Abstract

Within days. there was an orthodox wisdom on the American mid-term elections of 1986. At one level, they were a collection of individual races, lacking common themes from above and common responses from below, in which the best candidate-determined somewhat circularly-won. At a second level, while great new issues or grand social forces were not effectively present, there was still an available larger generalization: the alleged partisan realignment of the post-New Deal era in American politics, whose realization (or not) had itself become a staple of partisan debate, was not discernible in final election results. It was not conclusively dismissed. It surely was not advanced, and it was clearly somewhat retarded by the final mosaic of individual election outcomes. Nicol Rae has very ably set out this view, with a sophistication rare to post-election analyses, and with subtle elaborations and elucidations all his own. History is likely to make him right. Further concrete embodiments of the alleged theoretical elements of a classic and continuing partisan ‘dealignment’ were evident and abundant in the aftermath of the 1986 elections.’ Different parties advanced at different levels, simultaneously; the same voters went different ways with different elective offices, in apparent disregard of their (apparent) partisan loyalties. Nevertheless, it is still history, in the form of the results of the next several American elections, which will ultimately make the post-mortems of 1986 either right or wrong. Which is to say, those central elements which are most consistent with an evolving dealignment were themselves only capable of isolation after the ballot in 1986. The place of the 1986 elections, in turn, when viewed as one single, composite event, must inevitably be determined by the elections to follow. Even the two larger trends in American politics which were confirmed and expanded by these election outcomes, trends touched upon but under-emphasized in post-election accounts. can still in principle remain consistent with two grand, and ttlree specific. alternative historical movements.

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