How Democrats And Republicans Evolved Across Ideology, Geography, And Voters

The easiest story about American parties is also the least helpful: that Democrats and Republicans simply “flipped.” We take you past that cliché and into the moving parts that actually reshape coalitions—where parties win, what they believe, and who stands with them. With Dr. Beienberg back for our series finale, we connect 19th-century moral politics to modern social debates, show how FDR’s New Deal turned federalism into the defining party divide, and explain why New England and the Pacific Coast began voting like cousins.

We start with geography that tells a human story: migration from New England into the Pacific Northwest, secularization replacing Puritan roots, and a South that evolves from Democratic dominance to Republican strength. Then we zoom in on ideology, highlighting the GOP’s long thread of moral traditionalism, business-friendly policy, and colorblind legal equality, contrasted with the Democrats’ larger pivot toward a strong federal role, welfare programs, and compensatory justice after the 1930s. Along the way, we define swing states in plain language and revisit platform planks that keep resurfacing: ballot integrity, immigration anxiety, anti-monopoly themes, and debates over national versus state power.

Finally, we unpack demographics without resorting to stereotypes. Marriage and religiosity often predict more than broad labels, and cross-pressures within Catholic, Protestant, and secular voters help explain why coalitions reshuffle. Social issues from the 1960s onward—abortion, marriage, environmentalism—reordered loyalties, while immigration split business, labor, and cultural blocs inside both parties. The result isn’t a tidy flip; it’s continuity inside change, shaped by platforms, courts, culture, and lived experience. If you want to see the pattern for yourself, go read party platforms through the 1930s—they’re short, vivid, and revealing.

If this guide sharpened how you see American party history, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with the continuity or shift that surprised you most.

Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum!

School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Transcript

Welcome And Series Finale Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Welcome back to Civics in the Year. This is actually our last episode in our little political parties deep dive that we have. So Dr. Beinberg is back with us. And Dr. Beyenberg, this kind of an overview question, but I feel like, you know, in a classroom setting, in a learning setting, it's a good question to start with. And then if people want to go back and kind of learn more specifics, but what I'd like to know is how have the Democratic and Republican parties changed over time?

Mapping The Old And New Party Geography

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah. So there's three ways that we can think of party changes. And this will then sort of kind of work around in an odd way because that'll suggest some continuities. So the ways that I think we can think of when you look at a political party, you can think, what does this party believe? Have they changed their beliefs? Have they adopted the other parties? Have they adopted a third party's? Have everybody agreed on an issue, right? So what do they believe? A second question would be: where does this party succeed electorally? What's its geographic base? Is it strong in the South? Is it strong rural? Is it strong in the West? Right? Is it strong? Like where does it win elections? And then the third one would be sort of what kinds of people or what constituencies or groups or demographics make up this party? Is this a party that does well among merchants? Is this a party that does well among Protestants? Is this a party that does well among, you know, pick whatever demographic group. Is this a party that does particularly well among women or poorly among women? So basically the three things that I think of that we can think of a party is geography, ideology, and demographics. And on each of these, there are places where the parties have had continuity and where there has been been some shifts. So I maybe we'll start with the geography. This one is I think I think this will you'll see some places where it shifts, and then where it doesn't shift, I think will be will helpful to us. So if we think about the Republican Party in say the late 19th, early 20th century, it doesn't exist in the South, basically. It's pretty much uh doesn't exist there. The Democratic Party is has complete dominance of the South after they basically disenfranchise black Americans. And we'll talk more about that with the failure of the Lodge Bill, I think in the history series we'll do later. Right. So South, very democratic. New England, very Republican, Midwest, very Republican, California, the Pacific West, sort of moderately, the Pacific West and Mountain West sort of in play a little bit.

unknown 3:25

Right.

