Partisan-Ideological Divergence and Changing Party Fortunes in the States, 1968—2003

• Published date: 01 December 2008
• Date: 01 December 2008
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912908317795
• Author: John M. Bruce,Robert D. Brown
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

Volume 61 Number 4

December 2008 585-597

© 2008 University of Utah

10.1177/1065912908317795

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585

Partisan-Ideological Divergence and

Changing Party Fortunes in the

States, 1968–2003

A Federal Perspective

Robert D. Brown

John M. Bruce

University of Mississippi

We expand on previous literature on party competition in the American states by examining competition for both state

and national offices. We find significant differences in Democratic Party electoral advantage within states, along with

across-state variation in changes in these differences over time. We attribute these results to movement in the parti-

sanship and ideology of the states’ citizenry. As consistency in these core political attitudes increases, parties are able

to campaign and govern on messages that are more consistent across electoral levels. The result is greater consistency

in party electoral performance across state and national offices.

Keywords: party competition; ideology; partisanship; federalism

Schattschneider’s famous assertion that “modern

democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the par-

ties” (1942, 1) rests on an implicit foundation of com-

petitive parties. Appropriate to its significance, the

competitive nature of party systems has been subject

to a great deal of scholarly scrutiny. In the United

States context, work on party competition has pro-

ceeded in all electoral arenas, following the contours

of the constitutional framework into examinations of

competition at federal, state, and local levels. Yet,

while commonly recognizing the often decentralized

nature of U.S. political parties, as well as the fact that

partisan elections take place within the structure of

federalism, surprisingly few analyses of party compe-

tition incorporate this important contextual feature

into their analytical framework. Rather, most efforts

tend to focus overwhelmingly on party competition at

one level, either national or state, to the exclusion of

the other.1The result is that despite a large body of lit-

erature covering a significant variety of topics, state

and national electoral competition are rarely discussed

within the context of the same electoral setting.

We believe this to be a significant oversight in the

literature examining the nature of party competition

in American politics. While there is overwhelming

scholarly agreement that political parties have been

shaped by the opportunities and constraints created

by federalism, precious little work has been done to

relate these realities to what is arguably the single

most important aspect of political parties: their abil-

ity to contest elections at each electoral level.

From our perspective, a key step in understanding

party competition in a federal context is to acknowl-

edge the variation in political character of the states.

Even a cursory scan of the states reveals a range of

political profiles. State parties will respond to their

environment, developing messages and images that

maximize their competitiveness in that state. Their abil-

ity to adjust in this fashion stems from the organiza-

tion’s operational boundary matching the political

boundaries of the state. In contrast, the national parties

have little ability to adjust their message or image to

match any particular region or state. Indeed, the mod-

ern information age seems likely to create a very

homogenous national party image across the states.

However, the nature of how that image is received in

any particular state is going to be a function of the polit-

ical character of that state. The greater the disparity

Robert D. Brown, Professor of Political Science, University of

Mississippi; e-mail: psrbrown@olemiss.edu

John M. Bruce, Associate Professor of Political Science, University

of Mississippi; e-mail: jbruce@olemiss.edu