Talk:Political realignment

message: My objections to the article in its present form:
1. It's not NPOV. For example, it specifically states that a realignment occured under Reagan, which is not at all objective fact. It is certainly a fair theory, but should not be stated as it is.
2. It does not discuss the cyclical theory except in passing. Since in common usage, American realignments are understood to occur once in a generation, or every 36-years, that should be noted. They are also thought to favor one party over another.
3. It does not discuss even the most obvious criticisms of the theory. Changes occur in politics all the time, and it's not at all clear that elections can be sorted usefully into a series of multi-decade spans.
4. The obvious questions are not addressed: "What are the unmistakable characteristics of a realignment? How can we tell when we are in the middle of one? And how do we avoid mistaking an attractive but misleading detour for the genuine historical crossroads we are looking for?"
5. 
a. If new policies define a realignment, then it's not at all clear that 1896 is a realigning election. The elections of 1876 and 1912 brought about far more policy innovation on the part of the federal government: the end of Reconstruction in the first instance, and the enactment of Wilson's progressive economic agenda in the second.
b. If a realigning election is marked by a drastic reshuffling of votes, 1896 is also a flop. The Republican vote went up, but not dramatically. The Democratic vote hardly changed at all. And taking into account the nation as a whole, there was no significant change in partisan loyalties as compared to many other elections. (Consider 1876 and 1920)
c. If a realigning election is a change in parties, then 1816, not 1800, should be cited as a realigning election. The Federalists came within one state of winning in 1812. It was the war that pushed them to borderline treason, ultimately leading to their demise.
-- WikiAce 23:01, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  I think this page should be revamped 

message: Is the 1993 Canadian election a "realigning" one?  I mean, new parties were created and won votes, but really, they were the same groups that were in the PCs voting for the same reasons.    Now, wouldn't 1988 be more of a realigning election, with nationalists in the PCs and Free trade Liberals switching sides?Habsfannova 05:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1993 Canadian 

message: I think the individual who thought the 2004 election was a possible realigning election was, um, probably wrong. But thank you for playing.
::The 2006 Canadian federal election ought to be removed. It was certainly not a dramatic turning point since the Conservative Party only won a minority government, a point further reinforced by their second failure to secure a majority in the 2008 election. If 2006 is to be considered part of a long-term realignment of parties, then I think it is far too early to tell whether or not this is true. Until the Conservative Party secures a majority I don't think this can be argued. And, of course, there is nothing guaranteeing a Conservative Party majority government. In short, a dramatic realigning election such as 1896 in Canada or 1980 in the United States is fairly self-evident. On the other hand, drawn-out realigning elections require far more historical hindsight and are still problematic in that a "tipping point" in a longer process is far less salient let alone obvious to those who live through it. --Doug Nesbitt (talk) 20:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  2006's election 

message: Quite apart from the fact that it's currently divided up into US elections (two sections) and the whole of the rest of the world (one section) there seem some surprising omissions. For example, I'm British, and would most definitely include the 1997 UK election that brought Tony Blair to power. Is there a good reason that's been left out? 86.132.143.43 00:59, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The GOP started electing Senators South in 1960s, with John Tower of Texas a famous case. The behavior of actual voters is a critical element in realignment and cannot be deleted. Rjensen 19:11, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: yes, and please don't blank whole sections that are proper and on target. To say that the GOP STARTED to take senate seats in the 1960s is accurate, of course. (1950s and 1970s would be untrue). Rjensen 04:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Agreed. I am not good at actually editing articles, but I would suggest that someone reword the article to remove most of these bulleted lists. I can see where they could be helpful, but it seems like they've gone a little overboard here. 24.174.0.229 00:36, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This page needs cleaning up 

message: Senate and House have lost a lot of GOP seats, at least according to official poles. Barrack Obama got elected by a landslide, being the first African American to set foot in a presidential office, which is a major move towards civil rights. Nancy Pelosi was first female speaker of the house in 2006, yet another example of civil rights. The economy has basically collapsed with a huge stock market crash as people have been ensuing chaos on Wall Street and stocks falling to record lows in over 5 years. It now just remains to be seen if these elections will change history and undo all the damage from 2000-2008 in what may be called the worst presidential term ever in US History, as ratings for G.W. Bush plummet to 20%. Turnouts in 2008 have been at record high levels, unlike anything ever seen in history, and many electoral states gone from Red to Blue since both 2000 and 2004. What we are witnessing is a huge change in the US government, enough to break down the barriers of race, sex, and religion that have been long fought over in history. What astonishes me the most is that Barrack Obama is "trying" to break down all of Washington and make it so that there are no more empty promises or lies (You can argue against this if you wish), and I really hope that he will keep his promises to be honest, as honesty is something I have yet to see in any president in my lifetime, being 28 years of age. If he pulls through and does everything he says and follows through on all his promises, then I think it is fair to say we have a re-alignment. The thing is, we all have to do our part to help and unite ourselves under the nation, because we are ultimately in charge of our nation, not one person. As JFK said before my time, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." and Obama says, "Yes We Can." It's this ideology that remains yet to be seen, and only time will tell if politics have evolved in the next few years.
(63.200.199.41 (talk) 21:23, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  US 2008 Election and 2006 Combined = Realignment if all promises are held? 

