The US entered it's "Seventh Party System" in 1994

[Cassandra]

Political scientists have more or less come to a consensus that the US entered a distinct "Sixth Party System" with Richard Nixon's election in 1968, and the shattering of FDR's New Deal coalition which that entailed. For those unfamiliar, the commonly agreed upon "party systems" are as follows:

1st: 1792-1824, Federalists vs. Jeffersonian Democrats
2nd: 1824-1854, Whigs vs. Jacksonian Democrats
3rd: 1854-1896, Republicans vs. Democrats
4th: 1896-1932, Republicans vs. Democrats
5th: 1932-1968, New Deal Democrats vs. Republicans
6th: 1968-???, Republicans vs. Democrats

I believe the "Republican Revolution" in the 1994 midterms signals a break with the political system of Nixon and Reagan important enough to begin a "Seventh Political System." The early nineties saw the emergence of several new forms of mass media: 24 hour cables news with CNN then Fox, nationally syndicated conservative talk radio as pioneer by Rush Limbaugh, and the internet with early sites such as The Drudge Report.

The effect these media innovations had on political discourse and mass participation in politics is comparable, in my view, to the impact of Mark Hanna's work on William McKinley's 1896 presidential campaign, which is generally credited as the beginning of the modern political campaign.

These developments perfectly presaged the rise of the social media internet with its polarization and alienation, allowing the social media presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump to be neatly incorporated into its system.

I believe we may be on the cusp of an "Eighth Political System." I suspect the liberal push for increased surveillance and censorship may change the media landscape in such a way as to create a new ecosystem (this would required a more activist approach by tech companies of course, but that is not out of the question). Or maybe we'll have a MAGA restoration and a crackdown of the liberal-left in 2024. Either way, the current system seems unstable and not long for this world.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I'd have to strongly disagree that 1994 marked a switch in party systems.  An argument can be made that there was an earlier switch and that the Seventh  (or Sixth depending on whether you think the enddate of the Fifth was 1968 or later) System Republicans took the House in 1994, but neither party was particularly changed in outlook by the 1994 elections.

Indeed, as I already alluded to, there is not a strong consensus as to when the Sixth began. I would argue 1974 as a good transition date for the change from the Fifth to the Sixth.The Great Society marked the last hurrah of the Fifth, while Vietnam, the Warren Court, and Watergate caused its dissolution, with the parties then reshaping themselves in the years after Nixon. The Republicans managed to be the defining party of the Sixth System, with a core of conservative social policy, vigorous military and foreign policy, and small government economic policy save that existing social welfare programs for the elderly were largely exempt. The Democrats were (and to some extent still are) defined by being the anti-Republican party.

If we have entered a Seventh System, which I think we have, we did so sometime between 2001 and 2020, but we'll have to wait and see what the long-term of Trump will prove to be and whether the Trump Presidency properly belongs to the last days of the Sixth System or the starting days of the Seventh.

[Hope For A New Era]

We've gone over this. The Sixth Party System, for whatever reason, is weak and amorphous. The transition into it began in 1964, but was not fully completed until 2010, by which point the transition into the Seventh Party System had already begun (in 2004, when Republicans first started slipping in suburbs).

It appears that the Seventh is also weak and amorphous, but slightly less so. The exact details, of course, will become more clear with time.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

We've gone over this. The Sixth Party System, for whatever reason, is weak and amorphous.

The Sixth Party System is marked by the ascendancy of the primary as the principal method of selecting candidates at all levels and thereby led to weak parties. There are additional reasons for party weakness, but that's the principal reason.

[7,052,770]

It looks like we're moving into an 8th one now, Facts vs. Feelings.

[Hope For A New Era]

We've gone over this. The Sixth Party System, for whatever reason, is weak and amorphous.

The Sixth Party System is marked by the ascendancy of the primary as the principal method of selecting candidates at all levels and thereby led to weak parties. There are additional reasons for party weakness, but that's the principal reason.

I didn’t just mean that, though. I also meant that the dominant party of this party system, which is supposed to be the Republican Party, is not very dominant. It still is - it’s clearly the “default” party, people need a “reason” to vote for Democrats - but Democrats during the 5th were the party. They had decades of nearly-unbroken control of Congress and an extremely powerful position in the electoral map (the only Republican presidents to win did so by either winning so sweepingly that the details of the map didn’t matter or by reinventing the map entirely).

