The Policy Bases of the New Deal Realignment:
Evidence from Public Opinion Polls, 1936–1952
Devin Caughey1 , Michael Dougal2 , and Eric Schickler2
1
Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2
Travers Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley
2013/08/27
Abstract
This paper uses early survey data to help understand the changing policy mood and
ideological predispositions of the mass public during the late 1930s and 1940s, as the
party system was reshaped by the ongoing New Deal realignment. We devise measures
of state-level liberalism along three potentially separate dimensions for each year from
1936–1952: New Deal liberalism on all economic issues excluding labor, labor policy
liberalism, and civil rights liberalism. Our results suggest that there was a fairly steady
drift to the right in aggregate public opinion on economic issues from 1936 through
the mid-to-late 1940s. On labor policy, we see a more dramatic move to the right
concentrated in the war years, followed by at least a partial revival in support for unions
in the mid-to-late 1940s. We also find some striking regional patterns in the data. In
particular, we see a major transformation where southern states go from being fairly
liberal on non-labor economic issues to standing out as the most conservative region in
the country, particularly on labor policy but also on economic liberalism more generally.
We also find that states that tend to be liberal on labor policy also tend to be more
pro-civil rights. In future work, we will relate our composite measures of state-level
liberalism to geographic patterns in presidential and congressional election results and
to roll call voting by members of Congress.
Prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, August 29 to September 1, 2013.
We thank Tony Huynh for his exceptional research assistance, and Chris Warshaw for collaborating on
the development of the group-level IRT model. A National Science Foundation grant supported this research.
1
Contents
1 Introduction
1
2 Data and Methods
2.1 Public Opinion Data, 1936–1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 Modeling State Liberalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3 Liberalism Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6
6
8
11
3 The Geography of New Deal Liberalism
14
4 Civil Rights and Other Dimensions of Liberalism
23
5 Conclusion
25
2
1
Introduction
The New Deal realignment is often taken to be the paradigmatic case of a policy-based
partisan realignment.1 Although Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign was notoriously vague about
what the challenger would do if elected, once in office his Administration launched a bold
set of initiatives that redefined the relationship between the national government and its
citizens. Roosevelt’s resounding reelection victory in 1936—by an even bigger landslide than
his initial win four years earlier—was widely taken as a ratification of the New Deal’s social
welfare and labor policies (Key 1958, 589; Ackerman 1993). Yet while we know a great
deal about elite-level conflict over New Deal policy initiatives, beyond aggregate election
results we know relatively little about how the mass public responded—if at all—to the
dramatic changes in the ideological tenor of American politics that occurred during these
years. Fortunately, Roosevelt’s 1936 landslide coincided with the birth of systematic public
opinion research. This paper attempts to leverage early survey data to help understand
the changing policy mood and ideological predispositions of the mass public during the late
1930s and 1940s.
The depth of the ideological transformation at the elite level is evident when one compares
party politics in the 1920s to the late 1930s. In the 1920s and early 1930s, progressives had
routinely complained that neither party represented their policy views. While the mostly
agrarian and southern Democratic Party was more favorable to some business regulation and
income taxes on high-earners than were northern Republicans, the two parties were most
sharply divided over the tariff and, to a lesser extent, prohibition (see, e.g., Hayes 1937).
The Democratic nominees for President in 1924 and 1928, John Davis and Al Smith, were far
removed from the agrarian populism of William Jennings Bryan. Indeed, Davis and Smith
were allied to eastern corporate and financial interests who had considerable influence over
1
See Mayhew (2004) for a review of the realignment literature; the New Deal case holds up well in relation to
most of the criteria Mayhew details for assessing whether a partisan realignment occurred. See also Hershey
(2005, 294) for an account that treats the New Deal realignment as a leading example of a policy-based
realignment.
1
the national Democratic Party. Even in 1932, Roosevelt’s campaign sought to appeal both to
pro-business eastern financial interests and to western progressives, generating considerable
criticism from the left that the Democratic candidate would not offer a genuine departure
from Hoover’s policies.2
By 1936, however, the tables had turned and conservative northern Democratic leaders—
including Smith, Davis, and former Democratic National Committee Chairman John Raskob—
had all bolted from the New Deal, backing the Liberty League in its harsh attacks on the
“socialistic” New Deal. With the Social Security Act, Wagner Act, and expanded relief policies, the Roosevelt Administration forged a new coalition, in which most progressives—now
increasingly calling themselves “liberals”—found their home. In place of the old cleavage
surrounding the tariff, the new party system seemed to offer voters a much clearer choice:
an increasingly urban, pro-labor Democratic party advocating an expansive welfare state,
progressive taxation, and more robust corporate regulation now competed against a Republican Party offering a more limited welfare state and emphasizing the dangers posed by a
too powerful federal government and labor movement. In many accounts, this cleavage over
the New Deal’s social welfare, labor, and regulatory policies became the defining feature of
American politics for decades until it was eventually displaced by new divisions over civil
rights and rising social issues in the 1960s and 1970s (see, e.g., Sundquist, 1983; Ladd and
Hadley, 1975).
But this simple depiction of the New Deal realignment raises several difficult questions.
First, what role did the South play in the New Deal coalition? From the start, southern
lawmakers’ concerns about the New Deal’s potential impact on the repressive Jim Crow
system left an important mark on Roosevelt’s policies (Lieberman, 1998; Katznelson, 2013).
By the late 1930s, southern members of Congress began to balk at the New Deal’s labor
policies as well. The rise of the CIO, with its embrace of racial liberalism and its bold goal
2
For example, see “Will the Democrats Turn Left?” The New Republic, December 14, 1932, pp. 121–22;
Oswald Garrison Villard, “The Pot and the Kettle: The Bipartisan Hypocrisy of Politicians,” The Nation,
September 21, 1932, p. 247.
2
of unionizing the South, led many southern elites to see organized labor as an existential
threat to the region’s racial and socio-economic order. As many accounts have emphasized,
southern lawmakers allied with Republicans to rein in New Deal economic policies starting in
the late 1930s, muddling party lines (e.g., Patterson, 1967; Katznelson, Geiger and Kryder,
1993). This elite behavior raises important questions about the nature of the New Deal
coalition. Did southern elites’ defection on labor policy reflect the views of their constituents
or did southern Democratic voters generally accept the national party’s close ties to unions?
