“Culture Wars” in the American Party System

Abstract

This article uses surveys of the parties' national convention delegates from 1972 to 1992 to examine the emergence of a religious cleavage between Republican and Democratic activists. The findings indicate that the religious cleavage between the two parties has grown over time, with the Republicans becoming more traditionally religious and with the Democrats growing more secular and religiously modern. This religious polarization has been associated with a growing partisan polarization on “cultural” issues such as abortion, women's rights, and homosexual rights. Finally, the article demonstrates that the impact of religious change within the parties on interparty differences on cultural issues has been even broader than a model focusing only on religious replacement would predict. Not only is religious replacement within the parties occurring, but within religious groups, Democratic activists are becoming more culturally liberal relative to Republican activists.