When did the parties switch platforms?

[Goldwater]

lmao "the parties never switched platforms"

Go on?

Red - States that voted majority R before 1964 and majority D since 1964
Blue - States that voted majority D before 1964 and majority R since 1964
Green - States that voted majority R both before and after 1964
Orange - States that voted majority D both before and after 1964
Yellow - States that voted for both parties equally before 1964 and majority R since 1964

This seems to imply (correctly) that either the parties or the states switched platforms sometime around 1964.

So you're saying that, for example, the 1988 Republican Party platform is the same as the 1940 Democratic Party platform, and vice versa? Because that's laughably ridiculous.

[Kosmos]

I was under the impression that it began in the 1960s?

[Rockefeller GOP]

I was under the impression that it began in the 1960s?

LOL, well it didn't begin or happen at all.

Change =/= switch.  Obviously parties change with each decade.  However, there are quite obvious conservative elements of the GOP of every age, and there have been liberal elements of the Democratic Party in every age.

[RINO Tom]

Obviously anyone with a brain knows that the parties used to be much more of "big tent" organizations, but how could someone argue that a Democratic Party (and a predecessor Democratic-Republican Party) could be cranking out quotes like this and still be considered a "conservative" political party (which would be implied, as these quotes were all made before most mythical "switch" dates)?

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“Corporations, which should be carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”
– Grover Cleveland, who is for some reason viewed as this "original DINO" of sorts, LOL

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
– Woodrow Wilson's acceptance speech at the 1912 Democratic National Convention

“Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt ... to be fair, when people talk about party switching in the '60s, they just conveniently leave out the '30s and '40s rather than make up lies about them

Combine that with these types of quotes from Republicans and Whigs and Federalists long before any mythical switch dates, and it's literally undeniable that there have remained progressive elements of the Democrats and conservative elements of the GOP since the beginning:

“That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.”
– Abraham Lincoln, quoted in a speech by NOTORIOUS "RINO" Teddy Roosevelt

“I never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence ... [the Declaration] does not declare that all men are equal in their attainments or social position.”
– Abraham Lincoln

"You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."
- Abraham Lincoln

"The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to carry his own weight."
- Teddy Roosevelt

There has absolutely been a similar *attitude*, especially on economic affairs, that has stayed consistent through the ages - with the Republicans being the party that celebrates the near perfection of the free market, the idea of the self-made man and praising economic individualism while the Democrats have always been skeptical of this approach, weary of giving business too much freedom/power and believing that the government should be there for the less fortunate.  When you consider that social issues change every 20-30 years, what is so different?  The coalitions?  Well duh ... But the coalitions have changed since the 1990s, and the parties obviously haven't "switched" since then.

Honestly, looking at a few maps and deciding that the parties must have been opposite in the past is a simpleton's exercise and intellectually lazy, not to mention a disrespect to a wealth of primary sources.

[Virginiá]

So did Thurmond and Helms, but they don't get a pass from Democrats.

Did he, though (I am legitimately asking)? I see articles around, particularly this Slate one, about how he never publicly renounced his views on racial segregation. I was able to find plenty of Byrd-related material with him renouncing this or that, and even pushing policies or ideas that no Dixiecrat would ever do.

I'd like to think Strom came around, but I don't actually know if he did, and if it was genuine.

[RINO Tom]

So did Thurmond and Helms, but they don't get a pass from Democrats.

Did he, though (I am legitimately asking)? I see articles around, particularly this Slate one, about how he never publicly renounced his views on racial segregation. I was able to find plenty of Byrd-related material with him renouncing this or that, and even pushing policies or ideas that no Dixiecrat would ever do.

I'd like to think Strom came around, but I don't actually know if he did, and if it was genuine.

I'm not sure about Thurmond, but I know he fathered and cared for a Black daughter ... couldn't have been THAT racist, LOL.  And Helms hired James Meredith (first Black student to ever attend Ole Miss) on his staff and was apparently (according to Wikipedia) the only Senator to return his inquiries.

[Virginiá]

So did Thurmond and Helms, but they don't get a pass from Democrats.

Did he, though (I am legitimately asking)? I see articles around, particularly this Slate one, about how he never publicly renounced his views on racial segregation. I was able to find plenty of Byrd-related material with him renouncing this or that, and even pushing policies or ideas that no Dixiecrat would ever do.

