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110 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1995-1996)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry110 and id is 1 raw text is: 




The 1994 Congressional Elections:


             The Postindustrial Realignment Continues









                                              EVERETT CARLL LADD

             The result of the 8 November  1994 balloting is at one level entirely
clear and unequivocal:  the Republicans won  a major  off-year election victory,
making  a net gain of fifty-two House seats, nine Senate seats, fourteen governor-
ships, and eighteen state legislative houses. The implications of this huge partisan
turnaround  for the course of public policy, both nationally and at the state level,
over the next two years  are obviously great.
    Just where the 1994 election fits into the longer-term evolution of American
partisan competition is far from apparent, however.  The  thinking of the U.S.
electorate in 1994 was thoroughly examined in many hundreds of opinion surveys,
including some of the very highest quality. The work of the Times Mirror Center
for the People and the Press, and of the Gallup Organization  working for USA
Today  and CNN,   deserves special commendation.'  What's more,  the contempo-
rary political system in which last November's balloting took place has assumed
increasingly clear and distinct form over the sequence of elections that began in
1968. We  are no longer in the position of attempting to describe an abrupt political
departure, but instead see the latest electoral display of a fairly mature parties
and elections system. We  don't have to applaud all the structural features of this
system,  of course, and we  certainly don't need to like any particular election
results it delivers. The system itself, nonetheless, should long-since have lost
any real capacity to surprise.

   I Through the courtesy of these organizations, the entire collection of Times Mirror and Gallup
surveys taken during 1994-along with those for earlier years as well-are available through the Roper
Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, Storrs.

EVERETT   CARLL  LADD  is professor of political science at the University of Connecticut and
executive director and president of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. He is the author
of ten books on American political life, including American Political Parties and Transformations of
the American Party System (second edition revised with Charles Hadley). He is editor of a just-published
volume on the 1994 elections, America at the Polls, 1994.


Political Science Quarterly Volume 110 Number 1 1995


1

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