Overview
- Offers new and comprehensive election data in the state of Alabama
- Analyzes long-term electoral shifts in the state as well as state and national level comparisons
- Presents geographic centers of continuity and change through county-level analysis in Alabama over time
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in US Elections (PSUSE)
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
Keywords
- electorals politics
- US elections
- alabama elections
- voting
- electoral patterns
- civil rights movement
- gubernatorial elections
- legislative elections
- presidential elections
- southern politics
- partisan politics
- race and elections
- House of Representatives
- congressional elections
- Senate
- electoral behavior
- state politics
- partisan realignment
- local politics
- coattail effects
About this book
While significant attention in political science is devoted to national level elections, a comprehensive look at state level political dynamics in the United States is so far sorely missing, and state level electoral developments and shifts are treated as mere reflections of national-level dynamics and patterns. This book argues that this significantly impacts our ability to understand macro-level electoral shifts in the United States in general. The book analyzes gubernatorial, congressional, and presidential election results in the state of Alabama from 1945 through 2020. Comprehensive maps of county-level partisan shifts over time and comparisons between trends for different offices make it possible to isolate pivotal elections and compare state-level and national trends over time. When and where did Alabama’s electorate break with the Democratic Party, and were these breaks uniform across the state? Which counties shifted the most over time, and wasthis shift gradual or characterized by change elections? Comprehensive electoral data, on the county- and precinct-level, make it possible to answer these questions and place state-level electoral behavior in its regional and national context. Detailed county level demographic and economic data is used to provide local context for electoral patterns, shifts, and continuities.
Reviews
“Wagner relies primarily and creatively on county-level election and census data to provide readers with a comprehensive and compelling account of the post-World War II transformation of party politics in Alabama. She ably juxtaposes the dramatic reversal of party fortunes with the persistence of cultural traditions and factionalism rooted in region and socio-economic class. Her single-state focus incorporates and clarifies broader contemporaneous regional and national developments. This is an invaluable addition to the scholarly literature on Southern politics and party realignment.” (--Harold F. Bass, Department of Political Science, Ouachita Baptist University, USA)
“Top-down interpretations of American politics are everywhere, interpretations in which state and local developments are mainly reflections--even merely examples--of a national story. So a bottom-up approach is instantly noteworthy, and few if any states have changed as much as Alabama in this bottom-up interpretation of postwar Alabama politics. Gubernatorial, senatorial, and presidential contests; local, regional, and national coalitions; crucial change-points and insistent continuity: all appear here in a clearly organized exposition that still picks up many of the major developments in postwar American politics, while making it clear that these were rarely simple replications at the state and local level--most certainly not in Alabama. The great virtue of a grass-roots context is that it permits an underlying social complexity to show up in political analysis, by offering the real context within which politicians had to plan their campaigns and their careers.” (--Byron E. Shafer, Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, USA)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Regina L. Wagner is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alabama, USA.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Electoral Patterns in Alabama
Book Subtitle: Local Change and Continuity Amid National Trends
Authors: Regina L. Wagner
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in US Elections
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06770-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-06769-3Published: 27 August 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-06770-9Published: 26 August 2022
Series ISSN: 2731-6785
Series E-ISSN: 2731-6793
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 122
Number of Illustrations: 9 b/w illustrations, 17 illustrations in colour
Topics: Political Science, Electoral Politics, Governance and Government, Legislative and Executive Politics