The challenge is to create an america with 2 political parties, probably still the Democrats and Republicans, who have dramatically different positions and voting coalitions than OTL Democrats and Republicans. The pod or pods have to be after 1900. It cant be a massive gain for 1 party, it has to be close to 50-50, just like OTL.
 
Progressives Stay with Republicans
If Theodore Roosevelt had not challenged Taft in the 1912 election or Wilson had not been able to claim the mantle of progressivism, it is possible that progressive movement could have been the majority in the Republican Party. If Roosevelt had not divided the vote and left Taft had won in 1912, Progressives could have continued to push Taft or gathered their strength in the party and chose a candidate to their liking in 1916 or 1920. Progressives could have stayed relevant for a bit longer without Wilson's failures or Roosevelt's division of the Republicans. Progressives like Robert La Follette could have had greater influence in the Republican leadership. The Democrats, on the other hand, could have remained a conservative party in the style of Grover Cleveland if progressive leaders had been margianalized or separated from the Democrats. The conservative Deep South could have a great stranglehold on the message of party and possibly gather conservative rural voters in the West or Midwest disaffected from the progressive Republicans. Democrats could lose voters in the Northeast if Republicans appealed to these urban voters by focusing less on a Protestant-only message. If Democrats and not Republicans had advocated for Prohibition, then these wet urban voters would have only joined Republicans and the Democrats would have soldified the conservative rural voters. I suspect that the Republicans could have been socially moderate and economically progressive with voters in the Northeast, Rust Belt, and the Left Coast, and the Democrats could have become socially and economically conservative with voters in the South, Greater Appalachia, and the Western States, while the Midwest becomes the swing vote.
 
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Republicans Pass Civil Rights
If the Republicans had been the one pushing the Voting Rights Act in the early 1960s, the trajectory of the parties would have been different. While Harry Truman had desegerated the armed forces in 1948, the Democrats could have decided to continue to coddle with the Dixiecrats and treat Truman's decision as an aberration. Republicans could have fully supported Eisenhower in his enforcement of Brown vs Board of Ed and advocated for a Voting Rights Act in Congress. If Nixon had not remained silent on the issue of civil rights, it could have neutralized Kennedy's attempts to woo black voters thereby allowing Nixon to win in 1960. Nixon could have pushed for the Voting Rights Act during the following years thereby solidifing the black coalition within the Republican Party. While the Republicans could have passed the Voting Rights Act in the first years of the Nixon administration, a Civil Rights Act could have failed to pass with a Southern filibuster and Republicans losing willpower on the issue. The minority coalition could grumble and complain on the lack of progress, but joining the Democrats could become impossible as pro-civil rights supporters are marginalized or ignored by the Democratic leadership. The Democrats would have not lost their strangehold on the South, and they could become more economically progressive by advocating New Deal-like policies to white working class voters while being social conservative and anti-civil rights. The Republicans could shift rightward economically in response to Democrats's "big government policies" while becoming socially liberal. With conservative Southern Democrats holding the reigns of power, they could gain voters in the Rust Belt and/or the Far West for their stance on economic progressivism or being anti-civil rights while the minority and immigrant vote goes to the Republicans with the strongholds being the Northeast, the Left Coast, and the Midwest.
 
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