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Elections matter in democratic societies. They not only decide who will govern, but they can also reveal, beneath the surface, other important pieces of information about political life. Behind the aggregate total of votes received by each party lies a puzzle: where do the votes come from? The social profile of party electoral coalitions is important because once in power, parties tend to reward their most important supporters. As these profiles change, whether as a result of demographic shifts, declining rates of political participation, or changes in voting behavior, influences on the policies of democratically elected governments change as well.
The study of the "social" bases of voting behavior (and how they change over time) has been an important part of the tradition of voting studies. It is also a central focus of political strategists and campaign managers seeking to maximize candidate and party vote shares. In this essay, we discuss some of the most important changes in voting demographics. To keep the discussion manageable, our focus is on the established "rich" democracies of Western Europe and North America, although many of the same points could be made about some of the newer democracies in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Elections in the rich democracies during the first three-quarters of the 20th century were defined by fairly stable group-based alignments. Historically, the two most important of these were those based on religion and class, with religion as a generally stronger predictor of voting behavior. More recently, a gender cleavage has opened up in many countries, with women shifting in significant numbers towards center-left parties. In some places, other group-based alignments-such as those along linguistic, regional, or racial lines-have also been important, although these have varied from country to country and have not lent themselves to broad generalizations. In the United States, for example, African-American voters have been overwhelmingly Democratic since the early 1960s, representing perhaps the single strongest social group alignment in any of the rich democracies today. regional and linguistic divides in countries like Canada or Belgium can play an important role. And rising rates of immigration are becoming increasingly significant, especially in countries where immigrants or their children can gain citizenship rights.
The classical theory of group alignments holds that once a...