Critical Realignment Essay

Critical realignment and secular realignment have different functions in the party system. Both critical realignment and secular realignment come from realignment itself, V.O. Key created two categories in which they have different functions for both of these terms. Critical Realignment is also known as critical election and political realignment, they are named differently but they have the same purpose and procedure. Critical realignment is mostly used to describe major shifts in voting patterns in single elections. According to Carmines and Stimson they claim that that this term is supposed to be used to explain the long-term change in the party systems (107). In which then they classify it as seeing a radical change or not, meaning that …show more content…
Secular realignment describes the process of how voters change from one party to another over a slow period of time. Cultural issues are not new in American and it will continue to be an important issue and role in American society. Religious is an important part as well, because many people base their beliefs in politics. “Realignment are causes, defining properties, concomitants or consequences of them” (Mayhew 452), both secular and critical realignment are related to realignment, which is related to describing changes in political systems. They both differ because secular realignment focuses on the effects of the elections, and critical realignment focuses on how realignment occurs during a certain period of time and convey how the voting patterns change over a continuing period of time. Realignment involves partisan, which is the people that stick to something that they are strong supporters of a certain party, as well as secular shifts, which involves the people, that change from one party to another due to their religion or change of financial status (Kaufman …show more content…
According to Mayhew, Key uses information form the election of 1896 and 1928 defining it as one of the first critical elections (450). Many believe that in reality there is no critical realignment and that it is just coincidence that it has happen that way. The realignments have been moving from Democrats to Republicans since 1896, according to Mayhew there is no realignment in1932 in which supposedly there is a gap of 68 years, but according to Burnham he asserts that there was one critical election in 1968-72(457), which was during Nixon. Realignment leads to high voter turnouts, which also leads to policy