New Deal coalition
The
New Deal coalition was the alignment of interest groups and voting blocs who supported the
New Deal and voted for
Democratic presidential candidates from 1932 until approximately 1966, which made the Democratic Party the majority party during that time.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a coalition that included the Democratic party, big city machines, labor unions, European and African-American minorities or ethnics, and farm groups.
The
1932 election brought about a major realignment in political party affiliation, and is widely considered to be a
realigning election, though some scholars point to the off-year election of 1934. Franklin Delano Roosevelt set up his
New Deal and was able to forge a coalition of
Big City machines, labor unions,
liberals, ethnic and racial minorities (especially Catholics, Jews and
African Americans), and Southern whites. These disparate voting blocs together formed a large minority of voters and handed the Democratic Party seven victories out of nine presidential elections, as well as control of both houses of
Congress during much of this time. Starting in the 1930s, the term "liberal" was used in U.S. politics to indicate supporters of the coalition, while "conservative" denoted its opponents. The coalition was never formally organized, and the constituent members often disagreed with each other about things.
Roosevelt had a magnetic appeal to the city dwellers, especially the poorer ethnics who got recognition, unions, relief jobs and beer thanks to the President. Taxpayers, small business and the middle class voted for Roosevelt in 1936, but turned sharply against him after the recession of 1937-38 seemed to belie his promises of recovery. Roosevelt discovered an entirely new use for city machines in his three reelection campaigns. Traditionally, local bosses minimized turnout so as to guarantee reliable control of their wards and legislative districts. To carry the electoral college, however, Roosevelt needed massive majorities in the largest cities to overcome the hostility of suburbs and towns. With
Harry Hopkins his majordomo, Roosevelt used the WPA (1935-1942) as a national political machine. Men on relief could get WPA jobs regardless of their politics, but hundreds of thousands of well-paid supervisory jobs were given to the local Democratic machines. The 3.5 million voters on relief payrolls during the 1936 election cast 82% percent of their ballots for Roosevelt. The vibrant labor unions, heavily based in the cities, likewise did their utmost for their benefactor, voting 80% for him, as did Irish, Italian and Jewish voters. In all, the nation's 106 cities over 100,000 population voted 70% for FDR in 1936, compared to his 59% elsewhere. Roosevelt won reelection in 1940 thanks to the cities. In the North the cities over 100,000 gave Roosevelt 60% of their votes, while the rest of the North favored Willkie 52%- 48%. It was just enough to provide the critical electoral college margin. With the start of full-scale war mobilization in the summer of 1940, the cities revived. The new war economy pumped massive investments into new factories and funded round-the-clock munitions production, guaranteeing a job to anyone who showed up at the factory gate.
The coalition fell apart in many ways. The first cause was lack of a leader of the stature of Roosevelt. The closest was perhaps
Lyndon Johnson, who deliberately tried to reinvigorate the old coalition, but in fact drove its constituents apart. New issues such as
civil rights, the
Vietnam War,
abortion,
gay rights and
affirmative action and urban riots tended to split the coalition and drive many members away. Meanwhile, the Republican party made major gains by promising lower taxes and control of crime.
The Big City machines faded away in the 1940s, with a few exceptions, such as
Chicago and
Albany. The New Deal had made them heavily dependent on the
WPA for patronage, and, when Congress shut down the WPA, the cities could not find a substitute. Furthermore, World War II brought such a surge or prosperity that the relief mechanism of the WPA, CCC, etc. was no longer useful as a political tool.
Labor unions crested in size and power in the 1950s, then went into steady decline. They continue into the 21st century as major backers of the Democratic party, but with so few members they have lost much of their influence.
Intellectuals gave increasing support to Democrats since 1932. The
Vietnam War, however, caused a serious split, with the
New Left reluctant to support most Democratic presidential candidates.
The European ethnic groups came of age after the 1960s.
Ronald Reagan pulled many of the working class social conservatives into the Republican party as
Reagan Democrats. Many middle class ethnics saw the Democratic party as a working class party and preferred the GOP as the middle class party. However, the Jewish community still voted in masse for the Democratic party, and with the recent election 74% voted for Kerry.
African Americans grew stronger in their Democratic loyalties and in their numbers. By the 1960s, they were a much more important part of the coalition than in the 1930s. Their Democratic loyalties cut across all income and geographic lines to form the single most unified bloc of voters in the country.
White Southerners abandoned cotton and tobacco farming, and moved to the cities where the New Deal programs had much less impact. Beginning in the 1950s, the southern cities and suburbs started voting Republican. The white South saw the support northern Democrats gave to the
Civil Rights Movement as a direct political assault on their interests and opened the way to protest votes for
Barry Goldwater, who in 1964 was the first Republican to carry the deep south.
Jimmy Carter and
Bill Clinton lured many of the Southern whites back at the level of Presidential voting, but by 2000 white males in the South were 2-1 Republican and, indeed, formed a major part of the Republican coalition.
In many ways, it was the
civil rights movement that ultimately heralded the demise of the coalition. Democrats had traditionally solid support in Southern states (the "
Solid South"), but this electoral dominance began eroding in
1964, when
Barry Goldwater carried the deep South (and little else). In the
1968 election, the South once again abandoned its traditional support for the Democrats by supporting Nixon and segregationist third-party candidate
George C. Wallace. These events, coupled with Nixon's
southern strategy aimed at attracting these voters, led to increased support for Republicans by Southern whites.
Since 1968, the south has generally voted for Republicans in presidential elections. Exceptions came in the elections of
1976, when the southern states voted for native southerner
Jimmy Carter, and
1992 and
1996, when the Democratic ticket of two southerners (
Bill Clinton and
Al Gore) achieved a split of the region's electoral votes.
In more recent years, support for the Democrats has become the strongest in the northeast and on the west coast, with Republicans showing more strength in the south and southwest. The Midwest has become a partisan political battleground. The division between the two parties is virtually even in both houses of Congress, as of 2006, and no party has established the kind of dominance that the Democrats were able to exert during the period of the New Deal coalition.
* Allswang, John M.
New Deal and American Politics (1978)
* Andersen, Kristi.
The Creation of a Democratic Majority, 1928-1936 (1979)
* Burns, James MacGregor.
Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1956)
*
Cantril, Hadley and Mildred Strunk, eds. Public Opinion, 1935-1946 (1951), massive compilation of many public opinion polls from US, UK, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.
* Jensen, Richard. "The Last Party System, 1932-1980," in Paul Kleppner, ed.
Evolution of American Electoral Systems (1981)
* Ladd Jr., Everett Carll with Charles D. Hadley.
Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s 2nd ed. (1978).
* Patterson, James.
Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933-39 (1967)
* Robinson, Edgar Eugene.
They Voted for Roosevelt: The Presidential Vote, 1932-1944 (1947) tables of votes by county
*
Sundquist, James L. Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (1983)*
Conservative coalition*
Solid South*
History of United States Democratic Party*
Southern strategy
