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Topic: Political Realignment

	Realigning election - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Of all the realigning elections, this one musters the most agreement from political scientists and historians; it is the archetypal realigning election.
		To this day, all modern political parties in the Republic of Ireland except the Labour Party and the Green Party are descended from the Sinn Féin party which won the election of 1918.
		Realignment can also be used to describe the switching of voter preference from one party to another, in contrast to dealignment (where a voter abandons his/her party and does not gain a new one).
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Realigning_election (2938 words)

	Untitled Document (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Political scientist Everett Carl Ladd suggests that while we have been searching for this massive change, we have ignored important shifts in the attitudes and partisanship of the electorate.
		Three sets of definitions of the phenomenon [of realignment] have been in circulation: (1) the dictionary meaning, which is the most general; (2) the understanding common in media discussions; and (3) the predominant political science usages, which are the most elaborate and hence the nar-rowest.
		The electorate is far more weakly tied to political parties now than at any time in the past century, and, as it has been freed from the "anchor" of party loyalties, it has become vastly more volatile.
	www.cooper.edu /humanities/classes/electives/library/ladd_everett.html (2544 words)

	IDEOLOGICAL MAJORITIES, PRESIDENTIAL INITIATIVES, AND POLICY CHANGE
		Probably most important in making the politics of foreign policy different from that of domestic policy is the fact that foreign powers, foreign actors, international developments, and global crises all introduce factors beyond the control of the American political or party system into the unfolding of foreign policy.
		A political realignment changes the partisan landscape for generations, but an ideological majority only endures for a year or at most a few years, although its policy consequences are long lasting.
		The political parties try to make icons out of presidents from their party who have shaped the historical direction of public policy, like FDR for the Democrats or Reagan for the Republicans, not just to create a favorable public image, but also to legitimate continuation of the policy directions they have set.
	www.dflorig.com /ideomajor.html (8133 words)

	"Populism and Political Realignment"
		Political scientists have a method of comparing elections that rests upon the idea that at any given time there is a political system featuring a majority party and a minority party.
		Realigning elections, since they represent a desire to permanently alter the status quo, feature an abnormally high interest by the electorate in all phases of the political process and record voter turnouts occur on such election days.
		Realigning elections are characterized by definitive conflicting issue stances by the major political parties.
	www2.austin.cc.tx.us /lpatrick/his1302/populism.html (2127 words)

	Memo, 6-11-97; Political Realignment
		The topic of political realignment is one that has occupied theorists for at least the past 25 years.
		The realignment would be most evident in the voting patterns of fl Americans, who were decisive factors in the last major realignment of the parties in the New Deal, an alignment that grew out of the Great Depression.
		The Jewish political community, which is divided on almost all other issues, is united on Israel’s security, unwilling to chance a political realignment that might threaten it.
	www.polyconomics.com /searchbase/6-11-97.html (2548 words)

	JAST 9 - Luconi
		The main challenge to the realignment theory has been the failure of the dynamics of the New Deal party system to represent the whole course of the twentieth-century American electoral history and to serve as a paradigm to analyze contemporary US politics.
		But this later realignment was “non-partisan-channeled.” The enduring transformation in the present-day political system has not been a massive shift in the traditional party loyalties of the participating electorate with the ensuing emergence of a new majority party, as happened for previous realignments.
		A Democratic realignment did not occur in 1992 because the change in the partisan balance among voters was all but massive and short-term forces determined the election outcome (Pomper, “The Presidential Election” [1993] 150; Ceaser and Bush, Upside Down 179-80; Nelson 183).
	www.bilkent.edu.tr /~jast/Number9/Luconi.html (4423 words)

	Nigeria - Popular Disillusionment and Political Realignment
		Abuses were widespread, including intimidation of opponents by threats of criminal investigation, manipulation of the constitution and the courts, diversion of public funds to party and private use, rigging of elections, and corruption of public officials whose political patrons expected them to put party interests ahead of their legal responsibilities.
		Political realignment was deceptive, however, because the basic divisions within the country remained unaltered.
		The NPC was reasonably secure in the Northern Region, despite the presence of minor parties, but it could not govern Nigeria alone, and alliances with any of the southern parties were ideologically incompatible and very tenuous.
	www.country-data.com /cgi-bin/query/r-9355.html (413 words)