Meanwhile, the Republican Party has only won the national popular vote once since the 1980s, and while they have taken Congress, their majorities have always been narrow (except after 2010, which is an anomaly). They just don’t have the national power and control that dominant parties did in past party systems. The Sixth almost looks more like a period without a party system at all, with evenly matched parties and constantly shifting coalitions.

[Vosem]

We've gone over this. The Sixth Party System, for whatever reason, is weak and amorphous. The transition into it began in 1964, but was not fully completed until 2010, by which point the transition into the Seventh Party System had already begun (in 2004, when Republicans first started slipping in suburbs).

It appears that the Seventh is also weak and amorphous, but slightly less so. The exact details, of course, will become more clear with time.

Is it really any more weak and amorphous than earlier ones? I don't think anyone disputes that 1948 and 1960 were both close elections under the Fifth Party System, but the change in coalitions was enormous, with huge Democratic gains in the Northeast but large Republican ones in the Mountain West and Upland South.

(1948 and 1960 are honestly not compared often enough: by universal swing to GOP win they are deeply similar elections, with a 0.84% swing needed for a Dewey win and a 0.80% swing needed for a Nixon win: astoundingly similar, though of course Dewey was massively advantaged by the EC and Nixon wasn't. The time distance between them is the same as between us and 2008 -- so not really large at all -- but some of the coalition swings are enormous, and it's interesting to consider why.)

[Kuumo]

I think the Sixth Party System originated between 1968 and 1980 and doesn't have one clear realigning election. The Seventh Party System originated between 2010 and 2016, with the collapse of Democrats in white rural areas and the slippage of Republicans in suburbs as partisan outlets and social media became much more popular and mainstream.

It looks like we're moving into an 8th one now, Facts vs. Feelings.

It's very ironic that Ben Shapiro is the one who said "Facts don't care about your feelings," when it applies best to Trump's diehard base.

[HisGrace]

I believe we may be on the cusp of an "Eighth Political System." I suspect the liberal push for increased surveillance and censorship may change the media landscape in such a way as to create a new ecosystem (this would required a more activist approach by tech companies of course, but that is not out of the question). Or maybe we'll have a MAGA restoration and a crackdown of the liberal-left in 2024. Either way, the current system seems unstable and not long for this world.

So basically technocratic "soft despotism" or a right wing coup. That sounds fantastically s****y

[dw93]

IMHO, the end of the 5th party system and the start of the 6th was 1980, though you had some signs of what was to come in the 6th party system in what I like to call the transition period of 1964-1980. I'd argue 1994 was very much a part of the 6th party system, and an important part at that. As for when the 7th started, only time will tell, but the earliest possible starting point was 2008.

[Vosem]

We've gone over this. The Sixth Party System, for whatever reason, is weak and amorphous. The transition into it began in 1964, but was not fully completed until 2010, by which point the transition into the Seventh Party System had already begun (in 2004, when Republicans first started slipping in suburbs).

It appears that the Seventh is also weak and amorphous, but slightly less so. The exact details, of course, will become more clear with time.

Is it really any more weak and amorphous than earlier ones? I don't think anyone disputes that 1948 and 1960 were both close elections under the Fifth Party System, but the change in coalitions was enormous, with huge Democratic gains in the Northeast but large Republican ones in the Mountain West and Upland South.

(1948 and 1960 are honestly not compared often enough: by universal swing to GOP win they are deeply similar elections, with a 0.84% swing needed for a Dewey win and a 0.80% swing needed for a Nixon win: astoundingly similar, though of course Dewey was massively advantaged by the EC and Nixon wasn't. The time distance between them is the same as between us and 2008 -- so not really large at all -- but some of the coalition swings are enormous, and it's interesting to consider why.)

I made a swing map from 1948-1960, and it's amazingly regional: the Thurmond states swung massively to Kennedy, as did New England and MI (HI and AK are both zeroed out for 1948), but almost the entire country swung narrowly to the GOP. This map is consistent with the GOP doing basically no better in the race -- Dewey's coalition was so much more efficient than Nixon's that it beggars belief: