Class, Party, and South/Non-South Differences: An Update

This article examines the past 50 years to update an analysis of the relationship between income and partisanship. Earlier, Nadeau and Stanley noted that therewas a change in partisanship in the South from inverse class polarization, in which higher income individuals more often identified with the Democratic Party, to normal class polarization, but the permanence of the shiftwas open to question. Now, with a longer time perspective and even greater partisan change, it can be concluded that class-based partisanship is not only a reality in the South but that it is now considerably stronger than in the rest of the country. Moreover, the South has not simply surged past a stable non-Southern level; greater polarization in the South has occurred in the context of growing class polarization in the non-South.