I'd like to think Strom came around, but I don't actually know if he did, and if it was genuine.

I'm not sure about Thurmond, but I know he fathered and cared for a Black daughter ... couldn't have been THAT racist, LOL.  And Helms hired James Meredith (first Black student to ever attend Ole Miss) on his staff and was apparently (according to Wikipedia) the only Senator to return his inquiries.

I do remember reading that. Apparently he got her pregnant when he was 22 or so. I think all that makes him is a hypocrite, because he still went on to be pretty thoroughly racist after doing that. After all, it happened in the 20s and it was literally generations before things began to change.

[RINO Tom]

Also not exactly related to Strom, but Paul Thurmond (his son) did call for the removal of the Confederate Flag this summer and had the decency and historical literacy to admit that the Civil War was fought over slavery.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/south-carolina-state-senator-and-son-segregationist-just-called-confederate-flags-remov

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It is easy to look at a map and ignore the context within each of those states during those periods. The Depression saw the mobilization of a New Deal Coalition, including ethnic whites, minorities and Jeffersonian-Jacksonian Democrats (Southern Illinois for instance). The growth and organization power of unions, gave Democrats a permenant advantage in most of the cities, out voting the urban based GOP middle class base. At the time rural areas were split with places like rural New England, upstate NY, Central and Northern PA and the rural portions of Northern OH, ILL, and Indiana voting Republican. Meanwhile the Southern portions of ILL, IN and OH and even parts of Southern PA voted Democratic.

The effect of this was that Republicans could no longer win in the North at the levels necessary to sustain majorities and everytime things went bad, the GOP imploded like 1948 and 1958. Only people with substantial union support like Rockefeller could win. Prior to the New Deal Coalition, you had people like Republican James Wadsworth getting elected as Senator of New York. Wadsworth opposed women voting and the FDA. Harding got 60% in New York and Coolidge was the last Republican to win New York City. Upstate could actually outvote the city or at least come close to it, and in the city you had a substantial WASP middle class Republican vote. You also had far left Italian Progressives like Fio join the Republicans because the Democratic establishment in Tammany Hall was hostile to them. And of course African-Americans were still voting Republican. After the New Deal, only Liberal Republicans of the mold of Thomas Dewey and his heirs could win in the state.

After World War II, the WASP Middle class moved to the suburbs as did a good number of first Irish and German, and then Italian new middle class voters and powered Republican strength in places like Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester, as well as Staten Island within the city. But the Democratic margins in the city were thus increased and the growth in the city was amongst Democratic leaning demographics, Hispanics and African Americans, as well as more recent ethnic white immigrants, who were thus poorer.  Beginning in the post-war period you had a simultaneous move to the sunbelt, by largely the same group of middle class Republicans. This ramped up in the 1970's and 1980's and helped make Florida so Republican during the Reagan era until the movement diversified and even became Democratic leaning towards the late 1980's.

You cannot look at a map and presume everything else remains the same. Demographic change has a big impact and it is not just in cities. As the new group comes in, the old group's areas of majority are pushed further and further out. The only English majority/plurality counties in New York are in the central upstate. The Irish majority/plurality counties are in the Hudson valley and the Italian majority/plurality ones are NYC suburbs. In 1860, most every county in the state would be English Majority and even super majority with the city being Irish plurality or majority. One hundred or more years before that it was the same story with the Dutch being pushed further and further out by the English. Note this does not mean their presence in the city disappeared, merely that it was swamped by larger and newer demographics. It also doesn't mean there was necessary a flight of people, just that rural counties are naturally behind the city in terms of demographic change by two or three groups.

A massive inmigration of people occured into Vermont and New Hampshire. The one going into New Hampshire was largely Republican leaning consisting of the right demographics leaving Taxachusetts. The opposite was true of Vermont as liberals from Boston and New York located there. Both states as well as Maine, naturally drifted to the Democrats in the 1960's and early 1970's, but New Hampshire swung back hard to the GOP in the 1970's and 1980's, becoming one of 41s best states, largely because of that inmigration. More recent groups moving into NH have been Democratic leaning.

