?  I mean, Dewey and Willkie were part of this crowd and they emphatically declined to run on New Deal repeal.  1958 was really when the last GOP urban machines fell (Philadelphia, the Italian vote in NYC, urban NorCal, etc.), but I don't know that they ever had much of an ideology beyond patronage for GOP-voting groups.  On a different note, it's surprising that we think of the 1950's as a particularly conservative time today.

In essence the Republicans changed bases rather than change ideologically. As a part of this process though, it is unavoidable that the party would evolve to match its new demographics. So a shift from Old Right Taft to Neoconservatism on defense for instance. An embrace of free trade instead of protectionism, which no longer swayed workers post Depression anyway. An ever growing view of hostility towards government since Southerners hate the federal gov't, Irish hate the establishment and the Germans hated communism and were distasteful of WW1 and even WW2 to some extent.

This was a combination of 2 things: 1. Recognition that they simply couldn't compete for working class votes with the New Deal at stake 2. Outreach to the growing managerial class as protectionism became associated with organized labor.

But generally this is what is mistaken for the "platform switch". The platforms didn't switch, the Democrat's old base became alienated by the New Deal, Civil Rights and Foreign Policy and gravitated towards the Republicans, who had a minority coalition to begin with. This gave the Republicans a large minority coalition, but their original base found their new bed fellows unsavory and slowly gravitated towards the Democrats. The evolution of the Party system typically is started by the liberal or left party and the right then reacts to it.

The Democrats were already a liberal party when this began, and it was their traditional base of poor Southern farmers and big city ethnics that pulled them so, even though these had been the foundation blocks of the Democratic party going back to the Jeffersonian era. This process began with William Jennings Bryan, who energized "the traditional Democratic base", but around a "new populist-left" platform. This was not just happening in the US, but in Britain as well where the Liberal Party, a party of similar demographics and viewpoints to the Democrats, went through a similar transformation in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

This same base elected Wilson and it is from Wilson that you get FDR. Over this same period, Irish and Germans stopped being disadvantaged immigrants and became middle class people who wanted their cut of power more than they wanted Gov't expansion. So they still hated the establishment, but now it was the New Deal Establishment running things.

I think this is the key.  The broad demographic shifts of 1945-1995 really look like the GOP version of the "emerging Democratic majority" idea.  Basically, the GOP base in the suburbs grows continuously after WWII until they finally have enough people distributed widely enough to run the show.  It isn't really traceable to one exceptionally potent economic or social event like the Depression, Panic of 1893, or Civil War.  People got notably more libertarian as 19th century fears of deprivation faded away.


The closest thing to a platform switch occurred in the late 19th century, when the Democrats (and Liberals) began to use gov't as tool to uplift the poor as opposed to regarding government as tool for elites to preserve their power. Previously both the Democrats and Liberals had opposed such bastions of power over the preceding 100 years, and both had opposed the policy of protectionism while the American Whigs/Republicans and Tories were protectionist and elitist oriented.

IMO the story behind the changes we are seeing on trade is that wages really have stagnated since 2000 in some industries and since 2008 for most workers even as prices for certain vital goods have kept rising.  With large swaths of the country gradually dropping out of the middle class, Trump realized that the right needs something to offer again to prop up working class wages.  The alternative was a 20 year majority for the left.  If you watch Obama's 2012 campaign speeches, he got this on a personal level, and economically speaking, he won when he wasn't supposed to win.  Clinton simply didn't get it and lost when she should never have lost.

[Skill and Chance]

The one constant is that Republicans have always had more support from small business owners, from family farmers tired of competing with slave labor in 1856 straight through to 2016.  Big business has been somewhere between uniformly Republican (1856-76, 1920-1992) to tilting Republican overall with some sectors voting heavily Democratic (1880-1916, 1996ish-present).