Did "party fatigue" exist before the Great Depression?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

the 1920 election is normally interpreted as a reaction against the activisim and zeal of the Teddy Roosevelt/Wilson era (even if they were both from different parties and had Taft in the middle of them).

And 1876 is another good example: after 8 years of Grant, the Dems managed to seize enough Union states to win the "popular vote" (with the help of their paramilitaries).

The Democrats ironically pissed away their PV advantage in the 1890's. The severe reduction of the southern voter turnout after the wave of voter suppression laws aimed at blacks and poor whites as well as the alienation of non-Irish catholics during the Bryan era, is what allowed the Republicans to win big PV vote margin after 1896, after 20 years of close contests and narrow PV losses in most of them.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

the alienation of non-Irish catholics during the Bryan era

What caused this?

Bryan's economic policies being portrayed as a threat to industrial jobs, as well as as Bryan's protestant revivalism. A number of these groups were also shut out of the Irish machines because they were not Irish. This created the dynamic that allowed Republicans to control cities like Chicago and Philadelphia. Republicans still did not dominate the rural areas in the Northern states, as large sections of Southern PA, OH, IN and ILL still voted Democratic. The Republican dominance was a product of rural Yankees combining with GOP big city machines to out vote the Irish, South German, Scots-Irish and Southern descendants in these states.