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From the Populist Era to the New Deal: A Study of Partisan Realignment in Washington State, 1889-1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Howard W. Allen  and
Erik W. Austin
Howard W. Allen
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University
Erik W. Austin
Affiliation:
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Extract

Study of the popular response to the political parties and candidates of nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States history has made significant progress since the 1950s. Samuel Lubell in The Future of American Politics was certainly one of the first to show historians that much understanding about the voting behavior of past generations could be gleaned from an imaginative examination of county and precinct election data. Lee Benson, in his now classic essay on “Research Methods in American Political Historiography,” persuasively demonstrated to many that systematic analysis of quantitative data could improve the accuracy and quality of generalizations about past voting practices. Benson’s subsequent study of early nineteenth-century New York politics, The Concept ofJacksonian Democracy, which quickly became a model of excellence in research design and methods, concluded, among other things, that “socioeconomic cleavages” were less important in explaining how New Yorkers voted after about 1820 than were “ethnic and religious” factors. At least in part inspired by Benson’s findings in New York, other historians pursued the study of the relationship between voting behavior and ethnocultural and religious factors by examining, for example, political behavior in Michigan during the Jacksonian era, the Midwest and Northeast during the 1890s, and Chicago in the early twentieth century. While the emphasis upon the importance of ethnocultural and religious factors in voting has engendered some criticism and dissent, it seems fair to conclude that this approach to the study of the voting process has produced significant work that has substantially influenced interpretations of American political history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Winter 1979 , pp. 115 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1979 

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References

Notes

1. Lubell, Samuel, The Future of American Politics, 3rd ed. rev., (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Benson, Lee, “Research Problems in American Political Historiography,” in Toward the Scientific Study of History (New York, 1972), 3–80Google Scholar; and The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (New York, 1964), 165; Formisano, Ronald P., The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, 1971)Google Scholar; Jensen, Richard, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar; Kleppner, Paul, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics. 1850-1900 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; McSeveney, Samuel T., The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893-1896 (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Allswang, John M., A House for All Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago, 1890-1936 (Lexington, 1971)Google Scholar; and Tarr, Joel A., A Study in Boss Politics: William Lorimer of Chicago (Urbana, 1971)Google Scholar.

2. Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York, 1960)Google Scholar. See also, Campbell, Angus, “A Classification of the Presidential Elections,” in Campbell, , Converse, , Miller, , and Stokes, , Elections and the Political Order (New York, 1966), 63–77Google Scholar.

3. Sellers, Charles, “The Equilibrium Cycle in Two-Party Politics,” The Public Opinion Quarterly, 29 (Spring 1965), 16–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pomper, Gerald, “Classification of Presidential Elections,” The Journal of Politics, 29 (August 1967), 535–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burnham, Walter Dean, “The Changing Shape of The American Political Universe,” The American Political Science Review 59 (March 1965), 7–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York, 1970); Burnham, Walter Dean, Clubb, Jerome M., and Flanigan, William H., “Partisan Realignment: A Systemic Perspective,” in Silbey, Joel H., Bogue, Allan G., and Flanigan, William H., The History of American Electoral Behavior (Princeton, 1978), 45–77Google Scholar; and Benson, Lee, Silbey, Joel H., and Field, Phyllis F., “Toward a Theory of Stability and Change in American Voting Patterns, 1792-1970.” in Silbey, , Bogue, , and Flanigan, , The History of American Electoral Behavior, 78–82Google Scholar.

4. William Wolman, The Development of Manufacturing Industry in the State of Washington, Bulletin No. 31 of the Economic and Business Studies, Bureau of Economic and Business Research (Pullman, 1958). See also Avery, Mary W., History and Government of the State of Washington (Seattle, 1961), 3–25 and 248–99Google Scholar; Gastil, Raymond D., Cultural Regions of the United States (Seattle, 1975), 264–72Google Scholar; Gates, Charles M. and Nesbit, Robert C., “Agriculture in Eastern Washington,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 37 (October 1946), 279–302Google Scholar; Johansen, Dorothy O. and Gates, Charles M., Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest, 2nd ed. (New York, 1967), especially 369–83Google Scholar; Kerr, William T. Jr., “The Progressives of Washington, 1910-12.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 55 (January 1964), 16–27Google Scholar; and Meinig, D. W., The Great Columbian Plain: A Historical Geography, 1805-1910 (Seattle, 1968)Google Scholar.