	The American Thinker
		Certainly, some political realists on the pro-life side of the debate, anticipating that abortion will not be banned outright, have attempted to move the goalposts a little in their direction, by working to ban partial birth abortion or institute parental consent requirements in individual states.
		To assume that abortion has not affected our politics would suggest that if those who were aborted, had instead been born and grown to become adults, that they would have then voted in a similar fashion to the rest of America.
		It seems to me that the political pundits and analysts are either missing or deliberately ignoring the issue of abortion and its political impact.
	www.americanthinker.com /articles.php?article_id=3365 (1003 words)

	Sharon's political realignment 'painful' - World - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		He would walk away from the party for which he had led the expansion of settlements in the Palestinian territories, so that he could be free from its objections to pulling down the settlements today.
		He would ditch the party that had propelled him into the top job when he was considered by many to be a dangerous right-wing extremist, a war criminal even, and form a moderate, centrist bloc instead.
		On the face of it, the political turbulence of the past week marks a chapter in the 77 years of Mr.
	www.washtimes.com /world/20051126-115235-4797r.htm (637 words)

	AEI - Short Publications (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		What historians mean by a realignment is a major change in political allegiances that installs a new party or governing coalition in power for a significant period of time, perhaps a generation or more.
		The possibility of a gradual realignment of the parties is reflected in the Harris poll on party identification, taken consistently since the 1970s.
		The last realigning election was the election of 1936, in the midst of the worst depression ever experienced in the U.S., when Roosevelt won 61 percent of the vote and the Democrats swept the field in a huge landslide.
	www.aei.org /publications/pubID.23301,filter.all/pub_detail.asp (3684 words)

	IRAQ: US Realignment With Sunnis Is Far Advanced
		As this sweeping definition of the U.S. political objective indicates, these talks are no longer aimed at splitting off groups that are less committed to the aim of U.S. withdrawal, as the Pentagon has favoured since last summer.
		On Jan. 28, Sunni political groups and secular political parties announced a new political bloc to demand that the Interior Ministry not be in the hands of "people related to political parties".
		Although it may be a way out of a war that cannot be won, the U.S. shift in political alignment away from the Shiites and toward the Sunnis brings with it a different set of costs and risks.
	ipsnews.net /news.asp?idnews=31965 (1270 words)

	Did the 1994 Elections Bring on a Political Realignment? by Peter W. Schramm (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		In the past, the GOP was not able to articulate a sufficient cause for realignment and, therefore, was not able form a new long term majority that would indicate a realignment had transpired (to realign means to both put something in a straight line and to take sides).
		In American politics, a realignment means that the voters take or switch sides in order to put the country back into alignment with its fundamental principles, or at least with what they regard as its fundamental principles.
		The Democrat realignment of the l930s did this, and that is why the GOP has seemed, for two generations, the "me-too" party.
	www.ashbrook.org /publicat/dialogue/schramm.html (2784 words)

	Gene Expression: The Turning of the Tide
		Glenn Reynolds points to Alyssa Ford's essay on the political realignment likely to follow the rise of genetic engineering, but she's about 3 years too late to the party for this is has been discussed quite frequently on this blog.
		I believe that this is a prequel to the coming political realignment that will follow the advent of human genetic engineering.
		Though politically liberals & radicals and conservatives & traditionalists are the straightfoward coupling, on an interpersonal level liberals & conservatives and radicals & traditionalists might be more intelligible in terms of their ultimate aims.
	www.gnxp.com /MT2/archives/003555.html (1184 words)

	AllRefer.com - Moldova - Political Realignment \| Moldovan Information Resource
		At the same time, the realignment moved Moldova's government into a more conservative position with respect to economic and political reform, marginalizing legislators who were elected as opposition candidates and vesting more power in the hands of those who were originally elected as representatives of the CPM.
		In particular, the realignment gave near-veto power to the bloc of Democratic Agrarian Party of Moldova deputies, many of whom were state and collective farm presidents.
		Although the great majority of these individuals supported democratic politics, the strength of their commitment to the transition to a market economy was questionable.
	reference.allrefer.com /country-guide-study/moldova/moldova56.html (520 words)

	RealClearPolitics
		Some, like Professor Andrew Busch argue that we are experiencing a "rolling realignment" which began as far back as 1968 and has been punctuated over the decades with victories in 1980, 1994, 2002 and now 2004.
		Karl Rove also uses the term "rolling realignment" to describe the significant Republican gains in recent years, often likening results of the 2000 and 2002 elections to the era of GOP dominance ushered in by the election of William McKinley in 1896.
		They point to pieces of evidence (the difference of a hundred thousand votes in Ohio this year, for example) and cling to theories of an "Emerging Democratic Majority" to suggest that things aren't really that bad.
	www.realclearpolitics.com /Commentary/blog_1_25_05_0915.html (357 words)