What Swing States Really Mean

SPEAKER_01 3:25

So if we look at parties today, New England and the Pacific states have now become basically very strongly Democratic. New Hampshire is sort of a weird exception, but basically pretty democratic. And the South, pretty Republican, although Virginia is then sort of moving, in some sense, looking more like the North in that sense, insofar as its base is shifted much more towards sort of federal workers. The Midwest basically still stays the same, right? The Midwest is still Republican leaning, at least at the presidential level. Again, you're always going to have like an odd candidate or a period of elections, but I think it's most folks. So that I think helps to complicate. And then the Mountain West is again sort of is it was in play in the early 20th century and it's still in play again. You know, which states are hopping around, but you know, Arizona and Colorado are swing states, Utah is not, Wyoming is not.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

But can you quickly define what a swing state is for somebody listening who has like, I've heard this term. What does that mean?

New England–Pacific Links And Migration

Ideology Throughlines In The GOP

Democrats’ Larger Ideological Shifts

Federalism Realignment Under FDR

Social Issues Reorder The Coalitions

Immigration, Labor, And Business Tensions

Demographics, Religion, And Voting Patterns

Nuance Over “Parties Flipped” Narratives

Read Party Platforms And Think Federally

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Sure. A state where it's not consistently voting for one party or another. You know, then there's swing states that have a tilt but still are in play. So, you know, today Arizona is a swing state. For example, it's flipped back and forth on who it votes for for president. Its Senate races have been relatively close, so on and so forth, right? Versus, you know, say Wyoming is not, no one's guessing how Wyoming is going to vote in any particular election. No one is guessing conversely how Vermont is going to vote in any election going forward. They didn't guess in the 1930s either. There's a very fate, there's a, you know, an old movie I was watching recently where I think it's Bob Hope makes some joke, they're like, a Democrat in Vermont, ha ha ha ha ha ha, that would never happen. And I found some news stories saying Vermont, as always, goes Republican, right? So shifts do happen. Uh and New England has clearly shifted. And it's worth noting that New England and the Pacific states shifted largely at the same time. And that's because it's this is an odd thing, but particularly upper Pacific West, Washington and Oregon were almost exclusively settled originally by New Englanders. Well, what's any guesses? Portland, Oregon. Any guesses where its name comes from? Isn't there a Portland, Maine? There is a Portland, Maine. The two founders of that town. It's exactly the two founders of that town. One of them was from Boston and one is from Portland. And I think they flipped a coin or did something to figure out which one of them gets to name their New England hometown. I don't, I've seen some people argue that Salem is named after the Salem, Massachusetts. But the point is it was very heavily settled by, and the political culture sort of tracked New England in many ways. California is a little weirder, mostly ends up being settled by Midwesterners later on, which is why you get the weird fluke thing that Los Angeles has a prohibition party member of Congress in the 1920s. Not a Republican who's a prohibitionist, not a Democrat who's a prohibitionist, an actual third-party prohibitionist who's basically being powered by Iowa prohibitionists as his voter base. So New England and the Pacific States have basically switched with the South as a geography base. The Midwest has stayed basically Republican, is a sort of default threshold, and the Mountain West has shifted some. So again, that suggests that there are reasons that it's not just a real simple the parties have totally switched switched sparties. Like why did the Midwest stay the same, right? And to help answer that, I think is worth tip turning to thinking about uh ideology particularly, and then we can say a little bit about uh demographics. So I have a sort of a strange take political parties in thinking of change. And I sort of alluded to this last time. I think you can draw a very, very similar through line between the Republican Party of 1860 and the Republican Party at least of say pre-twump, pre-Trump like 2010. The Trump phenomenon has sort of shifted it in ways that are yet to see. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad. Then I'll I'll talk about the details of why that is, of how that is. So I think that the Republican Party's ideology, and we'll walk through the platforms for why I think that is, is actually pretty consistent. And the Democratic Party has moved more. It has been more significant in its shifts. Okay, so what do we think of when we think of the Republican Party today? Well, if we look at the 1850s, six and 1860 Republican platform, there is a create, the main focus is on suppressing slavery in the territories, right? We've talked about that extensively. Do you remember the other thing that they want to suppress in the territories? They call it the other twin relic of barbarism, is polygamy. They want to use federal power to suppress polygamy because the Republican Party is at the time committed to effectively under the hood an alliance with evangelical Christianity, right? So they are upset at the prospect of what they see as this weird, again, anti-Christian, fundamentalist, like Mormon faction basically distorting the sort of proper understanding of the home, which again, and they're attached more to prohibition and morals legislation. I mean, New England, the first prohibition laws are all basically being pushed by New England Republicans, right? So they they have this alignment today, which you know dovetails today, where we think of, at least again, as at least as of 15 years ago, the Republican Party as attached to sort of, you know, moral traditionalism, conservative, you know, social conservatism, whatever you want to think about that. So that's a through line that I think actually, I think actually carries. Whereas, you know, the Democrats in the 18th, since the 1830s had been more skeptical of sort of Sunday blue laws, which which you can't run a business on Sunday or you can't deliver the mail on Sunday, right? So the Democrats were historically more skeptical of that kind of translation. Again, the Republicans weren't saying they wanted a theocracy. That's pretty clear. But they were more comfortable with sort of social moral, social mores and preferences being enforced at the policy level, at the state level generally, at the federal level, in the few places like the territories where they could. And this connects back to the point about the geographic shift. We think of New England today, we think of it as very secular. But New England is still two generations, you know, a few generations out of basically being old Puritans in some ways, right? So it is evangelical Christians and other, and some Unitarians as well that are basically spinning off of that to then become the secularism. But you know, the the laws that the the laws that get struck down in the 60s on contraception, like the contraception laws we'll talk about, those are passed by basically evangelical Republicans in the late 19th century. Calvin Coolidge is basically sort of the last kind of throwback to this old model. So it's not surprising that New England shifts when it's basically ceases to be primarily evangelicals. Like it's going to shift because it's ideology. The ideology has stayed the same, but who's interested in it has changed a little bit. So yeah, the the it's not an accident, like I said, that Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird, these are the two Supreme Court cases striking down contraceptive laws. Those are pre those are propagated in the 60s by those states that have become very Catholic, but they're protecting the old New England Protestant places that the New England Protestants themselves have given up on because they themselves have largely, largely secularized. So that's an interesting sort of throughfair that's continuous. As I talked about in the last episode, the Republican Party has generally held a fairly constant view of civil rights enforcement, which is basically colorblind, formal legal equality, but a squeamishness about the government basically doing compensatory or affirmative action type policies. You see this in the way that they write the Civil Rights Act of 1866. You see this in how quickly they want to get rid of the Freedmen's Bureau because they want to think of it as a temporary wartime measure, temporary wartime measure to eliminate sort of the vestiges of slavery at the end of the war, but they don't want it to be a sort of permanent federal program. So we see that through line. The Republican Party views itself as friendly with small and big business. That's why they shift in terms of the way that they view tariffs changes all over time. But they view themselves as the pro-tariff party because they view this as the pro-business thing. So again, that's I think a through line today. We generally think of the Republicans as the party of sort of business or free enterprise, you know, more free enterprise or something like that. Again, tweaks at the margins. If we look at the early Republican political coalition on immigration, right, the Republican Party, one of its groups is the Know Nothings that build into it. And the Know Nothings had been an explicitly anti-immigration party. And if you look at them the 1880s and 1890s at the Republican platforms, they're the ones that are starting to get particularly squeamish about immigration. Uh, the one that jumped out at me recently when I was looking at it is they have this real fixation on what they call the purity of the ballot. They're really fixated on that in the 1880s and 90s in voter fraud. That one sort of comes and goes, but that jumped out at me as a sort of strange continuity without commenting on the merits of more recent discussions of voting, but like this the rhetoric popped back up. So you see, you see that. So you see these sort of interesting, uh interesting through lines in terms of the ideology of the Republican Party on that front, right? The Democratic Party has tended to have a little more movement. So, as we talked about in the last podcast, originally they have a very, very strong white supremacist angle, but they also build as as through the 30s, a sort of much more sort of progressive, they want to have sort of compensatory or affirmative action policy. They want to make sure the government is basically acting to right historical wrongs, right? So they think that they can use the power of the federal government to do that. So they switch from being a white supremacist aligned party to a sort of compensatory party in some ways, right? So that's a significant shift, right? In neither way are they basically doing the kind of colorblind constitutionalism, but they're shifting in terms of what they they view on civil rights. So that's a that's a pretty significant shift. Both parties have been basically pretty consistently anti-monopoly for a long time. That comes out of Andrew Jackson, which both parties in some ways can point to as their historical uh perspective. As I mentioned, the Democratic Party tends to be more uneasy about connections between Christian morals specifically and state policy making. This gets complicated, though, in the in the New England states with the mass influx of Catholic immigration and generations afterward. So the Democratic Party tilts toward being the more pro-life party basically through the 80s for this reason, right? You know, the Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, others, these figures initially get their starts as sort of pro-life leaning Republicans on that front because they view that as the core thing of what their Catholic understanding is. And again, those the two states that have restrictions on contraception are both very heavily Catholic states. That sort of shifts later on. Obviously, we'll talk more about that. So the real shift, and then in the on economic on the federalism issues, is where there's been, I think, the biggest shift. Federalism issues, but also, as I mentioned, the civil rights issues. There's not that much difference between the Republicans and the Democrats on federalism, state, federal government power issues, basically until the 1930s. You have factions of each party that are more comfortable with national power, and factions of each party, which are more sort of states' rights, hesitant to use federal power. And both of those factions, uh, and in the 1930s, and I know we're going to talk to Sid Milkis later in the history section, he's going to talk more about the political coalition shifting. But basically, Franklin Roosevelt remakes the difference between a Republican and a Democrat. As of like 1928, it's effectively whether you like tariffs or not. And the Republicans are more sympathetic to civil rights enforcement. But that's basically it. Other issues are pretty mixed. Franklin Roosevelt realigns the parties to effectively be one of these is the party of a stronger federal government with much more sort of economic regulation, a welfare state, et cetera. And the Republicans are the party that isn't that. And so the more sort of economically libertarian Democrats move into the Republicans, and the more sort of economically populist or progressive Republicans that want to see a stronger welfare state at the federal level, they move to be Democrats. That is, I think, the clearest significant shift. So on that one, again, the sort of the Democratic Party moves more. The Republican Party still says basically a moderately states' rights party, whereas the Democrats had had a stronger fanatical states' rights wing that then basically they just say we're not doing federalism anymore. So that's the really, really major shift, I think, is to federalism issue, which then plays out as we talked about in the last podcast on civil rights. But I've teased this a couple of times. I think explain where the parties have shifted in terms of their geographic bases. Before I do that, the