Partisanship in American presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial elections in ten western states

Abstract

There is a sizeable body of recent literature which concludes that the strength of electoral partisanship in the United States has waned in the post World War II period. Although there is ample evidence that partisan dealignment has occurred at the national level, there is little basis on which to confirm that the impacts of dealignment are spatially uniform and well advanced in all areas of the country. The purpose of this paper is to examine the dealignment hypothesis in the context of a single electoral region. County-level voting returns for presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial elections in ten western states are examined using principal components and correlation analyses to gauge the impact of dealignment on this region. The results of this research contradict much of the literature on partisan dealignment. This study found no evidence of partisan dealignment in presidential elections and only limited tentative support for the influence of dealignment on the region's voting choices in gubernatorial and senatorial elections.