More generally, to what extent did the restricted southern electorate buy into the economic
policies of the New Deal, and thus reflect the broader national cleavage? Or, alternatively,
did southern Democratic voters “look like” northern Republicans when it came to their
economic policy views?
Second, how do we interpret the Republican comeback in many northern states starting
in 1938? Just two short years after Roosevelt’s second landslide victory, which had left
many political observers wondering whether the GOP had any future whatsoever, Republicans made tremendous gains in the 1938 midterm election. After reaching a low point of
eight-nine representatives, sixteen senators, and seven governors following the 1936 debacle,
the GOP gained eighty-one seats in the House, seven Senate seats, and eleven governors’
offices, dramatically outpacing most observers’ expectations.3 This shift was not an aberration. In each House election from 1938 to 1952, Republicans won a greater share of the
popular vote outside the South than did Democrats. GOP successes in the north meant
that Democrats had only a slight, nominal House majority following the 1942 election and
lost complete control of both chambers in 1946. The “permanent” Democratic majority
that we in retrospect date to the New Deal realignment did not look so permanent in the
early-to-mid 1940s.
What does the Republican revival tell us about the nature and meaning of the New
Deal realignment? The “Roosevelt recession” of 1937 is often cited as a proximate cause
3
News coverage in the lead-up to the election made clear that GOP gains were expected; but the outcome
went beyong even what the most optimistic GOP leaders had predicted.
3
of the Republican recovery the following year, an attribution in line with the literature
on retrospective voting. Norpoth, Sidman and Suong (2013), for example, argue that the
Democratic advantage in party identification did not solidify until the late 1940s, when
voters rewarded Democrats for victory in WWII and postwar economic prosperity. Similarly,
Chris Achen and Larry Bartels have also attributed the New Deal realignment to voters’
retrospective evaluations, though they emphasize the myopic character of those judgments.
They show, for example, that Roosevelt gained votes in 1936 in states that enjoyed high
growth in per capita income that year, but lost votes in states that had lost per capita
income. The election-year income gains “cumulated willy-nilly into a durable Democratic
majority in the electorate” (Achen and Bartels, 2008, 1).
By these accounts, both the Democrats’ new majority status and the reconfiguration of
the party coalitions had relatively little to do with ideological or policy evaluations on the
part of voters, and can hardly be read as a popular ratification of the new policy order.
An alternative interpretation, articulated by Sundquist (1983), is that the late 1930s and
1940s changes were “aftershocks” of the New Deal earthquake. In Sundquist’s view, a new
issue-oriented, working class, urban Democratic Party was created in the North in the 1930s,
at least at the presidential level (227–8). Though delayed in some places by local one-party
dominance, over time conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans gradually brought
their party identification in line with their presidential voting.4
One way to begin to gain leverage on the retrospective voting and policy-based explanations is to investigate how states that rebounded back to the GOP compare to states that
continued to show big Democratic majorities after 1936. In particular, when one examines
mass opinion towards economic issues in the late 1930s, do the states that move to the
Republicans look different from the states that stuck with Roosevelt and his New Deal?
Alternatively, do economic conditions do a better job of sorting states that stick with the
Democrats from states that go Republican? More generally, to what extent do Republican
4
One limitation of Sundquist’s analysis of these aftershocks is that it relies heavily on aggregate election
returns rather than direct measures of public opinion.
4
gains in the late 1930s and 1940s reflect a general drift in public opinion toward the right;
furthermore, is that shift concentrated on a limited subset of New Deal issues—such as labor
policy, where the CIO’s aggressive tactics and bold agenda may have alienated moderate
voters—or was it more widespread?
Another question is how the emergent policy battle over civil rights mapped into public
divisions over New Deal economic policies. Civil rights has often been treated as a crosscutting issue that divided New Deal supporters (see Carmines and Stimson 1989; Poole and
Rosenthal 1997). However, recent work has shown that among northern whites, economically
liberal Democratic voters were substantially more pro-civil rights than were economically
conservative Republican voters from the late 1930s onwards (Schickler, 2013). If one thinks
about the constituencies confronting senators and representatives, to what extent did members representing economically-liberal constituencies also find themselves with constituencies
that were stronger civil rights supporters? Alternatively, did these two dimensions remain
separated into the 1940s and 1950s?
This paper is a very preliminary effort to use a new data source to gain additional leverage
on these questions. As described below, we devise measures of state-level liberalism along
three potentially separate dimensions for each year: New Deal liberalism on all economic
issues excluding labor, labor policy liberalism, and civil rights liberalism. Our results suggest
that there was a fairly steady drift to the right in aggregate public opinion on economic issues
from 1936 through the mid-to-late 1940s. Our measure of economic liberalism hits its low
point in 1944-46, and stays low for the remainder of the 1940s. On labor policy, we see a
more dramatic move to the right concentrated in the war years, followed by at least a partial
revival in support for unions in the mid-to-late 1940s. We also see some striking regional
patterns in the data. In particular, southern states go from being fairly liberal on non-labor
economic issues to standing out as the most conservative region in the country, particularly
on labor policy but also on economic liberalism more generally. In future work, we will relate
our composite measures of state-level liberalism to geographic patterns in presidential and
5
congressional election results and to roll call voting by members of Congress.
2
Data and Methods
Adjudicating between the rival perspectives on the New Deal realignment requires systematic
data on and analysis of subnational shifts in mass attitudes towards policy and partisanship.
Using roughly one thousand poll questions asked between 1936 and 1952, we analyze state
level shifts in public opinion on attitudes towards New Deal programs, the role of government,
business, labor unions, and other important issues. Our state-level opinion measures allow
us to chart aggregate public opinion with respect to the New Deal in real time.
2.1
Public Opinion Data, 1936–1952
Systematic public opinion surveys first became a prominent feature of political life in the
1930s. Between 1936 and 1952, the four main polling organizations, Hadley Cantril’s Office
of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), George Gallup’s American Institute of Public Opinion
(AIPO), the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), and Elmo Roper’s eponymous firm
conducted roughly 900 national surveys. The polls attracted considerable attention at the
time. George Gallup reported results from his polls in a regular column syndicated in over
100 newspapers by 1940 (Igo, 2007). Fortune magazine sponsored many of Roper’s surveys
and regularly presented a detailed summary of the results; Roper also popularized the results
of his surveys with a syndicated column starting in the early 1940s. News coverage often
referred to poll results.
The surveys include a wide range of questions probing respondents domestic and foreign
policy views, including attitudes toward labor unions, government regulation of business,
taxation, redistribution, social security, relief policy, civil rights, and a variety of other
issues. While these surveys thus have a wealth of information about public opinion, they
have two main limitations. First, in their original format questions are organized, obviously,
by poll not topic and answers are coded in the order they appeared rather than from liberal
to conservative. To ease the interpretation of survey responses and help model the ideology
6
of respondents, we recode all question answers so that liberal answers have positive values,
conservative answers have negative values, and moderate answers are centered at zero. To
analyze shifts in public opinion over time, we construct a series of topic codes that identify
questions on particular policy dimensions, including economic liberalism, labor policy, and
civil rights. Questions that repeat over time have the same topic code, allowing us to identify
questions that bridge over time. Questions on a particular topic share a range of topic codes,
allowing us to identify all questions on a particular topic at any given point in time.
The second limitation of these early surveys is that the data were collected using quotacontrolled sampling techniques that have since been largely discredited. In quota sampling,
pollsters seek to interview certain predetermined proportions of people from particular segments of the population. While some pollsters used quotas to ensure that their samples
matched the population distributions of the quota variables (Roper, 1940), others designed
quotas to produce sample proportions that differed systematically from the population.
George Gallup was most interested in predicting elections, so he drew samples to represent each population segment in proportion to the votes it usually cast in elections. Because
Southerners, African Americans, and women turned out at low rates in this period, these
groups were deliberately underrepresented in Gallup’s polls. For example, the 1940 Census
found that 50 percent of the U.S. population was female, 10 percent was African American,
and 31 percent lived in the South. By contrast, a December, 1940 Gallup poll included only
34 percent women, 3 percent African Americans, and 13 percent Southerners.
In addition to the unrepresentativeness of the quota targets themselves, interviewer discretion in deciding whom to interview to meet their quotas created the potential for further
bias. This discretion generally resulted in a substantial skew in the education and political
engagement of survey samples, since well-educated, engaged respondents were more likely
to be approached by interviewers. For example, the 1940 Census indicated that about 10
percent of the population had at least some college education, while almost 30 percent of a
typical 1940 Gallup sample had attended college. Similarly, polls conducted by Gallup and
7
Roper tended to include more professionals than identified by the Census. The skew in these
variables is not surprising, given that education and occupation were not quota categories.
Both sources of bias can be ameliorated by weighting opinion estimates to match the
distribution of certain variables in the population. For example, since we know the gender
breakdown in the population, we can eliminate the bias caused by the undersampling of
women by up-weighting the estimates for women from approximately 34% in the polls to
their population proportion of around 50%. Drawing on the U.S. Census and other sources
(e.g., AT&T corporate records for phone ownership rates), we have collected data on the
state-level population distributions of a number of auxiliary variables available in the polls,
such as race, professional occupation, and urban residence. As detailed below, we use this
information to construct more accurate estimates of state opinion in each year.5
2.2
Modeling State Liberalism
The poll data from 1936–1952 contain a treasure trove of information on American’s political opinions during these crucial years. Our ability to discern broader patterns in public
opinion, however, is hindered by the very size and complexity of the data: hundreds of distinct questions asked of over one million individual respondents. An additional difficulty is
posed by the fact that each respondent answered only a small fraction of the total number
of economic liberalism questions, often only one or two. Our challenge is to summarize
Americans’ political opinions in a way that can be compared both cross-sectionally, among
different subsets of the American public, and dynamically, across different points in time.
To accomplish this task, we employ a dynamic group-level item-response model (Caughey
and Warshaw, 2013). Similar to factor analysis, item-response models treat observed survey
responses as indicators of a respondent-level latent trait (e.g., liberalism; see Treier and Hillygus, 2009; Jessee, 2009). In the 1936–52 poll data, there are too few questions per respondent
to apply a conventional individual-level item-response model, so we instead use a group-level
5
Because each additional weighting variable increases the computational difficulty of estimating the model,
in this version of the paper we include only a subset of the available variables: Black, Professional, and
Female, by state.
8
model (Mislevy, 1983), which generates estimates of average liberalism in different subpopulations (e.g., states). We smooth the subpopulation estimates with a hierarchical model
that includes a national intercept and all the geographic and/or demographic predictors that
define the groups (Gelman and Hill, 2006).6 To allow for change in public opinion, we allow
both the group means and the parameters of the hierarchical model to evolve in each year
(for full details on our estimation approach, see Caughey and Warshaw, 2013).
The liberalism estimates from this model are comparable across time under the crucial
assumption that the ideological content of a given question does not change if its wording
remains constant. This implies that two equally liberal respondents answering the same
question in different years have the same probability of giving a liberal response. The
assumption allows us to “bridge” estimates across time. Unfortunately, only a fairly small
number of questions repeat, making over-time comparisons highly dependent on the stability
of the bridging questions that we do have. In many instances, we believe that question
meaning is stable over time. For example, Gallup asked on several occasions whether the
government or private sector ought to “own and control” the banks. It is unlikely that the
meaning of this question shifted over time. In some cases, however, such as questions about
wartime strikes, there is reason to worry that the underlying meaning of the question changed
as conditions changed. In this iteration of the paper, we only treat a question as repeated if
it is worded identically across multiple years or if there are only very slight wording changes
that appear unlikely to affect the response distribution. Our system of topic codes allows us
to experiment going forward with less strict thresholds, which by increasing the number of
bridging questions may enhance the robustness of the bridging assumptions.7
Weaker assumptions are required for over-time comparison of relative liberalism (e.g.,
whether Alabama became more conservative relative to the nation). The principal requirement is that questions discriminate between liberals and conservatives equally well over time,
6
For example, if groups are defined by gender and state (for a total of 2 × 48 = 96 groups), the group means
are modeled as an additive function of gender and a state-specific intercept.
