Cycles in american national electoral politics, 1854-2006 : statistical evidence and an explanatory model
By: MERRIL III, Samuel
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Contributor(s): GROFMAN, Bernard | BRUNELL, Thomas L.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, February 2008American Political Science Review 102, 1, p. 1-18Abstract: Are there cycles in American politics? In particular, does the proportion of the Democratic/Republican vote share for president and/or seat share in Congress rise and fall over extended periods of time? If so, are the cycles regular, and what are the cycling periods? Moreover, if there are regular cycles, can we construct an integrated modelsuch as a negative feedback loopthat identifies political forces that could generate the observed patterns? First, we use spectral analysis to test for the presence and length of cycles, and show that regular cycles do, in fact, existwith periods that conform to those predicted by the Schlesingersfor swings between liberalism and conservatismbut with durations much shorter than those most commonly claimed by Burnham and others in characterizing American political realignments. Second, we offer a voterparty interaction model that depends on the tensions between parties' policy and office motivations and between voters' tendency to sustain incumbents while reacting against extreme policies. We find a plausible fit between the regular cycling that this model projects and the time series of two-party politics in America over the past century and a half
Are there cycles in American politics? In particular, does the proportion of the Democratic/Republican vote share for president and/or seat share in Congress rise and fall over extended periods of time? If so, are the cycles regular, and what are the cycling periods? Moreover, if there are regular cycles, can we construct an integrated modelsuch as a negative feedback loopthat identifies political forces that could generate the observed patterns? First, we use spectral analysis to test for the presence and length of cycles, and show that regular cycles do, in fact, existwith periods that conform to those predicted by the Schlesingersfor swings between liberalism and conservatismbut with durations much shorter than those most commonly claimed by Burnham and others in characterizing American political realignments. Second, we offer a voterparty interaction model that depends on the tensions between parties' policy and office motivations and between voters' tendency to sustain incumbents while reacting against extreme policies. We find a plausible fit between the regular cycling that this model projects and the time series of two-party politics in America over the past century and a half
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