Dealignment describes a process in which the share of the electorate that identifies strongly with any major party declines over time. Unlike realignment, where voters move from one party coalition to another (as in classic accounts of U.S. elections in 1860, 1896, or 1932), dealignment leaves voters less anchored overall: more independents, more split-ticket voting, higher electoral volatility, and weaker straight-party turnout.
The concept gained traction in American political science in the 1970s, when scholars including Walter Dean Burnham and, later, Martin Wattenberg argued that partisan identification measured by the American National Election Studies (ANES) was eroding, especially among younger cohorts. Comparable arguments emerged in Europe through Russell Dalton, Scott Flanagan and Paul Beck's edited volume Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies (1984), which linked dealignment to rising education, cognitive mobilization, and the decline of class- and religion-based cleavages mapped by Lipset and Rokkan.
Typical empirical indicators include:
- Falling shares of self-identified strong partisans in survey data.
- Rising vote volatility between consecutive elections (often measured by the Pedersen index).
- Growth of independents, non-voters, or support for new and challenger parties.
- More ticket-splitting where ballot structure allows it.
Dealignment is associated with the rise of catch-all and personalist parties, the fragmentation of European party systems since the 1990s, and the electoral breakthroughs of green, populist-right, and protest movements. It can coexist with partial realignment: for example, working-class voters in several Western democracies have loosened ties to social-democratic parties without uniformly committing to a new home.
Analysts debate whether contemporary patterns in the United States represent dealignment or a new affective-polarization-driven realignment, since partisan identification has stabilized even as institutional trust falls. The term is therefore best used carefully, with reference to specific indicators and time periods rather than as a general label for voter discontent.
Example
In the 2017 French presidential election, the first-round collapse of the Socialist and Republican candidates and Emmanuel Macron's victory under the newly formed En Marche! were widely cited as evidence of dealignment in the French party system.
Frequently asked questions
Realignment shifts voters from one party coalition to another, producing a new majority alignment. Dealignment instead weakens attachments to all major parties, increasing independents and volatility without a clear new dominant coalition.
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