7
We are preparing a detailed appendix that will include the topic codes and an explanation of how we decided
on which questions are comparable over time.
9
even if overall support for the question changes. One benefit of the dynamic item-response
approach is that while over time comparisons in the absolute level of liberalism depend
heavily on the bridging questions, we are able to use the much broader set of non-repeated
questions to gain leverage on each state’s relative liberalism as compared to the nation as a
whole at a particular point in time.
Using this model, we derive estimates of average liberalism in each state as well as in
partisan groups within each state (i.e., Democrats and Republicans). In the first case,
because we have data on the demographic profile of each state, we are able to use a method
similar to multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP), which yields more accurate
estimates of subnational opinion (Park, Gelman and Bafumi, 2004; Lax and Phillips, 2009).
This method requires that we estimate liberalism in more narrowly defined subgroups (e.g.,
white male professionals in Missouri) and then weight them to generate state-level estimates.
We cannot apply this weighting method to partisan groups, however, because we lack
population data on their demographic composition. Given the unrepresentativeness of the
poll samples, our inability to weight the data may result in estimates of the partisan groups
that are less representative of the public as a whole. The unweighted estimates are probably
more representative of the voting population, which contained class, racial, and gender biases
broadly similar to those in the polls themselves. In other words, while we are fairly confident
in our estimates of state-level opinion (particularly of the relative liberalism of states as
compared to one another at a particular point in time), estimates of partisan groups (e.g.
California Democrats, New Jersey Republicans) are more likely to represent the voting public
in a given election than the general citizenry.
An important complication is how to treat Southern African Americans, who were largely
disfranchised, in estimating state-level opinion in the South. In the analyses below, we weight
to the Southern white population, rather than attempting to estimate the opinions of black
Southerners, who were almost entirely excluded from the Southern poll samples. When we
simulate Southern opinion assuming that Southern blacks had similar views to their North10
ern counterparts, the South appears somewhat more liberal, but this does little alter the
overall picture of Southern opinion. Given the data limitations and the fact that Southern representatives had little incentive to respond to African Americans’ views, for present
purposes we simply target the Southern white population in constructing our estimates.
2.3
Liberalism Estimates
Although our results at this stage are preliminary, a number of interesting patterns are
evident. At the national level, when one examines economic liberalism—excluding questions
on labor policy—there is a clear, gradual conservative trend from the late 1930s to the early
1950s (see Figure 1). It is important to emphasize that the relatively high level of liberalism
evident at the start of our data—which is late in 1936—may not be the actual peak of
liberalism during the New Deal years. The economy had bottomed out in 1933–34, a period
characterized by the rise of Huey Long’s Share the Wealth Movement, the Upton Sinclair
End Poverty In California campaign, and numerous other signs of radicalism. As a result, it
is plausible that the relatively high level of liberalism observed in 1936–38 is actually lower
than what one would have found earlier in Roosevelt’s tenure.
In any case, our data suggest that the aggregate level of liberalism falls in the late 1930s
and drifts further downwards during the war years. By the mid-1940s, as Republicans were
preparing to take (temporary) control of Congress, the overall policy liberalism had fallen by
a magnitude equal to about one standard deviation in individual-level liberalism scores.8 The
bottom line is that at the national level, at least, the liberal public mood of the mid-1930s
seems to give way to a notably more conservative stance on economics.
The general conservative drift in public opinion can be discerned on individual questions
repeated over time. In 1938, 48% of respondents identified as conservative; in polls conducted
in 1947–48, 55% did. Support for some specific liberal or left-wing policies decreased even
more dramatically. In 1941, 90% of respondent thought Social Security should be expanded
8
In other words, the aggregate fall is about as large as the gap separating the liberalism of the 50th percentile
and 16th percentile individual in the country.
11
National Average (Standardized)
1.0
0.5
0.0
−0.5
−1.0
1936
1940
1944
1948
Year
Figure 1: National Trends in New Deal Liberalism, 1936–51. This figure plots yearly estimates of the American public’s average liberalism on non-labor economic issues. Error bars
represent 68% and 96% Bayesian confidence intervals around the estimate. For ease of interpretation, the estimates have been scaled by the standard deviation of New Deal liberalism
across individuals in a typical year.
to include farmers. In 1944, the figure was around 70%. The drop in support for government
“ownership and control” of certain industries, an important part of the social-democratic
agenda in Britain and elsewhere, is particularly striking. In 1937–38, roughly 40% of American favored government ownership of the railroads, 50% supported the policy for banks, and
over 60% were in favor of government ownership over electric power companies. By the end
of the war, however, support for government ownership and control of key industries had
collapsed: only 25–30% of Americans expressed support for government ownership of these
same industries (see Schickler and Caughey, 2011, 182–3 for a more detailed discussion of
this example).
These patterns are consistent with the contention of Brinkley (1995) and others that
the political debate was more open to a fundamental rethinking of government-business
relationships in the mid-1930s than at the end of the war, by which time a more limited
vision of the appropriate scope of government activism had taken hold. While Brinkley
12
National Average (Standardized)
1.0
0.5
0.0
−0.5
−1.0
1940
1944
1948
Year
Figure 2: National Trends in Labor Liberalism, 1937–49. This figure plots yearly estimates
of the American public’s average liberalism on labor-related issues. Error bars represent 68%
and 96% Bayesian confidence intervals around the estimate. For ease of interpretation, the
estimates have been scaled by the standard deviation of labor liberalism across individuals
in a typical year.
focuses on the contours of elite debate, our results suggest a parallel set of developments
at the mass level (though they do not resolve the direction of the causal arrow between
elites and the masses). At the mass level, however, rather than occurring in a short space of
time, the rightward drift appears to have taken place fairly gradually between the late 1930s
and mid-1940s. Notwithstanding the American public’s apparently diminishing appetite for
ambitious new liberal policies, it is important to remember that core features of the New
Deal, such as Social Security itself, remained highly popular. Indeed, their broad embrace
by the American public is reflected in the absence of questions asking whether, for example,
old-age pension should be eliminated.