	The American Enterprise: The Political Realignment (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		In the non-majority politics of the 1880s, Americans often ended up voting to express their feelings about the Civil War two decades earlier.
		While the impetus to political change cannot be predicted, one thing can be predicted: The party most likely to benefit from change will be the one that most swiftly adapts to it.
		There is no political error more dangerous than holding onto the carcasses of dead policies, warned Lord Salisbury, and the more successful a policy has been, the harder it is to jettison.
	www.taemag.com /issues/articleID.18205/article_detail.asp (994 words)

	Asia Times: Chapter 14: Post-colonial realignment of political forces
		The All Ceylon Tamil Congress meeting was held at the Jaffna Town Hall on June 20, 1948, with delegates from all the electorates in the Northern and Eastern provinces attending.
		The Tamils showed their political revenge against Lord Soulbury, who had ignored the demands of the Tamils, when he led the Royal Commission to investigate and recommend constitutional reform proposals.
		The party was considered a centrist political force and was expected to become the focal point of those groups dissatisfied with the UNP and to those who opposed the Marxists.
	www.atimes.com /ind-pak/CK10Df03.html (7181 words)

	Robert N. Thompson and Political Realignment
		However, Thompson's political ambitions were again delayed in 1940, after his name was put forward with three other potential candidates for the federal riding of Red Deer.
		Manning had a fl-and-white view of political ideology, so his policies and speeches addressed the need to avoid communism in any form and oppose help for any socialist/communist country.
		One way to achieve this was to develop two distinct political parties, one of a socialist nature and the other a conservative nature.
	www.albertasource.ca /aspenland/eng/society/article_political_realignment.html (706 words)

	The Claremont Institute: Rolling Realignment
		Perhaps, as David Mayhew argued in his book Electoral Realignments (2002), 1860 and 1932 were such extreme cases—revolving around civil war and the worst economic conditions in the nation's history—that they cannot serve as a realistic model.
		A "rolling realignment" is not a bad description, rolling through 1968, 1980, 1994, 2000, and 2002, the midterm elections that now appear as a foreshadowing of 2004.
		A rolling realignment means, however, that this realignment could be closer to its end than its beginning.
	www.claremont.org /writings/crb/winter2004/busch.html (2423 words)

	Is Political Realignment Desirable?
		While it may be philosophically satisfying for the activist or even the observer, I'm afraid such a realignment would be bad for the progess of freedom.
		Of course the general tendency of large political parties toward centrism, to be like each other, would still operate, but the authoritarian party would quickly find a large base among Maddox and Lilie's "populists" to keep from becoming too libertarian.
		Once unified politically, it is quite likely they'd develop think tanks that would then develop a coherent authoritarianism resembling those of the Old World as mentioned above, or maybe a uniquely USAn version.
	users.bestweb.net /~robgood/politic/LP_lose_by_win.html (567 words)

	Rediff On The NeT: Tamil Nadu set for major political realignment
		The voting on the motion of confidence in the Lok Sabha by political parties belonging to Tamil Nadu, straying from their known positions, may be a precursor to a major political realignment in the state.
		Though the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Tamil Maanila Congress and the Left parties are allies in both places, the DMK voted in support of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government while the TMC and the Left parties voted against it.
		The question being discussed in political circles is whether this development will herald the coming together of the two parties.
	www.rediff.com /news/1999/apr/17chenai.htm (643 words)

	Rajnath predicts realignment of political forces - Sify.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		BJP President Rajnath Singh on Sunday said the current Assembly polls in five states are not a referendum on Manmohan Singh government’s policies, and their outcome may not prompt the Congress-led coalition to go in for a mid-term gamble.
		He, however, predicted snap polls and realignment of political forces in the country, saying the UPA government could crumble any moment due to "inner contradictions".
		He said the realignment of political forces could take place in the near future, but declined to go into details.
	sify.com /news/fullstory.php?id=14180456 (584 words)

	The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : No scope for a political realignment
		The split did weaken the Congress organisationally, besides casting doubts in the minds of some of the coalition partners whether the UDF as a formation could survive in the long run.
		By alleging that he was a linkman in the transfer of votes by the BJP to the LDF, the KPCC was in a way acknowledging Mr.
		Karunakaran and the DIC (K), led by his son K. Muraleedharan, are the only ones who are not political untouchables, giving them an advantage in the unique caste and communal configuration.
	www.hindu.com /2005/11/29/stories/2005112913050400.htm (584 words)

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