other major shift is a result of the 1960s. And it's less, I would say, about the civil rights and more about sort of social issues becoming sort of the main fault line between the parties. And again, you see echoes of this before, with the Democrats being uneasy about Sunday blue laws and the Republicans wanting to use state government to close business. But it really becomes in the sort of 60s through the 80s that Catholic voters split internally. So Catholic voters that are more socially conservative align back with the Republican, align with the Republicans. Protestants and post-Protestants who are more socially progressive move over to the Democrats. So you're basically between the 30s and the 60s, you're picking your party based on whether you want a federal welfare state, how big you want the federal welfare state to be, basically. After that, increasingly you're picking it based on social issues. What do you think of Roe v. Wade, for example? What do you think of issues related to same-sex marriage or whatever, right? Those become environmentalism becomes another one, right? Environmentalism, obviously both parties have early interest in that, but the way that environmentalism gets understood after the 70s gets sort of sucked into the same sort of social issues kind of thing. And immigration lags a little bit. And this is one where there's really interesting shifts because for a long time, you have factions of both parties that are pro and anti-immigration. The Republican Party has a sort of cultural conservative faction that is squeamish about immigration, or you know, that they're concerned about sort of we have to have limits on it lest we get, you know, exceed assimilation. But you have a big business faction that wants cheap labor. Conversely, on the Democrats, you have a sort of more cosmopolitan faction that's that is less interested in sort of national borders that tends to be more sympathetic to a more liberal immigration policy. But you also have the old labor movement that views immigration as economic competition. So this is why this feels like forever ago, but you go back to 2016 and you have Bernie Sanders criticizing loose immigration policy as a Koch brothers-funded like corporate conspiracy, because he comes from that old faction which attended the have the labor unions were squeak, were skeptical on that, right? So that's one where there's a a again clear party sorting, right? So the parties have sorted on federal welfare state issues, and then with a cleavage attached to that as well on social issues, which is why then as we think about where the geography has changed, in many ways, it's that the different areas have different sort of concentrations of people believing those things. There aren't any New England Puritans left. So of course, New England isn't going to be sympathetic to a Republican Party that's interested in evangelical morality, right? The area has secularized, and so a party that's more committed to sort of social conservative views is not going to be appealing there. Conversely, areas with large numbers of Catholics. That are particularly Orthodox Catholics are going to drift toward the Republican Party as they view social issues as a main issue. And so and you know, this is a sort of a strange thing, but you know, a lot of our, and I'm not a polling guy, so this I'm not going to be, if you ask me follow-up questions, I will bulk. But, you know, for example, we have the narrative of a gender gap in our voting. But you know, the gender gap disappears in reverses once you put a marriage overlay on it. Right. So, like, for example, married white women vote Republican, even in the Trump era. Marriage is actually doing a lot more of the work. And similarly, if you were to take a married evangelical Hispanic woman, probabilistically she actually votes Republican, right? So we have all these really interesting interlays. The one exception on that is in among black Americans, for whom the Black Church remains a very organized, politically active party. That's one of the uh the the strange the probably one of the strange exceptions where younger secular black voters are more likely to be Republicans than their peers, right? They're not more likely to be Republicans compared to you know uh the voting base as a whole. But that's one of the few uh exceptions. So so that the narrative is in some sense, yeah, how have they changed? But for me, the more interesting question is where do we see the continuities, particularly ideologically? I guess the the really, really, really high-level take that one could say that I think helps explain how even as the parties have shifted in terms of some of their their geography, I would say since the 1850s, the Republican Party has been more closely identified with people that think that they are or I guess I'll flip this the other way around. The Democratic Party has basically defined its identity as those that feel sort of left out or at the margins of society. Now, hoof is at the margins shifts. So if you're Catholic in the 1870s, you feel very marginalized and you want no part of that Republican Party. If you're Catholic in 1960, 1968, you know, you're not your Catholic identity is not doing the same work for you. And this is why you can see you know immigrant groups, they land in New York, Italian Americans are very democratic, and then they sort of cease to like the Italian thing is doing less for them. And so they identify less as a kind of an outgroup. And so you can extend this out, you can extend this out in many ways. So if you you know if you view yourself as a religious minority, you view yourself as an ethnic minority, you view yourself as sort of outside. Whereas then conversely, you know, the Republicans have historically been the party of people that sort of have weaker, weaker senses of that sense of sort of isolation or marginalization or something along those lines. Or um, so again, this is all, I guess I just read about it, this is all very high-level probabilistic, right? Like obviously any individual is gonna have different reasons, right? Maybe you have a particular life experience that means that you grew up among another community, or you know, maybe you served in the military with people who had a perspective of X or what, whatever, right? So this is all whenever you're doing you know voting behavior kind of stuff, it's all high-level statistics. We want to just emphasize that this is, you know, this is not saying like you are ex-demographic and therefore you must be Y party. That's completely wrong, but this is probabilistic.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Because we see that a lot, especially in presidential years where they show the graphs you know on TV, and these are the demographics that they're looking at. And if you're you're teaching or you're taking AP government, that's one of the things they talk about is it's a it's a generalization. That does not mean that it applies to every single person because I know that there is somebody listening who's like, well, I'm X, Y, and Z and I'm not this. Yes, that's the beautiful thing about it. We are speaking in generalizations here. Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

