The 1930s changed the political landscape, bringing the Democratic Party majority status and a close alignment of presidential and House electoral bases. It also brought tensions within each party that would fester for many years. The within-party debates and assessments of what direction the Democratic Party should pursue were lengthy. The decision by factions within each party to seek different policies eventually led to winning new constituencies, with presidential candidates leading the way. These pursuits were fundamental in disconnecting the relationship between presidential and House results. The resulting disruption of this relationship was interpreted by many as the emergence of candidate-centered campaigns and politics by House members, but the separation of presidential and House results was really only a reflection of the lag of House results.

The concerns in this chapter are the tensions and disagreements within each party and how they prompted the changes that became evident in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps the most important matter leading up to the 1960s was that each party was feeling pressures to deal with the issue of whether to seek to change its electoral base. Although the Democratic New Deal coalition is often seen as dominating American politics for more than 30 years, there were tensions within the party that eventually resulted in change. For Republicans the need to consider change was more obvious: The party was largely in the minority, and had to consider how to get out of that status.