The Brittle Mandate: Electoral Dealignment and the 1980 Presidential Election

In the wake of the 1980 presidential balloting, important debate has sprung up over what the election results actually mean and what their long-term consequences are likely to be. On the one side are those who argue that a marked ideological change has occurred in the United States in recent years the populace has swung to the right and that Ronald Reagan and the Republicans are building what is likely to be a lasting new majority on the more conservative public mood. On the other side are proponents of the view that the election was simply the rejection of ineffective president who had to confront some intractable problems, and that at most the GOP won an opportunity to show that it could govern successfully. This is not the first time in modern politics, of course, that some observers have detected the emergence of a coherent new majority. In the Eisenhower years, many concluded that the growing post-World War II prosperity, manifested in the burgeoning new suburbs, was prompting a long-term shift to the Republicans.' Then, between 1968 and 1973, a number of students of American