William_T._Bianco,_David_T._Canon]_American_Polit

276 Chapter 8Chapter 8 || Political PartiesPolitical Parties

are grouped with the party they actually affiliate with). This figure shows that if you are

trying to predict how someone will vote, the most important thing to know is his or her

party ID.^26 Almost 90 percent of Democrats voted for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic

nominee, and about the same percentage of Republicans voted for Donald Trump.

Party Coalitions Data on party ID enable scholars to study party coalitions—that

is, groups of citizens who identify with each party. Figure 8.4 shows the contemporary

Democratic and Republican party coalitions. As you can see, some groups are

disproportionately likely to identify as Democrats (African Americans), some are

disproportionately likely to identify as Republicans (white evangelicals), and other groups

have no clear party favorite (women born in 1945 and earlier). Again, these coalitions

have shifted over time, often evolving during periods of realignment and changing

from one party system to the next. For example, the Republican advantage among

white southerners and white evangelical Protestants has existed only since the 1980s.^27

The Republican and Democratic party coalitions differ systematically in terms of

their policy preferences—what they want government to do—as shown in Figure 8.1.

This indicates the extent to which they disagree about the relative importance of issues

party coalitions

The groups that identify with a

political party, usually described in

demographic terms such as African-

American Democrats or evangelical

Republicans.

FIGURE

8.4

Source: Pew Research Center, “Wide Gender Gap, Growing Educational Divide in Voters’ Party Identification,” March 20, 2018,

http://www.people-press.org (accessed 8/1/18).

The Party Coalitions

Many groups, such as African Americans and white evangelicals, are much more likely to affiliate with one party than the other.

What are the implications of these differences for the positions taken by each party’s candidates?

59

50

26

16

8

2

8%

76

46

38

36

35

27

19

50%

18

22

35

38

43

46

84

68

65

67

63

59

56

42 %

77

72

58

54

51

48

8

22

27

31

28

32

37

White evangelical Protestant

Total

Democrat/

Lean Democrat

Republican/

Lean Republican

Groups That Tilt Republican

Mormon

White men, high school or less

Rural

White

Women aged 73–9 0

Groups That Tilt Democrat

Black

Religiously unailiated

Asian

Jewish

Millennial generation

(ages 21–37)

Latinos

Women

Democrat–Republican

Dierence

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