Since labor issues in this period exhibited political dynamics distinct from other areas
of the New Deal (Katznelson, Geiger and Kryder, 1993; Schickler and Caughey, 2011), we
constructed a separate series of questions related to labor unions. As Figure 2 shows, there
appears to be a shift to the right on labor issues in 1937–38. The sparseness of the data
13
makes us somewhat wary of drawing too firm inferences but these results are supported by
both the historical literature and by particular questions that ask respondents about change
in their own attitudes. For example, a June 1937 Gallup poll asked whether respondents’
attitude toward unions had changed during the past six months, and if so, in which direction.
Half of the respondents reported that their views had changed; of these, 70% claimed to be
more negative toward unions than they had been six months earlier.
Our estimates suggest a more dramatic decline in labor liberalism took place during the
war years amid popular outrage against (the admittedly few but widely covered) wartime
strikes. Once again, polls that ask directly about change in respondent views are consistent
with this finding. When Gallup asked in early May 1943 whether respondents’ views of
unions had changed over the past year, 38% reported being less supportive, as compared to
5% who were more supportive than a year earlier. Support for labor gradually revived as the
war wound down (we are skeptical of the size of the spike in union support in 1948 because
it is driven by a very small number of items in that year.)
In sum, the late 1930s to the early 1950s were an era of dramatic ideological flux, though
the dynamics of public opinion differed importantly between labor issues and other areas
of the New Deal. On most economic issues, the American public became gradually more
conservative over these years, with liberalism much lower in 1946 as Republicans took over
Congress than it had been at the start of the period. By contrast, on labor issues the
conservative reaction came earlier and more quickly, amid wartime frustration with unions.
Support for unions hit a low point in 1942, when the GOP nearly captured the U.S. House,
and then recovered gradually, though probably not to its pre-war level.
3
The Geography of New Deal Liberalism
We now turn to an examination of geographic variation in mass liberalism. One of the advantages of the dynamic item-response model is that it permits comparison of cross-sectional
and over-time variation on the same scale. Such comparisons must be made cautiously since
14
they depend on the assumption that the ideological content of questions is constant over
time, but they are informative nonetheless.
Consider Figure 3, which charts economic (top) and labor (bottom) liberalism over time,
for the nation (dotted line), four regions (dashed lines), and individual states (solid lines).
One pattern evident in this figure—though one that we must regard cautiously, given the
strong assumptions it entails—is that the variation in liberalism over time is approximately
the same magnitude as the variation across states. In particularly liberal years, the most
conservative state is estimated to be more liberal than the most liberal state in conservative
years. The apparently modest geographic polarization relative to the over-time changes may
reflect the New Deal’s layering of class cleavages on a more sectional earlier party system
(Sundquist, 1983), but it is also consistent with other works that find large temporal variation
in opinion relative to cross-sectional differences (e.g., Enns and Koch, In Press).9
The striking national opinion changes in this period were accompanied by marked and
consequential shifts in the geographic distribution of liberalism. These geographic shifts can
be seen more clearly if we center the state estimates at the national mean in each year. As
noted above, comparing the relative position of states at a given point in time also has the
virtue of relying on weaker assumptions regarding the constancy of the meaning of repeated
questions. The changing relative liberalism of states is highlighted in Figures 4 and 5, which
map the distribution of liberalism relative to the nation as a whole.
A striking feature evident in Figure 4 is that the South changes from the most pro-New
Deal area of the country to one of the most conservative.10 It bears emphasis that these
data exclude questions on both civil rights and labor policy, suggesting that the southern
transformation—though perhaps initially sparked by these issues, and no doubt undergirded
by racial concerns—was nonetheless quite broad. The move to the right is widespread across
the deep south and most of the rim south, with the exception of Oklahoma).11 By contrast,
9
Writing shortly after the period we examine, V. O. Key observed that “in the United States only rarely do
wide [public] opinion differences exist between regions” (1961, 101).
10
The South is defined as the eleven former Confederate states, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma.
11
By contrast, states on the periphery of the south, as conventionally defined—such as Missouri, Delaware,
15
Liberalism (Standardized)
1.0
0.5
Midwest
0.0
Northeast
South
West
−0.5
−1.0
1936
1940
1944
1948
Year
Liberalism (Standardized)
1.0
0.5
Midwest
0.0
Northeast
South
West
−0.5
−1.0
1940
1944
1948
Year
Figure 3: National, Regional, and State Ideological Trends. New Deal liberalism is plotted
in the top panel, and labor liberalism in the bottom panel. Southern blacks are excluded
from both sets of estimates. For ease of interpretation, the estimates have been scaled by
the standard deviation of labor liberalism across individuals in a typical year. The black
dotted line indicates national mean opinion, and the dashed lines indicate the average of
state estimates in each region. Solid lines correspond to the 48 states.
16
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
Relative
Liberalism
3
2
1
0
−1
−2
1951
Figure 4: New Deal Liberalism by State, 1936–1951. The state estimates exclude Southern
blacks and have been normalized to have a mean of 0 and variance of 1 in each year.
17
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
Relative
Liberalism
3
2
1
0
−1
−2
1949
Figure 5: Labor Liberalism by State, 1937–1949. The state estimates exclude Southern
blacks and have been normalized to have a mean of 0 and variance of 1 in each year.
18
1939
1949
Labor Liberalism (Normalized)
VT
2
NH
CT
RI
NY
MA NV
NJ
1
AZ
CA MTPA
VA MD UT NJ
DE
ME
WY
CO
LA
OK
MI
WI
KY
IL
KS
NC
MO
MNIN
AL
OH
TX FL
OR
MS
ID
SC ND
WV
IA
TN
GA NE
SDAR
0
−1
−2
NY
PA
MT
OH
OR
NV
CA
IL
RI
MA
CO
ME
IN
WI
MI
NH AZ
MN
NM VA
CT MO
DE
SD
AL MD
WY
ID
NE
GALA KS
FL
KY UT
TX
IA
OK VT
AR
TN
MS
NC
WA
ND
WA
NM
WV
SC
2.5
5.0
7.5
10.0
2.5
5.0
7.5
10.0
Union Membership in 1939 as % of Population
a Non−South a South
Figure 6: Labor Liberalism and Union Membership, 1939 and 1949. The state liberalism
estimates have been scaled to have a mean of 0 and a variance of 1 in each year. Data on
union membership from Troy (1957).
the big population centers in the northeast—most notably New York state—are consistently
liberal relative to the country, along with the states on the west coast. A handful of states
in the upper Midwest—such as Illinois and Michigan—shift to the left over time, relative to
the country as a whole.