The native demographics of both states fit the GOP like a glove. WASP, rural and Northern. NH had pockets of working class ethnics and more residual Jacksonian Democrats hence why Wilson won it and it was the least Republican of the three Northern New England states. However, that native population changed in its attitudes. It became far more secular over the course of the 20th century. Environmentalism became a big concern as religion became less of one and that was a big thing in the 1960s and 1970s. They were also non-interventionist, protectionist and hostile to immigration, both of which meant that the new sunbelt GOP was a horrible fit for them across the board. Even so there was still a negative reaction to the influx of urban liberals on the part of the Vermont natives and it created a reaction in the late 1990's, which crested in a 10% loss to Howard Dean and Bush losing by about 10% to Gore in 2000.

Remember the two cores of GOP support in the North. Forget Ideology and forget limited government/bigger government for a minute.

Urban/suburban Middle and upper class WASPs - inherited from the Federalists
Select Rural Areas - inherited in waves from Jeffersonian Republicans and eventually Jacksonian Democrats.

This is by nature an at-least center right coalition. It is also not a winning a coalition even before the New Deal. Republicans used tariffs to augment it with workers and some Republicans were rather pro-labor because it was necessary to sustain a pro-industrial party to prevent poor farmers from uniting with poor workers in a Democratic coalition, which is what happened in the 1930s. There was thus substantial space for Progressives to operate within the GOP as well not just with the Civil War legacy, but this geographic necessity of appealing to labor.

What changed was after World War II, the anti-New Deal right realized there was no going back to 1924 in the Northeast and Midwest. Numerous Republicans were moving to the South and Ikes popularity loosened people up to at least considering a Republican in the South. This process began in 1952 with places like Virginia and Tennessee, which had the largest residual bases of GOP support of any of the Southern states, and the fast growing cities of the South like Charlotte, Dallas, Tampa and going further west, Phoenix. Beginning in 1948 and doubled up in 1964, many Southerners no longer regarded the Democrats as their champions on Civil Rights and while some switched solely because of Goldwater, most who switched at these points because they were conservative pro-business suburbanites who viewed their home party not only has hostile on race issues but also on economic ones. They saw the Republicans as a viable alternative for the first time now that there was "not a dimes worth a difference" on Civil Rights anymore. Even use of the dog whistle tactics mentioned by Democrats in this thread was an attempt to be the "lesser of two evils" on the issue and those issues like busing had as much appeal in Michigan, as the Dallas surbubs.

[RINO Tom]

Great post, NC Yankee.  I'll add one more thing that I think any self-respecting student of history needs to truly comprehend: we cannot project our ideas of tolerant/intolerant, conservative/liberal, enlightened/unenlightened, etc. onto different eras without being VERY careful.  For example, everyone would look back on the Civil War era and at first glance think of the Democrats as the clearly more intolerant, racist party that was on the wrong side of history, while the GOP was this tolerant, forward-thinking mechanism for change, but people during that day certainly didn't see things in that black and white of terms.  I'm reminded of this quote on pg. 205 of the book "Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War" by Bruce Levine, a book I had to read for an advanced Civil War & Reconstruction class in college:

"Especially in the North, Democrats strove to depict the contest between themselves and their opponents (the Republicans) as one between cultural tolerance and bigorty (against the South, against Catholics, against the foreign-born).  Only the Democrats were ready to protect the rights of all white residents, native- and foreign-born alike, and regardless of religious faith.  'Let this be made the issue in the Newspapers & the Legislature & everywhere,' Stephen A. Douglas had earlier advised..."

People need to remember that almost every White American of the 1860s thought Blacks were literally an inferior race, including the vast majority of Republicans, and there were VERY real (and at the time considered persuasive) arguments being made by Democrats that slavery was actually good for Black Americans and Republicans were just giving them a path to starving on the streets.

[mianfei]

It is easy to look at a map and ignore the context within each of those states during those periods. The Depression saw the mobilization of a New Deal Coalition, including ethnic whites, minorities and Jeffersonian-Jacksonian Democrats (Southern Illinois for instance). The growth and organization power of unions, gave Democrats a permenant advantage in most of the cities, out voting the urban based GOP middle class base. At the time rural areas were split with places like rural New England, upstate NY, Central and Northern PA and the rural portions of Northern OH, ILL, and Indiana voting Republican. Meanwhile the Southern portions of ILL, IN and OH and even parts of Southern PA voted Democratic.

