Two-party system
The U.S. has used a two-party system throughout most of its history, and the Democratic and Republican Parties dominated U.S. politics since the 1828 and 1860 elections respectively. Following the 2020 election, Republican candidates have won 24 elections, while Democrats have won 23. Until the mid-1900s, the Democratic Party was generally more conservative, with the strongest following among southern and rural voters, while the Republican Party tended to be more liberal, and popular in the northeast and in urban centers. These roles have been reversed in modern elections, with the Democratic economic shift becoming most evident in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression (1930s), while the ideological realignment became apparent during the civil rights era (1950s-1960s). Despite these changes, it took years for many voters to support the party whom they had opposed for so long. It was not until the Republican’s “Southern strategy” (1960s-1970s), which capitalized on residual racial tensions in the south and pushed the party further to the right, where voting trends and party policies became more closely aligned.Expansion of voting rights
At first only property-holding, white males could vote, but suffrage was extended to almost all white men by 1856. Slaves were never allowed to vote, and despite universal suffrage for all black men following the Civil War, oppressive Jim Crow laws effectively disenfranchised the black vote in the south until the 1960s. As black populations (including slaves) were included when calculating electoral representation, white southerners therefore had a disproportionate influence on U.S. elections throughout most of the country's history. After a century-long struggle, women were finally granted nationwide suffrage in 1920, and since the 1980 election, women have consistently had a higher turnout in presidential elections than males. Recent decades have also seen black voter-turnout reach a par with that of white voters. An increasing turnout among the growing Hispanic population, particularly in the southern-border states, is set to cause a major upheaval in future presidential elections.
