jhsu asked 'Why aren't presidential races as national anymore?' In trying to answer, I came up with a theory of "big" re-alignment.
The basic idea is that a big trend you see is Republican support has become geographically much more broadly based. Just look at the Atlas map: a sea of blue.
Up until the middle third of the 20th century it was very simple that the Democrats were the party of the South and the Republicans were the party of the North. At that time, the Democrats had no chance in many Northern states and the GOP had no chance in the South. The West was competitive, but it simply was not relevant in most of this period because it was an extremely immature region with no clout. The real regions of the nation were the Midwest, Northeast, and South, and most of those regions were pretty solid for one party. Hence, presidential campaigns in that 1865-1928 era were no more "national" than they are today; change usually focused on a few critical states, although for the most part the Democrats were locked out based on regional structure.
Since then, what's happened is the North-South split has been replaced by an urban-rural split. The Democrats are now the party of the cities while Republicans are the party of the countryside, put crudely. The Republican majority is built on its advantage in the suburbs, which is now the big swing "region".
This is what I call the "big" re-alignment. The "big" re-alignment theory reflects a view of the FDR coalition not as a traditional political base but recognizes its exceptionalism as an inherently contradictory coalition reflecting an ongoing party transformation. That coalition was merely part 1 of this transformation of the North-South divide becoming the urban-rural divide. The "GOP Southern" re-alignment is part 2 of that transformation. What is traditionally seen as 2 separate re-alignments, I see as a single re-alignment spanning from 1928 through the present day.
So while elections may seem less national towards the end of this "big" re-alignment than they did during its process (1930s-1990s), they are no less national than they were prior to the beginning of the "big" re-alignment, that is, the 1920s and before.
Good analysis. The suburbs can be tricky depending on the part of the country & what not. You have suburbs which have traditionally been Dem (Boston burbs, Seattle burbs) suburbs that were once GOP stronholds now Dem areas & trending DEM (NYC burbs, Philly burbs, D.C burbs, Denver burbs, Vegas burbs) and you have suburbs which are still GOP & some trending more GOP (Atlanta burbs, Houston burbs, Phoenix burbs, Cincinatti burbs)