Another interesting feature of the maps is that if one were to use state-level economic
liberalism as of 1936–40 to predict contemporary state partisanship, the relationship would
largely be a null one. But by 1948, with some notable exceptions, the states that are relatively
conservative on economics are today bastions for the GOP, while states that were relatively
liberal vote Democratic some 65 years later. The main exceptions are in the upper Plains
states, where Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming continued to lean towards the left even in the
late 1940s. In addition, Vermont and Maine—longstanding GOP bastions—also continued
to be relatively conservative, in sharp contrast to their relative liberalism today.
When we turn to labor liberalism, the regional patterns are even starker. As Figure 5
West Virginia, and Maryland—show little evidence of a right-ward shift relative to the rest of the country.
19
shows, a sharp geographic cleavage on views towards unions emerges by about 1940 and
becomes more pronounced over the course of the 1940s. First, the South emerges early on
as a distinctly anti-labor region. This pattern is evident by the late 1930s and becomes
overwhelming during the war years. Just as their members of Congress took on an increasingly anti-union stance in the late 1930s, the eligible Southern electorate became the most
anti-labor constituency in the U.S. By contrast, one finds strong labor support—relative to
the country as a whole—throughout much of the Northeast, upper Midwest, and West.
As one would expect, the areas of the country that expressed the greatest support for
labor liberalism also tended to be areas where unions were strongest. More interestingly,
the correlation between union strength and pro-labor attitudes increased markedly over
time. Figure 6 plots the relationship between unionization levels and labor liberalism across
states in 1939 and 1949. Despite the fact that union membership is measured in 1939, its
relationship with labor liberalism is actually much stronger a decade later in 1949.
From a contemporary perspective, it is also interesting to note the congruence between
the map of labor liberalism in the 1940s to the familiar red-blue map of recent contemporary
elections. Figure 7 compares labor liberalism in 1937 and in 1944 to the two-party presidential vote in 2008. Labor liberalism as of 1937, before the sharp anti-labor reaction of the war
years, is unrelated to presidential vote in 2008. But when measured starting in the 1940s,
labor liberalism is a strong predictor of presidential vote more than sixty years later, in 2008.
Aside from a few anomalies like Montana and Wyoming on the liberal end and Vermont on
the conservative side, anti-union states in the 1940s tend to be Republican in contemporary
politics.
Indeed, partly due to the anomalous position of the South, our estimates of state labor
liberalism are more strongly related to partisanship today than to partisanship in the 1930s–
40s. One possible explanation is that by the Second World War, labor liberalism tapped
into enduring urban-rural and cosmopolitan-traditionalist cleavages that have become especially salient in recent American politics. It is also possible that the relationship between
20
1937
2008 Democratic Presidential Vote %
70
1944
VT
VT
NY
DE ILMACA
CT
60
ME MI WA
NM
OR
IA
FL
IN
50
SD
PA
NH
CO
VA
OH
NC MO
GA
ND
WV
NETN
NY
RI
MD
DE
NJ
WI
NV
MN
NM
NC
MT
OH
MOIN
ME WA
NJ
MT
KS
KY
AZSDND
SC
TX
NE
KY
LA
AR
AL
MS WV
TN KS
LA
AR
ID
OK
WY
−1
OR MI
WI
NV
PA
CONHMN
GA
AZ
SC
TX MS
40
−2
IA
VA
FL
RI
MA
MD IL
CA
CT
0
UT
OK
1
AL
ID
UT
2
3
WY
−2
−1
0
1
2
3
Labor Liberalism (Normalized)
a Non−South a South
Figure 7: Labor Liberalism and 2008 Presidential Vote. The left panel uses state estimates of
labor liberalism in 1937, and the right panel uses estimates from 1944. The state liberalism
estimates have been scaled to have a mean of 0 and a variance of 1 in each year.
labor liberalism and contemporary partisanship is more direct, which would be consistent
with Schlozman’s (2011) argument linking unionization in this period to modern political
cleavages.
A further question raised by this data is how party polarization in economic and labor
policy views evolved in the 1930s–40s. Figure 3 compares the economic and labor liberalism
of Democrats and Republicans, with partisanship defined by retrospective presidential vote.
These polarization estimates are from a model that controls for state of residence, so they
are best interpreted as the average within-state difference between the parties.12
Looking first at the left panel, we see that mass-level partisan polarization narrows fairly
steadily between 1936 and 1944, after which it flattens out. The gap between the two parties
at the start of the period is about 1.6 times as large as it is in 1944 and beyond. To give a
sense for the magnitude of the distance between Democratic and Republican partisans, as of
1937, the gap between the typical Democrat and Republican was about 2.5 times as large as
12
Unconditional polarization estimates (that is, not controlling for state) would be smaller because the
relatively conservative South was also overwhelmingly Democratic.
21
New Deal Liberalism
Labor Liberalism
1.2
●
●
●
●
Difference Between Parties
Difference Between Parties
1.5
●
0.9
●
●
●
●
●
0.6
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
0.3
0.0
●
●
●
1.0
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
0.5
0.0
1936
1940
1944
1948
1952
1940
Year
1944
1948
Year
Figure 8: Mass-level partisan polarization on New Deal issues (left) and labor issues (right).
the gap separating the most liberal state from the most conservative state. By contrast, as
of 1944, the gap between Democrats and Republicans nationally was less than twice the gap
between the most liberal and most conservative state. Within party variation also increased
over time. At the end of the period, the distance between California and Alabama Democrats
is about as large as the gap separating the two parties nationally.
