The Local Politics of National Realignments: U.S. Political Transformation from the New Deal to the Religious Right

bothandHow did local factors shape the political trajectories of White, working-class communities amidst the national breakdown of the New Deal coalition? This paper takes up this question by combining a quantitative, descriptive analysis of political change among White, working-class New Deal counties from 1932 to 2016 — including the Racial Realignment, the rise of the Religious Right, and the decline of unions — as well as a comparative-historical analysis of two of cities that were part of that New Deal coalition but took different political pathways after the Racial Realignment. I find that as cities confronted national political–economic developments, their responses were conditioned by local organizational contexts — which were often products of a previous period of response to national change. My findings suggest that New Deal counties that had a pre-existing history of evangelicalism and organized anti-Black sentiment prior to the Racial Realignment turned away from unions early in the deindustrialization period, were most open to late 20th century Republican politics. More broadly, the analysis offers a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between local and national processes of political change.