Few people agree on the periodization, but my approach is:
First Party System: 1796-1824; The Federalists represent the Northern business community while the Democratic-Republicans represent farmers and planters, being the ideological successors of the centralizing and decentralizing factions present at the foundation of the country and throughout the Washington administration. The Federalists are irrelevant after 1800 due to weakness in the new Western states and are fully repudiated after the Hartford Convention.
Second Party System: 1828-1852; Andrew Jackson's Democrats are popular for expanding the voting franchise while Whigs only extend the Federalist coalition to Southern elites and the small middle class. Democrat and Southern power dominates the country and eventually the Whigs collapse over factionalism on the issue of slavery.
Third Party System: 1856-1892; Democrats are confined to the South during and after the Civil War, finally allowing the new Northern-based party to pursue industrialization and centralization. Immigrants in Northern cities join big-city Democrat machines and gradually make elections closer, typically with moderate Bourbon Democrats able to both carry the South and tap into the North.
Fourth Party System: 1896-1928; The Republicans are seen as the party of prosperity after the Panic of 1893 and shore up the North. Populists muscle out the
Republican Lite Bourbon Democrats but fail to get Northern industrial workers onboard, and are thus confined largely to the South again. Progressives emerge in both parties but the Protestant moral panic benefits Republicans more.
Fifth Party System: 1932-1976; Those affected by the Great Depression shift en masse to the Democrats for their New Deal programs, including the Northern working class and minorities. The enormous New Deal Coalition survives the initial crisis as support for government expansion continues into World War II and the early Cold War, but the Northern and Southern factions are increasingly unable to cooperate on desegregation. Meanwhile, a new generation of conservatives eventually seen as more competent in foreign affairs and solution-oriented with social problems emerge and displace the old Eastern Establishment, gradually improving in the South, the suburbs, and rural areas.
Sixth Party System: 1980-202?; The realignment of the South, the suburbs, and rural areas is complete and the GOP dominates with an agenda of economic deregulation, social conservatism, and hawkishness abroad. While Democrats are only able to win with moderates capable of tapping into the South or the suburbs, urban and minority growth gradually makes elections closer. Simultaneously, widespread reaction against wealth inequality, the shattering of the "moral majority", and failed nation-building operations in the Middle East erode the Republican coalition's ideological reason for being. IMO, it ends when the Republicans' built-in Sun Belt advantage ends, so when states like Texas and Georgia become competitive. Personally, I doubt that's 2020, especially with the Biden campaign going the typical route by targeting the Northern working class and suburbanites.
What we can be sure of:
- The current GOP coalition is at a disadvantage going forward. The Democratic coalition of minorities and white progressives is growing and threatens to disrupt the urbanizing and diversifying Republican Sun Belt in the near future. The most recent Republican victory was won by a combination of the shrinking Reagan Era coalition and more traditionally Democratic working class whites in the Rust Belt as well as lower minority turnout. However, conservatives will likely have the advantage in the Supreme Court for decades as well as the Senate if they continue winning more (small) states than the Democrats.
- Basically all of the famous battles of the religious right have been won by progressives. Religiosity is decreasing but the remaining evangelical voters are increasingly Republican. Religious defense is increasingly absent in Republican arguments, and now "owning the libs" appears to hold the conservative voting bloc together in the absence of shared policy preferences.
- The stagnant 21st century economy has experienced two serious recessions which have exposed the weaknesses of the Sixth Party System's neoliberal economics. The effects of these recessions have been, and will be, long-lasting and far-reaching. Themes of progressivism and right-wing populism have been apparent since the Great Recession and contributed to candidates' victories in those elections.
- The War on Terror as an idea of unipolar Middle East nation-building has entered a less active phase as the US now looks to maintain status in a multipolar world. China is transitioning to a post-industrial economy and there is bipartisan support behind more hostile relations with the country, making a Cold War with China an inevitability in the coming years.
What will the issues, coalitions, and maps look like?
