Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
The First Party System was the political party system in the United States between roughly 1792 and 1824.[1] It featured two national parties competing for control of the presidency, Congress, and the states: the Federalist Party, created largely by Alexander Hamilton, and the rival Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party, formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, usually called at the time the Republican Party (which is distinct from the modern Republican Party).
The Era of Good Feelings marked a period in the political history of the United States that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the War of 1812.[1][2] The era saw the collapse of the Federalist Party and an end to the bitter partisan disputes between it and the dominant Democratic-Republican Party during the First Party System.[3][4] President James Monroe strove to downplay partisan affiliation in making his nominations, with the ultimate goal of national unity and eliminating political parties altogether from national politics.[1][5][6] The period is so closely associated with Monroe's presidency (1817–1825) and his administrative goals that his name and the era are virtually synonymous.[7]
The Second Party System was the political party system operating in the United States from about 1828 to early 1854, after the First Party System ended.[1] The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels of voter interest, beginning in 1828, as demonstrated by Election Day turnouts, rallies, partisan newspapers, and high degrees of personal loyalty to parties.[2][3]
Two major parties dominated the political landscape: the Democratic Party, led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig Party, assembled by Henry Clay from the National Republicans and from other opponents of Jackson. Minor parties included the Anti-Masonic Party, an important innovator from 1827 to 1834; the abolitionist Liberty Party in 1840; and the anti-slavery expansion Free Soil Party in 1848 and 1852. The Second Party System reflected and shaped the political, social, economic and cultural currents of the Jacksonian Era, until succeeded by the Third Party System.[4]
The Third Party System was a period in the history of political parties in the United States from the 1850s until the 1890s, which featured profound developments in issues of American nationalism, modernization, and race. This period was marked by the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of slavery in the United States, followed by the Reconstruction era and the Gilded Age.
It was dominated by the new Republican Party, which claimed success in saving the Union, abolishing slavery and enfranchising the freedmen, while adopting many Whig-style modernization programs such as national banks, railroads, high tariffs, homesteads, social spending (such as on greater Civil War veteran pension funding), and aid to land grant colleges. While most elections from 1876 through 1892 were extremely close, the opposition Democrats won only the 1884 and 1892 presidential elections (the Democrats also won the popular vote in the 1876 and 1888 presidential elections, but lost the electoral college vote), though from 1875 to 1895 the party usually controlled the United States House of Representatives and controlled the United States Senate from 1879 to 1881 and 1893 to 1895. Indeed, scholarly work and electoral evidence emphasizes that after the 1876 election the South's former slave centers, which before the emancipation of Republican-voting African Americans was electorally dominated by wealthy slave owners who made up the southern base of Whigs, Know Nothings and Constitutional Unionists, began realigning into the Democratic Party due to the end of the now unpopular Reconstruction efforts;[1] this new electoral base for the Democrats would finish realigning around 1904.
The Fourth Party System was the political party system in the United States from about 1896 to 1932 that was dominated by the Republican Party, except the 1912 split in which Democrats captured the White House and held it for eight years.
American history texts usually call the period the Progressive Era. The concept was introduced under the name "System of 1896" by E. E. Schattschneider in 1960, and the numbering scheme was added by political scientists in the mid-1960s.[1]
The period featured a transformation from the issues of the Third Party System, which had focused on the American Civil War, Reconstruction, race, and monetary issues. The era began in the severe depression of 1893 and the extraordinarily intense election of 1896. It included the Progressive Era, World War I, and the start of the Great Depression. The Great Depression caused a realignment that produced the Fifth Party System, dominated by the Democratic New Deal Coalition until the 1970s.
The Fifth Party System, also known as the New Deal Party System, is the era of American national politics that began with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to President of the United States in 1932. Roosevelt's implementation of his popular New Deal expanded the size and power of the federal government to an extent unprecedented in American history, and marked the beginning of political dominance by the Democratic Party that would remain largely unbroken until 1952. This period also began the ideological swapping of Democrats and Republicans into their modern versions. This was largely due to traditionally Republican Black voters switching to the Democratic Party, while conservative, White, and southern Democrats shifted to the Republican Party. This occurred as Democrats began increasingly prioritizing civil rights, a process that accelerated into the 1960s.[1] The Fifth Party System followed the Fourth Party System, also known as the Progressive Era, and was succeeded by the Sixth Party System.
The New Deal coalition that cemented the Fifth Party System and allowed Democrats to dominate the White House for 40-some years arose from the realignment of two similar third party factions into the Democratic Party: the Progressives in the Western Coast and the greater Rust Belt region (which includes New York, Massachusetts, Baltimore and New Jersey), and the Socialists in the Western Coast and Sun Belt. Realigning these two factions after the 1932 and 1936 elections allowed the Democratic Party to make inroads in the North for the first time since the Second Party System and made other non-South regions competitive.
The Sixth Party System is the era in United States politics following the Fifth Party System. As with any periodization, opinions differ on when the Sixth Party System may have begun, with suggested dates ranging from the late 1960s to the Republican Revolution of 1994. Nonetheless, there is agreement among scholars that the Sixth Party System features strong division between the Democratic and Republican parties, which are rooted in socioeconomic, class, cultural, religious, educational and racial issues, and debates over the proper role of government.[1]
This party system likely began as a result of a long-term realignment of conservative Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, who were disillusioned by the previous realignment of Progressives into the Democratic Party, though the exact timing of the realignment is usually called into question. Although Barry Goldwater was the first Republican to flip the Dixiecrats in the South in 1964, the South wavered between Republicans, Democrats, and Dixiecrats and wouldn’t fully realign into the GOP until 1984 with Reagan’s landslide victory. This Dixiecratic realignment - known as the Southern Strategy - would allow Republicans to dominate the White House from 1968 to 1992, and eventually Congress after the 1994 Republican Revolution, up until around the 2010s or 2020s.
In addition to this Southern realignment, a second realignment occurred amongst Anderson and Perot voters in the North and West in 1980, 1992 and 1996. After these Independents/Reform voters realigned into the Democratic Party, which started in the 1996 election and finished in 2008, the Democrats made the Presidency competitive as a result of their new-found dominance in the North and West.
