26 The nature of American politics
nevertheless left him facing a House of Representatives dominated by a ma-
jority of 242 Democrats over 193 Republicans, and again in1984 his popular-
ity and his sweeping presidential victory could not secure a majority in the
House of Representatives for the Republican Party. In 1996 President Clinton,
the candidate of the Democratic Party, won the election for the presidency,
but the Republicans secured majorities in both the House of Representatives
and the Senate. However, the increasing polarisation of American politics in
recent decades, which we will examine in Chapter 3, resulted in Republican
majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2004, alongside
the Republican President, George W. Bush.
Urban–rural–suburban politics
The relatively straightforward categories with which we began this chapter
soon begin to look somewhat inadequate when we delve into the rich de-
tail of the American political scene, for sectional, class and other aspects
of the political pattern overlap and intermingle. The first major overlap is
represented by the blending of geographical sectionalism and class politics
owing to the uneven distribution of industry across the country, and to the
consequent divisions between the urban and rural populations. During the
nineteenth century sectionalism was largely the consequence of the differ-
ing crops and products resulting from different climatic and soil conditions.
With the growth of industrial power, and the rapid concentration of popula-
tion in urban centres, however, the clash of interest between city and country
became a vital factor in the political scene. The greatest impact of the flood
of poor immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century was felt in the cities,
and at the same time there was an internal migration from the farms to the
Map 2.3 The election of 2000