The effect of this was that Republicans could no longer win in the North at the levels necessary to sustain majorities and everytime things went bad, the GOP imploded like 1948 and 1958. Only people with substantial union support like Rockefeller could win. Prior to the New Deal Coalition, you had people like Republican James Wadsworth getting elected as Senator of New York. Wadsworth opposed women voting and the FDA. Harding got 60% in New York and Coolidge was the last Republican to win New York City. Upstate could actually outvote the city or at least come close to it, and in the city you had a substantial WASP middle class Republican vote. You also had far left Italian Progressives like Fio join the Republicans because the Democratic establishment in Tammany Hall was hostile to them. And of course African-Americans were still voting Republican. After the New Deal, only Liberal Republicans of the mold of Thomas Dewey and his heirs could win in the state.

After World War II, the WASP Middle class moved to the suburbs as did a good number of first Irish and German, and then Italian new middle class voters and powered Republican strength in places like Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester, as well as Staten Island within the city. But the Democratic margins in the city were thus increased and the growth in the city was amongst Democratic leaning demographics, Hispanics and African Americans, as well as more recent ethnic white immigrants, who were thus poorer.  Beginning in the post-war period you had a simultaneous move to the sunbelt, by largely the same group of middle class Republicans. This ramped up in the 1970's and 1980's and helped make Florida so Republican during the Reagan era until the movement diversified and even became Democratic leaning towards the late 1980's.

You cannot look at a map and presume everything else remains the same. Demographic change has a big impact and it is not just in cities. As the new group comes in, the old group's areas of majority are pushed further and further out. The only English majority/plurality counties in New York are in the central upstate. The Irish majority/plurality counties are in the Hudson valley and the Italian majority/plurality ones are NYC suburbs. In 1860, most every county in the state would be English Majority and even super majority with the city being Irish plurality or majority. One hundred or more years before that it was the same story with the Dutch being pushed further and further out by the English. Note this does not mean their presence in the city disappeared, merely that it was swamped by larger and newer demographics. It also doesn't mean there was necessary a flight of people, just that rural counties are naturally behind the city in terms of demographic change by two or three groups.

A massive inmigration of people occured into Vermont and New Hampshire. The one going into New Hampshire was largely Republican leaning consisting of the right demographics leaving Taxachusetts. The opposite was true of Vermont as liberals from Boston and New York located there. Both states as well as Maine, naturally drifted to the Democrats in the 1960's and early 1970's, but New Hampshire swung back hard to the GOP in the 1970's and 1980's, becoming one of 41s best states, largely because of that inmigration. More recent groups moving into NH have been Democratic leaning.

The native demographics of both states fit the GOP like a glove. WASP, rural and Northern. NH had pockets of working class ethnics and more residual Jacksonian Democrats hence why Wilson won it and it was the least Republican of the three Northern New England states. However, that native population changed in its attitudes. It became far more secular over the course of the 20th century. Environmentalism became a big concern as religion became less of one and that was a big thing in the 1960s and 1970s. They were also non-interventionist, protectionist and hostile to immigration, both of which meant that the new sunbelt GOP was a horrible fit for them across the board. Even so there was still a negative reaction to the influx of urban liberals on the part of the Vermont natives and it created a reaction in the late 1990's, which crested in a 10% loss to Howard Dean and Bush losing by about 10% to Gore in 2000.

Remember the two cores of GOP support in the North. Forget Ideology and forget limited government/bigger government for a minute.

Urban/suburban Middle and upper class WASPs - inherited from the Federalists
Select Rural Areas - inherited in waves from Jeffersonian Republicans and eventually Jacksonian Democrats.

This is by nature an at-least center right coalition. It is also not a winning a coalition even before the New Deal. Republicans used tariffs to augment it with workers and some Republicans were rather pro-labor because it was necessary to sustain a pro-industrial party to prevent poor farmers from uniting with poor workers in a Democratic coalition, which is what happened in the 1930s. There was thus substantial space for Progressives to operate within the GOP as well not just with the Civil War legacy, but this geographic necessity of appealing to labor.

