Sixth Party System

Experts have debated whether national politics in the United States of America is currently^[update] in the era of a Sixth Party System, or whether the Fifth Party System continues in some form to the present. Opinions also differ on when a Sixth Party System may have begun, with suggested dates ranging from the 1960s to the 1990s. Maisel and Brewer (2011) argue that the consensus among specialists is that the Sixth System is underway based on American electoral politics since the 1960s:

Although most in the field now believe we are in a sixth party system, there is a fair amount of disagreement about how exactly we arrived at this new system and about its particular contours. Scholars do, however, agree that there has been significant change in American electoral politics since the 1960s.

The perceived Sixth Party System is characterized by an electoral shift from the electoral coalitions of the Fifth Party System during the New Deal: the Republican Party became the dominant party in the South, rural areas, and suburbs; while the Democratic Party increasingly started to assemble a coalition of African-Americans, Hispanics and white urban Progressives. A critical factor was the major transformation of the political system in the Reagan Era or "Age of Reagan" of the 1980s and beyond, led by Ronald Reagan.

However, no clear disciplinary consensus has emerged pinpointing an electoral event responsible for shifting presidential and congressional control since the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the Fifth Party System emerged. Much of the work published on the subject has come from political scientists explaining the events of their time either as the imminent breakup of the Fifth Party System, and the installation of a new one; or in terms of such transition taking place some time ago. Other current writing on the Fifth Party System expresses admiration of its longevity: the first four systems lasted about 30 to 40 years each, which would have implied that the early twenty-first century should see a Seventh Party System. It is also possible, as argued in Jensen (1981) and elsewhere, that the party system has given way, not to a new party system, but to a period of dealignment in politics. Previous party systems ended with the dominant party losing two consecutive House elections by large margins, and also losing a presidential election coinciding with or immediately following (in 1896) the second House election—decisive electoral evidence of political realignment. Such a shift took place in 2006–2008 in favor of the Democrats, but the Republicans won the elections of 2010 by their biggest landslide since 1946 and finished the 2014 elections with their greatest number of U.S. House seats since 1928.

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