The corresponding figure for labor liberalism, however, tells a story of continuing party
polarization in the electorate (Figure 3, right panel). Notice that the distance between
Democrats and Republicans nationally is over one standard deviation in 1937–39, before
narrowing amid the widespread anti-labor backlash during World War II. After the war,
however, the two parties again polarize, with the gap between Democratic and Republican
voters as large at the end of the 1940s as in 1937–39.
These results may reflect the narrowing of the scope of partisan conflict in the 1940s as
Republicans accepted much of the New Deal welfare state. Many of the New Deal departures
that had been sources of deep partisan controversy in the 1930s became less controversial
with the rise of so-called “me-too” Republicans in the 1940s (e.g. Wendell Willkie in 1940,
Thomas Dewey in 1944 and 1948). But the economic policy domain in which the two
parties continued to fight it out with little ground for compromise was labor politics, where
22
Figure 9: Civil Rights Liberalism Relative to non-Southern whites. The relative liberalism
of blacks is shown in the right panel and of Southern whites in the left panel. Southern
blacks are included in these estimates, in proportion to their share in the population. The
estimates have not been standardized, but for point of comparison, the standard deviation
across individuals in a typical year was around 2.
Republicans and their southern Democratic allies were on one side, and northern Democrats
on the other. Along these lines, it is worth noting that when it comes to labor policy, the
typical southern Democrat during the war years and beyond was about as conservative as
the typical Republican in such northern states as California, New York, Pennsylvania, or
even Ohio.13
4
Civil Rights and Other Dimensions of Liberalism
We also use the early opinion data to construct a measure of state-level liberalism on civil
rights policy in the 1930s and 1940s. Gallup asked respondents about their attitudes towards
lynching legislation on several occasions starting in 1937. A proposal to ban the poll tax was
included on additional surveys starting in 1940. Gallup asked about integrating the military
on a handful of occasions in the 1940s and about fair employment practices beginning in
1945. Unfortunately, we have very few questions with identical wording pre- and post-1948.
As a result, we do not focus on aggregate trends for the nation as a whole and instead present
13
On non-labor economic issues, however, southern Democrats were roughly equidistant between northern
Democrats and northern Republicans.
23
Liberalism Relative to National Average (Standardized)
0
Midwest
Northeast
South
West
−1
1940
1944
1948
1952
Year
Figure 10: Civil Rights Liberalism Relative to the Nation. Southern blacks are not included
in these estimates.
state-level and regional estimates relative to the estimated national mean in each year.
A first pattern evident should not be much of a surprise: the South appears to be a
separate world from the rest of the country when it comes to civil rights views (see Figures
9 and 10).14 While the Northeast emerges as the most liberal region, the gap between it and
the West and Midwest is modest. The South, however, is nearly a full standard deviation
below the northeast in its civil rights liberalism. The gap is even more stark when one
focuses on individual states. By the mid-1940s, the most liberal state (New York) is a full
two standard deviations to the left of the most conservative state (South Carolina) when it
comes to average civil rights opinion—an extraordinary degree of geographic polarization.
Figure 11 provides evidence concerning the inter-relationships among state-level liberalism on civil rights, labor policy, and non-labor New Deal economic policies. Given the
South’s distinctiveness, we include separate regression lines summarizing the relationships
across the two regions. Perhaps the most noteworthy finding is presented in the top panel: as
of 1937, there is only a weak positive relationship at the state-level between racial liberalism
14
Note that Figure 9 includes Southern blacks but 10 does not.
24
and labor liberalism in the non-South, and a negative relationship in the South. By 1943,
the relationship is quite strong in the non-South and is positive but fairly weak in the South.
In 1949, the relationship is very strong in both the South and the non-South. In other words,
the states that were more friendly to labor unions were substantially more pro-civil rights.
The bottom panel suggests a similar pattern when one relates general economic liberalism
to civil rights liberalism, though the connection at the end of the period seems a bit weaker
than that for labor liberalism in the non-South.
From the standpoint of members of Congress, the alignment between state-level economic
liberalism and racial liberalism in evidence by the mid-1940s may have played an important
role in facilitating the incorporation of civil rights concerns into the New Deal. In other
words, the same members of Congress pushed by their constituents to support pro-labor and
other liberal economic policies were also more likely to confront pro-civil rights constituencies.
A good deal more remains to be done with the state-level civil rights estimates, including
comparing Democratic and Republican partisans at the state-level and a more systematic
analysis of the relationship between civil rights liberalism and other policy dimensions (as
well as aggregate election outcomes). But one thing we can say now is that from the first
year we have poll data, Republicans presidential voters in the non-South were clearly and
consistently more conservative than Democratic voters (see Figure 12). In future work,
we will present more information on where African Americans fit in relative to the various
partisan and regional groups. In general, however, African Americans are noteworty from
the start in the extent of their support for each dimension of liberalism. The typical African
American is generally a bit to the left of the typical nonsouthern Democratic voter on labor,
non-labor economic policy, and civil rights.
5
Conclusion
The analyses presented above are intended to be preliminary first cuts at a vast data source.
Several refinements and extensions will be required before firm conclusions can be reached.