It's been, you know, and there are things that are going to be cross-cutting, right? So, like you might be, you know, some part of your identity or ideology suggests one way and it may cut another way. And you know, and you're gonna have, you know, in some sense, you have to decide does that mean that I align more with a party? Do I formally organize with that party and try to pull them to my side on those other issues? Do I just remain a non-aligned swing voter or something like that? Right. So there's there's all these complications about sort of strategy as well on that front. But so yeah, so the the basic takeaway is I I do think there's a through line of the two parties have had a different perspective of do you see yourself as basically, do you see yourself as basically sort of marginalized in some capacity? That has generally been a predictor. That has generally been a predictor. Geography has shifted, but largely as the demographics have shifted. When New England is all Puritans, it's very Republican. When New England is more of a mix of Catholics and sort of secular people whose grandparents might have been evangelicals, they're going to have a very different voting behavior. Going back to the last podcast, if you're a dirt, if you're a super poor Southerner, the New Deal looks pretty good with its sort of economic, you know, more robust protective welfare state that's immunizing you from a bad yield or something like that. If you're basically like a small businessman in middle-sized southern city in 1970, actually, you know, low taxes might look better for you. And so, you know, that that is so that again, this is where the ideology and the geography have really interesting overlays. So I know that's really, really weird and technical in many ways that I've gone through really strange tedious stuff, but I just really don't like the narrative of the parties flipped on X, and so therefore, and that's just not that's not accurate for the reasons that you were just talking about. Like people have different interests, ideologies, et cetera, that don't just collapse down to that, down to, you know, here's my geography or here's my my demographic group per se. Some of these things have interactions with each other, but well, and there's just more nuance.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