message: Beginning with 1992, several states broke from their former Republican leanings and became generally Democratic states.  Most of them, including large states like California, Michigan, Illinois, and Pennsylvania have unbroken streaks of giving their electoral votes to the Democratic ticket.  This also includes Vermont, which had famously been a Republican state that had only gone Democratic once before.  Two others (New Mexico and New Hampshire) have gone Democratic in four out of five elections.  TheUnknown285 (talk) 00:21, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about 1992? 

message: I think it can be safely said now that this was not a realigning election.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.173.229.180 (talk) 08:07, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: 2006 as well - I don't think we can call it any kind of a realignment when the Democratic gains were wiped out (and then some) only four years later. 98.209.116.7 (talk) 05:07, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

text: Care to rethink that assessment today? 2600:1003:B011:BA95:F617:CAE4:67B7:635E (talk) 03:12, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  2008 

message: I was directed to this article from a link in Politics of Canada; specifically, the section entitled Realignment: Conservatives in Power, in which an editor has put forth Beheils rather dubious theory proposing "that Canada has recently undergone a watershed political realignment" which, presumably, means that, federally, we have several successive majority Conservative governments to look forward to.
I fall into the camp who find this whole concept rather laughable. It reminds me somewhat of those who play the lottery each week, carefully selecting their number sequences to somehow find a way to "beat the odds" and find patterns where none exist.
The reality is that each and every election is a realignment. Some alignments are bigger than others, and some are potentially the beginnings of longer trends (not unlike those oft-sought-after-but-rarely-achieved "dynasties" in sport), but it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can apply any such hypothesis as this. There are too many variables in the short term political and economic environments to support this dubious theory. That is why there is so much discussion on these pages as to which election year was or was not a "re-aligning election". The pattern is in the eye of the beholder.
The 36-year-cycle hypothesis is particularly suspect. If this were the case then we in Alberta (a land which should be the model demographic for the 36 year theory) should have been free and clear of the provincial PC rule sometime around 2007. Sadly, there is still no end in sight. Perhaps it would be best to title this article "Wishful Thinking" so it better explains, for example, the huge disconnect between what the pundits were saying before election day and what actually happened in the 2012 Alberta election!
Similarly, at the federal level, it remains to be seen whether the surge in popularity in Quebec of the federal NDP will survive the death of their very charismatic leader recently, or whether it was just a single election blip of protest. Can the federal Liberals rebuild, or do we have several more elections of regional fragmentation coming up, leaving us to look forward to more minority Conservative governments or, according to Beheils hypothesis, a future pattern of Conservative majority governments?
If it were entirely up to me, this entire article qualifies for deletion - in my humble opinion - but there seems to be enough interest to keep it around for at least a while longer. ;-)Garth of the Forest (talk) 20:54, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Canadian experts  for several years now seem convinced that something very dramatic happened to the Liberal party not to mention the conservatives, and the New Democrats. That's what dramatic political shakeups look like in different countries, where they're called realignments. Rjensen (talk) 07:41, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  All elections are re-aligning elections 

message: I propose that Realigning election be merged into Party system. I think that the content in the Realigning election article can easily be explained in the context of Party system. Mitchumch (talk) 10:42, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: oppose. They are entirely distinct concepts, with realigning elections focused on voter behavior, and party systems focusing on the rules and behavior political parties. Rjensen (talk) 13:57, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: oppose. This article is about the concept itself, not about partisan politics in general. There is no better place for this content.Circumspice (talk) 21:24, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

text:  oppose Realigning elections are important enough to deserve their own article.  The party system should be referenced for context but both articles do not need to be merged.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.20.207.19 (talk) 01:34, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

text:  oppose This is a valid subject on its own. It needs its own article. "Party system" is far too general. 24.27.62.110 (talk) 18:49, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: I understand this is mainly a term from American politics, but some examples from British history have been added here, so I thought I'd make a space to discuss them. If 'realigning election' means an election where there's a change in who the main two parties are, then the last one in the UK was 1922. If in a broader sense it means an election where there's a significant and lasting change in the groups of people voting for the main parties, then the UK examples I'd say should be listed are 1922, 1945, 1979, 1997, and either 2015 or 2019 (2015 was certainly a realigning election in Scotland). Coincidentally that's not too different from the list at Landslide victory, which suggests there may be considerable overlap between those articles... Robofish (talk) 16:38, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  UK examples? 

message: Hey,
I think the 2011 Finnish Parliamentary elections should be added. The "Big Three" of Kokoomus (centre right), Centre Party and Social Democrats, that had dominated Finnish national politics since the Communists had faded in the late 70s and early 80s, were now to become the "Big Four" with the Finns Party gaining 3rd place with 39 seats, an increase of 34 in a single election and +15% in the popular vote. 
It further brought anti-establishment, anti-EU and anti-immigrant policies to the "mainstream", as previously those views had not reached a popular discussion point, but they became heated topics in debates, rhetoric and discussion.
Page 3: https://vaalit.fi/documents/5430845/7278629/ETYJ-raportti/ecf3a11b-8039-4e39-ae62-fc41530a1c2a/ETYJ-raportti.pdf?t=1522061924000  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarcoHamilton12 (talk • contribs) 18:50, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  2011 Finnish Parliamentary Elections