As we have seen, it is no accident that no enduring new major party has emerged in American politics for more than 130 years. More and more information points to a strong and exclusive party system. In the past two decades there have been remarkable changes in the make-up of the two major parties' voting coalitions. The parties are becoming more defined both socially and ideologically, reciprocally fostering greater coherence in the appeal parties make to voters. This major realignment in voter loyalty has according to Warren E. Miller and J. Merrill Shanks, The New American Voter, major realignment in the South took place shortly after the election of Kennedy in 1960. “It was realignment of massive proportions, involving a Democratic-to-Republican switch of at least 3 out of every 10 Southern non-Black male voters” (143).  This realignment took place in the midst of looming racial tensions, but incorporated a variety economic factors as well.  The civil rights revolution opened southern politics to Black involvement and Blacks responded by becoming loyal members of the Democratic party. The result had staggering effects on the make-up of the Democratic party by doubling the margin of support from Black voters, while at the same time increasing the Republican party’s support from Southern White males. Party loyalties were beginning to become clearer, to be further solidified during the Reagan years. Consequentially, at the national level, these changes in the South came with enormous costs for party politics. “Without a solid South, which had comprised the most loyal share of its New Deal base and given it a regional lock in the electoral college, the Democratic party is no longer dominant in American politics” (Beck, 34).

Since the early sixties, Blacks have maintained their strong loyalty to the Democratic party, both inside and outside the South. Other groups have also figured prominently in the realignment of the political parties as well. “From almost identical partisan distributions in the 1950s and 1960s, the partisan loyalties of men and women began to diverge in the 1970s and had become significantly different by the 1980s and 1990s” (Beck, 36). This is easily understood in light of Democratic advantages for women, while the Republican party, during the limited realignment described by Miller and Shanks, increased its loyalty of the white male through conservative partisan orientation. More specifically, the 1980-1988 realignment among voters centered on two distinct phases: the first phase saw an increase in Republican loyalty found among the young, markedly a tribute to the charisma of Ronald Reagan. The second phase concentrated in the ranks of the older, better-educated voters (Miller & Shanks, 166). From this, we can deduce that large segments of social groups adhere to either Republican or Democratic loyalties. In the end this creates a major disadvantage for third parties squandering for party support.

The realignment of parties, beginning with the expansive change in the South during the 1960s, beholds a system of fierce loyalties, rather than declining parties. Both parties are more polarized in the electorate along ideological lines than they have been in years. According to Paul Allen Beck, "The Changing American Party Coalitions,” the Republican party has steadily become a more conservative party. “By the 1980s, ideological conservatives comprised a majority of its coalition, and about two-thirds of its identifiers were self-declared conservatives by the 1990s… [furthermore], the Democrats, never as ideologically pure as the Republicans during this time period, have become a more liberal party in recent years; their liberal members now outnumber their conservatives by more than two to one (Beck, 40). Although some may point to this intensity of ideological followers in each party as a path toward dealignment by alienating nonpartisans, it is also clear that the two parties have once again created strong bonds among its members in order to further party goals. Similarly, in a two-party system, it behooves the ambitious politician to affiliate with one party or the other thus creating more of a disadvantage for third parties in attracting viable candidates.

The competition that follows due to massive realignment and the subsequent loss of the white voters in the South by the Democrats, places the two dominant parties on a fairly level playing field, both vying for power in extraordinary competition for electoral victories. Anthony Downs and Joseph A. Schlesinger are both rigorous advocates of competition for office being the single most defining characteristic of the American political party system (Aldrich, 12). More specifically, “parties formulate policies to win elections rather than winning elections to promulgate policies. In a two-party system, the health of the system is measured by how competitive the two parties are for a wide range of elective offices over a long period” (Aldrich, 13).  Schlesinger adds that each office and its party candidate serves as one “nucleus” of a party, and therefore, the hallmark of a strong party is one that has many strong organizational nuclei connected to each other in supporting its ambitious party candidates (Aldrich, 13). As we have seen, this ultimately excludes the third parties from competing for partisan victory. As the two dominant parties continue to dealign and realign for electoral domination, the third parties are left to fight a Goliath without the advantageous slingshot. In the meantime, the major political parties are becoming more centralized, more ideological, more disciplined, and more capable of sustaining their dominance in the American government.

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