That's the entire kind of point of this podcast, is we can't just say, nope, things switched because this happened. There is a lot of nuance within it, and it doesn't always apply to everyone. So, Dr. Beinberg, again, thank you for taking this very large topic and giving us things to think about, giving us more information so that we can just be better informed citizens. We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

I would just say is your one thing that like pull up party platforms and read them. Not the last few, because they've gotten so insanely long, but up to like 1936, you could read the party platforms are a couple pages each. So like you can see these sorts of continuities in really interesting ways or discontinuities.

State Vs Federal Parties And Closing

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Are would federal political parties be different than like the state political parties? Would you say, you know, you want to make sure you're reading both?

SPEAKER_01 27:49

The state political parties are often uh party platforms are just descriptively hard to get. So that may make it a little more complicated. I'm trying to remember if we have a party thing in the civic literacy curriculum. I think we might have some of those on there, but uh if not, it's on my to-do list. But there there is some some semblance, you're you're right to note this, and you've made my day as a federalism person, right? That there's a difference between the state and federal parties. Uh, and this is something that I know Sid Milkis will definitely talk about in in the podcast on that, how the state parties do have a lot more variety through the New Deal. That one of the things that is really a shift of the FDR system is that it nationalizes that. Whereas before, as I said, the parties don't disagree that much. They basically both want minimal federal government so they can do whatever they want at the state level, which is then going to do all kinds of different things, whether you're, you know, a Republican in Wisconsin is very different than a Republican in New England is very different than a Republican in, you know, Idaho in in eight, you know, 1920. So so the but the federal platforms, I think for our purposes, probably will get most of what most of what I'm I'm suggesting here. But yes, looking at state documents is never a bad idea. Thank you so much.