realignment

History not only explains how the industrial Midwest became Trump country, but also how the area's politics may shift again.

The transformation of Alabama politics in the 1960s and 1970s reflected the rise of a new version of Republicanism that Trump has perfected.

The secret, often missing ingredient to building a majoritarian progressive coalition.

A new history of American politics examines the past and future of political realignments.

Southern voters, once loyal to the Democratic Party, elected Republican candidates in 1966 as the two parties began to sort themselves into partisan camps.

An annotated collection of resources from the Bunk archive that help explain the shifting sands of American politics.

A conservative pundit questioned the prevalence of Dixiecrats switching to the GOP. Historian Kevin Kruse accepted the challenge.

What America’s last major party crack-up in the 1850s tells us about the 2010s.

It's been a remarkable transformation over 162 years.

The longest-running party in America has seen significant shifts in its ideological and geographic makeup.

One of the great pieces of unfinished business for the Democratic Party.

Ronald Reagan proved instrumental to Southerners bringing their cultural conservatism to center stage for the Republican Party.

Three US presidents from the South’s borders—Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson—worked against Southern politicians to support civil and voting rights.

James Longstreet became an apostate for supporting black civil rights during Reconstruction.

Bayard Rustin tried to forge a mass coalition to deliver progressive change. His failure to do so in the 1960s tells us much about building one today.

Kevin Phillips help set the Republican Party on the path that led it to Trump.

The president didn’t want to go too far on civil rights in 1948, fearing it would cost him reelection. But an obscure mayor changed the race — and his party.

The conservative backlash to the civil-rights era began immediately — and now it’s nearly complete.

A new book chronicles the decades-long fight to legalize abortion in the United States.

Political scientist Richard Bensel explains the feedback loops between policy commitments of political elites and the regional distribution of political power.