The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump

by Alan I. Abramowitz

argue in this book that negative partisanship was a key factor in Donald Trump’s surprising victory in 2016. Intense dislike for Hillary Clinton enabled Trump to consolidate support among Republican identifiers and Republican-leaning independents despite many of these voters’ reservations about his candidacy. In 2018 however, with Trump in the White House and Clinton no longer a candidate, negative partisanship clearly worked to the Democrats’ advantage.

The central argument of this book is that the deep partisan divide that exists among the politically engaged segment of the American public as well as among political elites and activists is, fundamentally, a disagreement over the dramatic changes that have transformed American society and culture since the end of World War II, and that continue to have huge effects in the twenty-first century. The challenges posed by technological change, globalization, immigration, growing racial and ethnic diversity, and changes in family structure and gender roles have produced diverging responses from party elites and a growing alignment of partisan identities with deeper divisions in American society and culture. This “great alignment” has transformed the American party system and fundamentally altered American politics in the twenty-first century.

The late House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s famous statement that “all politics is local” has been stood on its head. Today, it would be more accurate to say that all politics is national.