Nor was the pendulum about to swing back to the Democrats any time soon. The old ethnocultural balance of American politics had toppled. The election of 1894 had begun to solidify a critical realignment first noticeable in the state elections of 1893. The new alignment came less from mass changes in party loyalty, although there was party switching in the chaotic years between 1893 and 1897, and more from a combination of the ability of the Republicans to mobilize new voters and remobilize voters they had temporarily lost, and the decreasing ability of Democrats to muster their voters.
