Did the New Deal solidify the 1932 Democratic realignment?

Shawn Kantor, Price Fishback and John Joseph Wallis

Explorations in Economic History, 2013, vol. 50, issue 4, 620-633

Abstract: The critical election of 1932 represented a turning point in the future electoral successes of the Democrats and Republicans for over three decades. This paper seeks to measure the importance of the New Deal in facilitating the Democrats' control of the federal government well into the 1960s. We test whether long-differences in the county-level electoral support for Democratic presidential candidates after the 1930s can be attributed to New Deal interventions into local economies. We also investigate more narrowly whether voters rewarded Roosevelt from 1932 to 1936 and from 1936 to 1940 for his efforts to stimulate depressed local economies. Our instrumental variable estimates indicate that increasing a county's per capita New Deal relief and public works spending from nothing to the sample mean ($145) would have increased the long-run support for the Democratic party by 2 to 2.5 percentage points. We further find that the long-run shift toward the Democratic party after 1928 was not a function of the Roosevelt landslide victory in 1932. Roosevelt's ability to win over voters during the 1936 and 1940 elections with New Deal spending, however, did matter for the long-term.

Keywords: New Deal; Great Depression; Political economy; Voting; 1932 realignment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 E65 N42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Chapter: Did the New Deal Solidify the 1932 Democratic Realignment? (2012)
Working Paper: Did the New Deal Solidify the 1932 Democratic Realignment? (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:exehis:v:50:y:2013:i:4:p:620-633

DOI: 10.1016/j.eeh.2013.08.001

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