Abstract

How did local factors shape the political trajectories of White, working-class communities amidst the national breakdown of the New Deal coalition? This paper takes up this question by combining a quantitative, descriptive analysis of political change among White, working-class New Deal counties from 1932 to 2016 — including the Racial Realignment, the rise of the Religious Right, and the decline of unions — as well as a comparative-historical analysis of two of cities that were part of that New Deal coalition but took different political pathways after the Racial Realignment. I find that as cities confronted national political–economic developments, their responses were conditioned by local organizational contexts — which were often products of a previous period of response to national change. My findings suggest that New Deal counties that had both a pre-existing history of evangelicalism and organized anti-Black sentiment prior to the Racial Realignment and turned away from unions early in the deindustrialization period, were most open to late 20th century Republican politics. More broadly, the analysis offers a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between local and national processes of political change.