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Political scientists who have studied electoral realignments in the American party system increasingly focus on explaining such changes as the result of major historical developments outside of the control of party leaders. Using both national parties’ approaches to the South in the period 1948–1968, I argue that while party leaders may be unable to cause or prevent a realignment, they do attempt to affect the way in which that process plays out. That is, while the shift of Southern White voters from the Democratic to the Republican Party itself was a largely inevitable process, the timing and context in which it played out was affected by competing strategies from both parties. Specifically, I show that between 1948 and 1964, Democratic leaders hedged their bets between attempting to keep white Southern voters in the party, or expel them in favor of black voters in the Northeast based on their assessments of the party’s electoral position. At the same time, between 1948 and 1968, Republican leaders struggled to balance an appeal to segregationist Southerners and voters in other regions before finding a winning formula in Richard Nixon’s 1968 ‘Southern strategy.’

One dimension of party realignment – party position change – has been debated extensively in recent political science literature. This article reviews recent evidence presented to explain position change: candidates, politically active groups, and ideology. Based on historical case studies, I make the case for treating politically active groups as the most important factor in party change. A clear understanding of these factors can help us understand whether recent changes in both parties are harbingers of long term trends.

Much scholarship in political science on electoral change tends to neglect the perspectives and actions of the politicians who both responded to developments that offered them opportunity, and sought to achieve electoral gain as a result. The study of the Republican party from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush suggests that such neglect has negative consequences for our understanding of how electoral coalitions undergo transformation, and of how parties interact with political change. First, it was much more difficult for politicians to analyze the implications for party coalitions of social and political upheavals than hindsight suggests. Even at a moment of apparent crisis for the Democrats, in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Republicans were uncertain, and in disagreement, about how to respond. Second, even when politicians decided a project of party revitalization, the implementation of such a project was far from straightforward, encountering many obstacles – not least dissent within their own party as well as counterstrategies from the opposing party. If many now see the paradigm of electoral realignment as failing to provide explanations for change in party coalitions over time, how politicians engaged with their understanding of an opportunity for realignment provides insights into party politics and electoral change.

This article pursues a developmental understanding of American parties as autonomous and thick collective actors through a comparison of four key historical actors we term “prophets of party”: partisans of the nineteenth-century Party Period; Progressive reformers; mid-twentieth century liberal Democrats; and activists in and around the body popularly known as the McGovern-Fraser Commission. Leading theories portray political parties as the vehicles either of ambitious politicians or of groups eager to extract benefits from the state. Yet such analyses leave underdetermined the path from such actors’ desires for power to the parties’ wielding of it. That path is mediated by partisan forms and practices that have varied widely across institutional and cultural context. As parties search for electoral majority, they do so in the long shadow of ideas and practices, layered and accreted across time, concerning the role of parties in political life. We analyze four such prophesies, trace their layered contributions to their successors, and reflect on their legacy for contemporary party politics.

Donald Trump owes his election to post-1972 changes in party institutions and economic developments that were largely the result of presidential policies supported by both parties. Political scientists and pundits who relied on survey data and assumptions about motives and character of Trump supporters failed to understand the deep causes of the 2016 election outcome, and to inform the public and party leaders about strategic and coalition options for the future. Focusing on expressive protest and labeling are probably antithetical to party reorganization leading to genuine reform and reduction in inequality.

How does the influence of party factions change over time? This article only begins to tackle this question by looking at which party caucuses newly elected members join. I focus on joining patterns in the current 115th Congress to shed light on which factions are more or less influential in Congress today. I show, first, that almost all incoming members joined an ideological faction when they entered office. Furthermore, the Republican Study Committee attracted the most incoming Republicans; the New Democratic Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus attracted the most incoming Democrats. The moderate factions lagged behind the more conservative and liberal factions in the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively. These joining patterns of newly elected members have important implications for the current and future influence that factions can expect to have in the party and chamber.