What changed was after World War II, the anti-New Deal right realized there was no going back to 1924 in the Northeast and Midwest. Numerous Republicans were moving to the South and Ikes popularity loosened people up to at least considering a Republican in the South. This process began in 1952 with places like Virginia and Tennessee, which had the largest residual bases of GOP support of any of the Southern states, and the fast growing cities of the South like Charlotte, Dallas, Tampa and going further west, Phoenix. Beginning in 1948 and doubled up in 1964, many Southerners no longer regarded the Democrats as their champions on Civil Rights and while some switched solely because of Goldwater, most who switched at these points because they were conservative pro-business suburbanites who viewed their home party not only has hostile on race issues but also on economic ones. They saw the Republicans as a viable alternative for the first time now that there was "not a dimes worth a difference" on Civil Rights anymore. Even use of the dog whistle tactics mentioned by Democrats in this thread was an attempt to be the "lesser of two evils" on the issue and those issues like busing had as much appeal in Michigan, as the Dallas suburbs.

Excellent post! The importance of the Sun Belt migration in causing a large scale partisan reversal by providing opportunities for an anti-New-Deal party. In essence, the Sun Belt takeover of politics was what permitted the Republicans to win seven of ten Presidential elections (and nearly win two of the other three) between 1952 and 1988. Middle class white suburbanites were a perfect fit for an economically conservative low-tax party hostile to the very high income tax rates introduced to fund World War II, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War and the Great Society. They also were desperate to see the government stay out of social engineering to deal with racial problems caused by the “Great Migration” which had begun in the 1910s and accelerated during the Civil Rights era.

The one bug I have in your analysis is the omission of the Pacific Northwest (at least that area west of the Cascades). This region has been the most socially liberal of the nation since long before party vote correlations reversed at a state level in the 1960s. Washington, Oregon and California (also Hawaii which was far from statehood at this stage) were single-party Republican bastions between the Panic of 1893 and the New Deal. However, these states turned overwhelmingly to FDR in 1932 and 1936 (Landon was a terrible fit for these states even vis-à-vis most of the rest of the nation) but until a major Democratic revolution in 1954 remained strongly Republican at the state level. Especially in Washington, the GOP was frequently threatened by leftist third party movements, up to William Hope Harvey in 1932 reaching 20 percent in Thurston County. Big-government New Deal Democrats were – despite their social conservatism and Catholic influence – a better fit than a free-market GOP.

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

[OSR stands with Israel]

On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.

I wonder if TR had won the GOP nomination in 1912 instead of running third party, if that would have taken the party in a progressive direction for the foreseeable future.

[darklordoftech]

"The parties have completely switched" and "the parties haven't switched whatsoever" are both oversimplifications. The Republicans have always been the more business-friendly party and the Democrats have always used "common man" rhetoric. However, it used to be that businesses wanted the government to help them and the Democrats saw the free market as anti-elitist, parties have definitely switched their views on blacks, etc. New England used to be more religious, but it was a pr o-civil rights, feminist, and pro-education form of religion. Grover Cleveland opposed women's suffrage.

On another note, William Jennings Bryan was the Bernie Sanders to Cleveland's Bill/Hillary Clinton.

[OSR stands with Israel]

On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.

I wonder if TR had won the GOP nomination in 1912 instead of running third party, if that would have taken the party in a progressive direction for the foreseeable future.

depends on if Wilson still gets elected or not . If Wilson still gets elected almost certainly not , if Taft wins maybe.

[Karpatsky]

On Economics- GOP has always been more right wing
Foreign Policy- They were about the same until the 1970s when the GOP became more hawkish
Social Policy- Gradual from truman to lbj

Basically this.

A lot of people fighting strawmen in this thread. No one with any knowledge of the situation thinks that one day in 1964 Johnson sent Strom Thurmond over to the Republican caucus with a briefcase full of political positions and asked them to send theirs over. And I think one would have to be willfully ignorant to deny that the cultural conservatism which was once the basis of the Solid South is now almost completely in the Republican camp. The question is not whether these trends exist, because they clearly do, but to what extent they exist, what issues they touch, and how long it took for them to become apparent.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

The bases of both parties would have revolted if the platforms switched.

[darklordoftech]

The Jacksonian Democrats opposed public schools.

In 1820-1928, Prohibition was generally supported by Protestant Republicans and opposed by Catholic and Jewish Democrats. In 1984, Frank Lautenberg, a Jewish Democrat, introduced the National Drinking Age act, and initially, the Democrats supported it and the Republicans, including Reagan himself, opposed it.

While the Democrats have always used "common man" rhetoric, I'm not sure how a slaveowning planter elite is any less elitist than a mercantile elite. If a slaveowner calling a banker "elitist" isn't an example of the pot calling the kettle black, I'm not sure what is.

