Next time on NDCR
President Reagan meeting with Ambassador Gorbachev at the White House.
O Gorbachev, why oh why aren't you General Secretary.
New Deal Coalition Retained: A Sixth Party System Wikibox Timeline
O Gorbachev, why oh why aren't you General Secretary.
I made a Senate map for the 96th Congress:
Red is 2 Republicans, blue is 2 Democrats, purple is 1 Democrat and 1 Republican, light purple is 1 Democrat and 1 Conservative, and orange is 1 Republican and 1 Independent.
Red is 2 Republicans, blue is 2 Democrats, purple is 1 Democrat and 1 Republican, light purple is 1 Democrat and 1 Conservative, and orange is 1 Republican and 1 Independent.
Thank you! Though Vermont should probably have a color detailing one Republican and one Progressive. Minor quibble
I counted Leahy as an independent, since he doesn't particularly fit either in the Democratic party of Wallace nor the Liberty Conservative GOP.Thank you! Though Vermont should probably have a color detailing one Republican and one Progressive. Minor quibble
It's interesting how a lot of small, safe states OTL in the Plains and Rockies are swing states, while big, OTL swing states like Pennsylvania are solidly in one's party column.
Based on my math:
The Democratic Party has 49 seats
The GOP has 41 seats
The Progressives have 1 seat
The Conservatives have 1 seat
Totaling of 92 seats- leaving eight seats unaccounted for. I guess those seats were up for reelection?
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The GOP has 60 seats (including Buckley (C-NY) and Biden (I-DE)). The Dems have 39, while Leahy caucuses with them.
The GOP has caught a couple of lucky breaks recently, plus a lot of the races have been very close or have well-liked incumbents (California and Illinois fall under this category)
Be sure that the GOP doesn't get too many lucky chances, however. I'm not saying that the TL is biased, but giving the GOP too many lucky chances can push one into that zone.
Don't worry. I've pretty much planned it out to be very fair to all sides. America has Universal Health Insurance, remember.
Reagan is pretty popular, so it's only natural that popularity bleeds to his party. One of the reasons the Democrats managed to gain seats in the Senate in 1974 was due to Wallace's popularity after Amcare was passed.
In OTL, the Ds got to 68 senate seats after 1964, just to point out.
I don't see the relevance of that in this context.
That makes sense.
That required everything possible to go well for the Democrats. And I mean everything. To be frank, if such a thing was replicated in a TL, I'd deride it as implausible.
And even then, one thing to note is that the Democrats were quite divided, with polar opposites like George McGovern and Bull Connor in the same party, which is something that remained true well into the OTL Reagan era (which is why he was able to get his tax cuts through).
Again, these are sensible wins for the GOP, but do remember to keep it in mind for the future. I'd hate to see an awesome TL jump the shark in terms of plausibility.
What goes up must come down. I have a plan, and the pendulum will swing back. The Ds made some pretty convincing gains on the state level in 1978, including Yorty and Fitzgerald winning governorships.
OTL 1976, Oregon was the most marginal state, carried by Ford by just 0.17%.
Seems like Democratic Prairie Populism has held on to life a little longer than OTL.
Remember that when Republicans started to recover from their rump New England only party status that came from the Depression, they flipped states in the Great Lakes and Midwest first, then finally out to the West Coast when they were finally back on the upswing. So those regions were kinda swingy during the New Deal.
If the Republicans aren't making major inroads in the South, the Northeast has to be solidly GOP if they're not going to bring in embarrassing, Landon-esque showings.
Under Reagan, the GOP is making ironroads in the Upper South plus securing the Black-majority areas in the Deep South. New England is a patchwork at the moment, though the GOP looks strong there due to the collapse of the Massachusetts Democratic Party and the landslide in 1976. California has strong incumbents in Pete McCloskey and George Murphy.
The most Democratic state ITTL would arguably be Alabama. Whites are 90%+ Democratic and it doesn't have a large enough black (like MS) or wealthy suburban (like GA) population to allow a good Republican to win there unless they can transcend the party line.
The most Republican state ITTL... it would have to be either Hawaii or Maryland. Hawaii is machine dominated at this point and the Japanese and Chinese residents have been Republican since the civil rights battles turned them off the Democratic Party (but won't, no matter what, turn against Dan Inouye). Maryland has a large black population and is dominated by wealthy suburbs, the GOP's bread and butter. Since Governor Agnew basically has Soviet-style approval ratings, the GOP dominates the state.
Yeah that seems to make sense.
Hm I don't remember how Alaska has been going. OTL they (Alaska and Hawaii) went with their current alignments (very narrowly!) in 1960 and never looked back.
Hm I don't remember how Alaska has been going. OTL they (Alaska and Hawaii) went with their current alignments (very narrowly!) in 1960 and never looked back.
Lost Freeway
Banned
Forgive me if this question has been answered before, but has Agnew engaged in the same shady dealings as IOTL?
Alaska is generally Democratic, though this is mostly due to being economically populist. Their senators are Democrat Clark Gruening and Republican Wally Hickel, while it's Representative is Republican Mike Gravel (who is basically Justin Amash levels of a thorn in the GOP leadership's side). It's Governor and state legislature are Democrat.
He didn't engage in the OTL dealings due to butterflies. The FBI investigated for a while on other allegations, but they came up short. He runs a patronage mill like Jimmy Hoffa in Indiana, but both are popular enough to avoid much scrutiny.