When did the Sixth Party System Begin?

When did the Sixth Party System begin?

  • 1964

    Votes: 1 11.1%
  • 1968

    Votes: 4 44.4%
  • 1974

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1976

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1980

    Votes: 4 44.4%

  • Total voters
    9
The Sixth Party System is widely agreed to have begun at some point between 1968 and 1980.

Key attributes of the sixth party system involve:

The decline/decimation of conservative democrats and liberal republicans
The urban northeast swinging to the Democrats and the south swinging to the republicans
Increasing Republican emphasis on "values" and Democratic emphasis on "identity"
The rise of primary system and caucus-based politics rather than nominating convention

The question is, when exactly did it start? The usual dates pointed to are 1968 (with Nixon and the Southern Strategy) and 1980 (with the Reagan Revolution).

1964: When the conservatives became a powerful enough force in the Republican Party that they were able to seize the nomination. The GOP went on to win the deep south (although LBJ won the majority of the Southern vote). Conservatism would plow on afterwards in the form of Reagan's 1966 victory in California.

1968: Nixon became the first Republican to win the majority of the South. He campaigned on value politics (Law and Order) and cultural conservatism. Reagan was fairly successful in the primary as well. Two years later Conservative Party candidate James Buckley would win the New York Senate election. On the Democratic side, you first started seeing the trend against old New Deal politics being pushed against by baby boomers and New Left types.

HOWEVER, Nixon was also a bit of a throwback to liberal Republicanism and governed fairly liberally by GOP standards. He was deemed the last liberal president by Noam Chomsky and the most Socialist President in US history by Milton Friedman.

1974: The year the Watergate Babies arrived in Washington and began in force pushing back against the New Deal Coalition within the party.

1976: The first year that both parties had 50-state primaries. Carter went on to be the great deregulator (trucking, energy, finance, air traffic controls, etc) and build up the military. Reagan and the Conservative movement meanwhile fared well enough that year that Reagan could have feasibly driven out an incumbent President.

1980: The triumph of the modern conservative coalition and the culmination of the creation of what we see as the modern GOP.
 
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