5. Wolman, W., The Development of Manufacturing Industry in the State of Washington, 31–59Google Scholar. The data utilized in this study were made available by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The data were supplied in partially proofed form and the Consortium bears no responsibility for either the analyses or interpretations presented here.

6. Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections (Washington, 1975), 279–99, 435, and 661–880Google Scholar.

7. Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections, 279-99.

8. Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections, 279-99.

9. Burnham, W. Dean, “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe,” 7–28; and Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics, 195–203Google Scholar. Estimates of eligible voters, defined as adult males twenty-one years and older until 1912 when woman suffrage was adopted and all adults twenty-one and older after 1912, were computed on the assumption that population change was uniform from census year to census year. The change in population in each decade, in other words, was distributed uniformly across the decade.

10. Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes, The American Voter, 425-40.

11. Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi-Sovereign People (New York, 1960), 81Google Scholar.

12. Key, V. O. Jr., “A Theory of Critical Elections,” The Journal of Politics, 17 (February 1955). 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. For a more general discussion of the systemic characteristics of national alignment patterns, see Burnham, W. D., Clubb, J. M., and Flanigan, W. H., “Partisan Realignment: A Systemic Approach,” 70–75Google Scholar.

14. See for example, Allswang, John M., A House for All Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago, 1890-1936 (Lexington, 1971)Google Scholar; Clubb, Jerome M. and Allen, Howard W., “The Cities and the Election of 1928: Partisan Realignment?” The American Historical Review, 74 (April 1969) 1205–1220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Degler, Carl N., “American Political Parties and the Rise of the City: An Interpretation,” The Journal of American History, 51 (June 1964), 4–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Key, V. O. Jr., “A Theory of Critical Elections,” 3–18Google Scholar; Lichtman, Allan J., “Critical Election Theory and the Reality of American Presidential Politics, 1916-50,” The American Historical Review, (April 1976), 317–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lubell, S., The Future of American Politics, 43–68Google Scholar; Shover, John L., “Was 1928 a Critical Election in California?” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 58 (October 1967), 196–204Google Scholar; and Sternsher, Bernard, “The Emergence of the New Deal Party System: A Problem in Historical Analysis of Voter Behavior,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 7 (Summer 1975), 127–149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. See for example J. M. Allswang, A House for All Peoples: Degler, C. N., “American Political Parties and the Rise of the City: An Interpretation,” 4–59Google Scholar; Key, V. O. Jr., “A Theory of Critical Elections,” 3–18Google Scholar; and S. Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 43-68.

16. Allen, Howard W., “Miles Poindexter: A Political Biography,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1959Google Scholar; and Kerr, T. Jr., “The Progressives of Washington, 1910-12,” 16–27Google Scholar. A revealing description of a lumber town in western Washington is Clark, Norman H., Mill Town: A Social History of Everett, Washington from Its Earliest Beginnings on the Shores of Puget Sound to the Tragic and Infamous Event Known as the Everett Massacre (Seattle, 1970)Google Scholar. Most recent studies of the Midwest and East in the 1890s emphasize the importance of ethnic and cultural rather than economic factors, but they do seem to agree that the economic collapse of the economy was also an important factor in explaining the permanent shift to the Republicans in midwestern and eastern cities. See Degler, C. N., “American Political Parties and the Rise of the City: An Interpretation,” 124–34Google Scholar; Jensen, R., The Winning of the Midwest, 269–308Google Scholar; Kleppner, P., The Cross of Culture, 179–315Google Scholar; and McSeveney, S. P., The Politics of Depression, 163–229Google Scholar.

17. The multiple regression equations were computed by means of a backward stepwise analysis. Independent variables from the chronologically most proximate census that “explained” at least 10 percent of the variance of the Democratic percent of the mid-term House vote were included in the analysis. The weakest variable, defined by a significance test of the F-ratio, was removed at each step of the analysis until all included variables fell within or very near the .05 significance level. The significance test, in other words, was used merely as a measure of the strength of the relationship and not as a statement of probability.