Grover Cleveland opposed disaster relief and women's suffrage.

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.

In 1924, 1916, 1908, 1904. From 1896-1932, the GOP was more liberal most of the time.

[OSR stands with Israel]

On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.

In 1924, 1916, 1908, 1904. From 1896-1932, the GOP was more liberal most of the time.

1924 LMAO , Calvin Coolidge was probably the most conservative president since the 1850s and ran on his record of huge tax cuts , enforcing prohibition , making government smaller , and restricting immigration.


1916 lol again Wilson was clearly more liberal than Hughes

1908 Bryan was clearly more liberal than Taft

[darklordoftech]

On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.

In 1924, 1916, 1908, 1904. From 1896-1932, the GOP was more liberal most of the time.

1924 LMAO , Calvin Coolidge was probably the most conservative president since the 1850s and ran on his record of huge tax cuts , enforcing prohibition , making government smaller , and restricting immigration.


1916 lol again Wilson was clearly more liberal than Hughes

1908 Bryan was clearly more liberal than Taft

Coolidge's opponent opposed child labor laws and anti-lynching laws while Coolidge supported both.

Bryan was perhaps the most liberal politician of his time, but is often misremembered thanks to the Scopes Trial. What few remember is that the time, evolution was being used to justify eugenics and social darwinism.

[OSR stands with Israel]

On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

How many GOP nominees from 1896-1996 was more liberal than the Democratic one lol(There is only 1 and that is 1904)


The fact is ever since the election of 1896 the GOP has been the more conservative party, and the election of 1912 solidified it.

In 1924, 1916, 1908, 1904. From 1896-1932, the GOP was more liberal most of the time.

1924 LMAO , Calvin Coolidge was probably the most conservative president since the 1850s and ran on his record of huge tax cuts , enforcing prohibition , making government smaller , and restricting immigration.


1916 lol again Wilson was clearly more liberal than Hughes

1908 Bryan was clearly more liberal than Taft

Coolidge's opponent opposed child labor laws and anti-lynching laws while Coolidge supported both.

Bryan was perhaps the most liberal politician of his time, but is often misremembered thanks to the Scopes Trial. What few remember is that the time, evolution was being used to justify eugenics and social darwinism.

Coolidge at the state level was much much different than the Coolidge at the Presidential Level. Presidential Coolidge probably is the most conservative President since at least the 1850s.


Here is the 1924 Democratic Platform: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29593

They slam the GOP for being in bed with Big Business and supporting a tax policy that helps the rich.

[mianfei]

On an economic level, from ~1860 to ~1925 the two were roughly even, but after this the Democrats became markedly more economically liberal. On social issues, the switch happened on a presidential level from ~1964 to ~1984, but took some time to percolate down ballot. As a result, it would be accurate to say the GOP during much of the 19th and 20th centuries was the more “liberal” party. Nowadays, this is clearly not true.

As David Carlin pointed out in his 2006 book Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?, although the GOP was economically more conservative (in general) from 1896 onwards, the New Deal Democrats were always socially extremely conservative by today’s standards, and much more morally conservative than Northern and Pacific state Republicans.

As one illustration, it was the FDR administration that introduced the Hays Code for motion pictures, which was extremely restrictive compared to what could be filmed in Europe where the working classes were extremely anti-religion (especially Catholicism). As another, the New Deal saw the development of the “family wage” as an effort to hold and encourage permanent marriages, because it was felt that women working depressed wages, increased unemployment, and had been encouraged (if wholly tacitly) by the free-market GOP administrations in the 1920s.

However, the crises brought about by attempts to enforce facility integration in the 1950s and 1960s forcibly turned the Democratic Party away from ideals of the “natural family” and toward social engineering and acceptance of “alternative” lifestyles like homosexuality and cohabitation. As I said in my previous post, the “Revolution of 1954” in the Pacific States was the prelude to this change, and led to elimination of laws on abortion and homosexuality for the first time in US history in these states. In fact, this 1954 revolution was in my view an undoubted factor reversing historic party alignments in the rest of the nation.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The one bug I have in your analysis is the omission of the Pacific Northwest (at least that area west of the Cascades). This region has been the most socially liberal of the nation since long before party vote correlations reversed at a state level in the 1960s. Washington, Oregon and California (also Hawaii which was far from statehood at this stage) were single-party Republican bastions between the Panic of 1893 and the New Deal. However, these states turned overwhelmingly to FDR in 1932 and 1936 (Landon was a terrible fit for these states even vis-à-vis most of the rest of the nation) but until a major Democratic revolution in 1954 remained strongly Republican at the state level. Especially in Washington, the GOP was frequently threatened by leftist third party movements, up to William Hope Harvey in 1932 reaching 20 percent in Thurston County. Big-government New Deal Democrats were – despite their social conservatism and Catholic influence – a better fit than a free-market GOP.