25
1937
1943
1949
Labor Liberalism
RI
2
ID
NV
MD MT
LA
VTWI MN
NJ NY
PA
AZ
NHMO
AR CA OH UT
WA
AL TX
WYKS
MA
MS OKKY CO NMCT
IL
MI
NC
SC
WV
DEND
ME
NE
IA
FL TN
IN
SD
GA
OR
0
SC
−2
FL
MS
TN
ALLA
TX
AR
NC
KY
OK
VA
VA
−3
−2
MT
WA NJNY
ME
NH
MA
RI
WV
PA
NV CA
MI
OH
WY
IL
MN
WI
CT
IN
IA
CO
AZDE
OR
VT
SD
UT
MD
MO
ND
KS
NM
ID
NE
GA
−1
0
1
2 −3
−2
NY
PA
MT
WA
OH
OR NJ
NV
CA
RI IL
MA
CO
ME
IN ND
WI
MI
AZ NH
WV
MN
VA
NM
MO
CT
DE
SD
MD
AL
WY
ID
NE
GA
LA
FL
KS
KY UT
TX
IA
ARTNOK
VT
MS
NC
SC
−1
0
1
2 −3
−2
−1
0
1
2
Racial Liberalism
a Non−South a White South
1937
1943
Labor Liberalism
3
2
1
0
−1
1949
RI
MT
NJ WA
ID NV
MT
MNMD
VT
NY LA
WI
NJ
MO AZ NH
PA
OH UT
AR
TX
CA AL
WA
WY
KS
MA
OK KYMS
ILNMCO
MI CT
NC SC
ND
WV DE
ME
NE
IA
FLTN
IN
SD
GA
OR
−2
NH
MA
CA
PA RIWV
NV
OH
WY
IL MI
MN
WI
CT
IN
IA
CO
DEAZ
OR
VT
FL
SD
MDUT
MS
MO
KS ND
LA
TN
ID NM
TX ALAR
NC
KY OK
NE VA
SC
GA
VA
−2
−1
0
1
NY
ME
2
−2
−1
0
1
MS
NY
PA
MT
WA
OH
OR
NJ
NV
CA
IL RI
MACO
MEMI
IN
WI
ND
NHAZ
WV
MN
VA
NMMO DE
CT
SD
MD
AL
WY
ID
NE
GA
LA
FL
UT
KS
KY
TX IA
OK
AR
TN
VT
NC
SC
2
−2
−1
0
1
2
New Deal Liberalism
a Non−South a White South
1937
New Deal Liberalism
2
1943
LA
NH
SCMS
GA
NJ NYRI
TX
AL
AZ
KY
NC
TN
MO
AR WA
CO
MT WIUT
FL OK CA
NV
PA
OH
NMDE
KS IL IDMA
VA
CT
WV
OR
MD
MI
IA
IN NE
WY
VT MN
ND
SD
ME
1
0
−1
−2
FL
GA
SC
OK
KY
LA
TN
AR
AL
MS
NC
TX
VA
1949
NY
MA
WA
NM
WV
UTRI
NJ
ID
MD
PA
MT MI
AZ
OR
DE
IL
IN
CT
CO
WYOH
MO
WI
MN
CA
ME
NV
ND
PA
SC
IASDNH
VT
KS
NE
MS
−3
−3
−2
−1
0
1
NY
RI
WVCT
DE
WA
CAMIIL
WY
ID
SD
MD
OK
ME
MO
NV
OR
TN
WINJ
CO
NM
UT
KS MA
MN
AZ
IA
MT
KY
FL
OH NH
NC
ND
VT
TX
VA
NE
AL
IN
AR
LA
GA
2 −3
−2
−1
0
1
2 −3
−2
−1
0
1
2
Racial Liberalism
a Non−South a White South
Figure 11: Correlations Between Economic, Labor, and Racial Liberalism, 1937–49. Blacks
are excluded from the estimates for Southern states. State estimates have been normalized
to have a mean of 0 and a variance of 1 in each year.
26
Figure 12: Civil Rights Liberalism Relative to Non-Southern Democrats: Southern
Democrats (left panel), non-Southern Republicans (middle), and Southern Republicans
(right). Southern blacks are included in these estimates, in proportion to their share in
the poll samples. The estimates have not been standardized, but for point of comparison,
the standard deviation across individuals in a typical year was around 2.
Specifically, we will expand the set of weighting variables used in estimating state-level
opinion. As noted above, the computational difficulty of estimating the model required
that we include only a subset of the available weighting variables in this paper: Black,
Professional, and Female, by state. In future work, we will incorporate additional weighting
variables, such as phone ownership, education, and urban-rural residence. A second extension
will be to probe further the robustness of our findings based on more or less stringent
thresholds for using a repeated survey item to bridge responses across time.
We will also relate state-level public opinion to geographic patterns in presidential and
congressional election results and to roll call voting by members of Congress. In estimating the election models, we will also account for state economic conditions, allowing us to
compare the relevance of ideological and retrospective determinants of aggregate outcomes.
Even with the many caveats attached to our findings, however, we believe that this examination of mass opinion in the late 1930s and 1940s provides potentially important leverage
for understanding the development of New Deal liberalism. Our results suggest that the
conservative shift in the terms of political debate in the late 1930s and 1940s noted by many
historians did correspond, at an aggregate level, with a drift to the right in mass opinion.
27
On general New Deal economic issues, this drift appears to have been gradual and steady
from the late 1930s into the mid-1940s, when it flattened out. On labor policy, the shift
was more dramatic and concentrated in the war years, and was followed by at least a partial
rebound in labor liberalism following the war. There appears to have been a mild convergence between Democratic and Republican partisans on non-labor economic issues during
the 1940s, but labor issues continued to be highly polarizing. Arguably no issue drew a
clearer line between the two national parties than labor policy in this era.
The role of the South as a distinct region also is clearly evident in our opinion data. The
South is, of course, most distinctive when it comes to civil rights opinion; throughout the
period examined, southern opinion on racial policy was far more conservative than in any
other region (see Figure 10). But the South was also distinctive on other issues as well. We
see the mass public in the South moving sharply to the right on labor policy in the late
1930s. Southern white opinion remained distinctively anti-labor throughout the remainder
of the period. But Southern conservatism was not confined to race and labor. We find that
southerners started out as relatively liberal—compared to the rest of the country—on nonlabor economic issues at the start of the period. But by the early 1940s, Southern opinion
had moved considerably to the right, and the South was the most conservative region on
these issues throughout the 1940s, though not by a large margin. This underscores the
anomalous position of southern Democrats in the party system: the region that voted most
overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates was also the region that was most conservative
across a range of policy issues in the 1940s.
On the whole, these results tentatively suggest that average voters did respond in systematic ways to the changing ideological tenor of party competition in the 1930s and 1940s. As
the New Deal increasingly came to be identified with urban, programmatic, labor-oriented
liberalism, ordinary southerners evidently came to see that program as increasingly threatening and moved towards a more consistent conservative stance. Meanwhile, more urban,
unionized sections of the northeast and far west supported this form of labor liberalism and
28
the New Deal more generally. The urban-rural and south-nonsouth cleavages in attitudes
towards labor liberalism in the 1940s are a tantalizing precursor to today’s highly sectional
partisan map.
29
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