Electoral Trends

Electoral trends are observable patterns of change over time in voting behavior, turnout, party support, and the social bases of political alignment, identified through election results, surveys, and polling. They include realignment, in which the party coalitions of social groups shift durably, dealignment, in which party attachments weaken, and increasing volatility, polarization, or geographic sorting. V. O. Key developed the idea of critical elections and realigning periods, and Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan analyzed how class, religious, and regional cleavages froze European party systems. Russell Dalton, Ronald Inglehart, and Pippa Norris examined declining party loyalty and the rise of value-based politics, with Inglehart’s postmaterialism and Norris and Inglehart’s cultural backlash thesis seeking to explain the support for populist parties. Thomas Piketty has described a shift from class-based to multiple-elite party systems, and Jonathan Rodden analyzed the political geography of urban and rural divides. Arlie Hochschild and Katherine Cramer have studied resentment in regions affected by economic decline. Age cohorts, education, and ethnic diversity shape trajectories, while media and social networks influence opinion. Electoral trends remain central to research on political sociology, democracy, polarization, populism, and social change.