Well I have since refined some of my knowledge and have read "The Emerging Republican Majority" by Kevin Phillips.

Oregon was the most stable of the states and the most pro-Republican, conservative in a Burkean sense, it resisted a lot of the populist surges and radical impulses, that swept over Washington and California. The reason for this was that it was largely dominated by Protestant Yankees in the Portland area, and while the eastern part had a large number of Southerners move in, it was not enough to fundamentally erode that power bastion. At least not until the New Deal Era, especially the 1950's.

Northern California was impact by this same trend, but Southern California was exploding in Population and So-cal was basically an extension of the sunbelt. Half of Iowa basically picked up and moved to Orange county in the mid 20th century, as well as large number from all of the Midwestern states. The industries, demographics and ethos meant that these counties were solidly Republican and fast growing. So even if the Republicans lost ground in Norcal, they would replace it in Socal, which is what enabled them win CA from 1952 until 1988 with the exception of 1964.

A lot of Yankee Republican bastions saw shifts towards the Democrats and away from the Republicans in the 1950's midterms. Conservatives found themselves being replaced by liberals or by Democrats in Vermont and UES New York (though in migration and other demographic changes were always a factor as well). In the 1960's, many of the remaining Representatives of these "Yankee" districts, raced to left to try and catch up to their electorates. They supported Rockefeller over Nixon and their voting records in Congress surged to the left as well. This was a Quixotic and doomed strategy because the GOP basically broke away from its Yankee base by 1964 to become a Southern, German and Irish middle class party, with a declining but still solid contingent of Yankee whites. This was the case in 1968, which is when the book was written about. All they accomplished was to alienate themselves from the new base and lead to formation of the concept of "Liberal or RINO Republicanism".

In essence the Republicans changed bases rather than change ideologically. As a part of this process though, it is unavoidable that the party would evolve to match its new demographics. So a shift from Old Right Taft to Neoconservatism on defense for instance. An embrace of free trade instead of protectionism, which no longer swayed workers post Depression anyway. An ever growing view of hostility towards government since Southerners hate the federal gov't, Irish hate the establishment and the Germans hated communism and were distasteful of WW1 and even WW2 to some extent.

But generally this is what is mistaken for the "platform switch". The platforms didn't switch, the Democrat's old base became alienated by the New Deal, Civil Rights and Foreign Policy and gravitated towards the Republicans, who had a minority coalition to begin with. This gave the Republicans a large minority coalition, but their original base found their new bed fellows unsavory and slowly gravitated towards the Democrats. The evolution of the Party system typically is started by the liberal or left party and the right then reacts to it.

The Democrats were already a liberal party when this began, and it was their traditional base of poor Southern farmers and big city ethnics that pulled them so, even though these had been the foundation blocks of the Democratic party going back to the Jeffersonian era. This process began with William Jennings Bryan, who energized "the traditional Democratic base", but around a "new populist-left" platform. This was not just happening in the US, but in Britain as well where the Liberal Party, a party of similar demographics and viewpoints to the Democrats, went through a similar transformation in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

This same base elected Wilson and it is from Wilson that you get FDR. Over this same period, Irish and Germans stopped being disadvantaged immigrants and became middle class people who wanted their cut of power more than they wanted Gov't expansion. So they still hated the establishment, but now it was the New Deal Establishment running things.

The closest thing to a platform switch occurred in the late 19th century, when the Democrats (and Liberals) began to use gov't as tool to uplift the poor as opposed to regarding government as tool for elites to preserve their power. Previously both the Democrats and Liberals had opposed such bastions of power over the preceding 100 years, and both had opposed the policy of protectionism while the American Whigs/Republicans and Tories were protectionist and elitist oriented.