History of ethnocultural politics in the United States

The Protestant religious revivals of the early 19th century had a profound impact on shaping the moral values of the affected voters, pushing them into moralistic political programs, such as opposition to slavery and calling for prohibition of alcoholic beverages. Revivals and perfectionist hopes of improving individuals and society continued to increase from 1840 to 1865 across all major denominations, especially in urban areas. Evangelists often directly addressed issues such as slavery, greed, and poverty, laying the groundwork for later reform movements.^[1] Although the women could not vote or hold office, they could influence the political viewpoints of their menfolk.^[2] In the midst of shifts in theology and church polity, American Christians began progressive movements to reform society during this period. Known commonly as antebellum reform, the phenomenon included reforms in temperance, women's rights, abolitionism, and a multitude of other questions faced by society.^[3]

The religious enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening was echoed by the new political enthusiasm of the Second Party System.^[4] More active participation in politics by more segments of the population brought religious and moral issues into the political sphere. The spirit of evangelical humanitarian reforms was carried on in the antebellum Whig party.^[5][6] Historians stress the understanding common among participants of reform as being a part of God's plan. As a result, local churches saw their roles in society in purifying the world through the individuals to whom they could bring salvation and through changes in the law and the creation of institutions. Interest in transforming the world was applied to mainstream political action, as temperance activists, antislavery advocates, and proponents of other variations of reform sought to implement their beliefs into national politics. While Protestant religion had previously played an important role on the American political scene, the Second Great Awakening strengthened the role that it would play.^[7]

Politics in the Midwest was deeply rooted in ethnocultural divisions from the 1830s to the 20th century.^[8] Yankee settlers from New England started arriving in Ohio before 1800 and spread throughout the northern half of the Midwest. Most of them started as farmers, but the larger proportion later moved to towns and cities as entrepreneurs, businessmen, and urban professionals. Since its beginnings in the 1830s, Chicago business was under Yankee control from the 1830s, and the railroad and financial metropolis quickly came to dominate the Midwestern economy.^[9][10] However, city politics was under the control of complex ethnic coalitions in both parties. Finally, in the 1930s, the Irish took control of the Democratic Party and the city government.^[11]

The historian John Buenker has examined the worldview of the Yankee settlers in the Midwest:

Because they arrived first and had a strong sense of community and mission, Yankees were able to transplant New England institutions, values, and mores, altered only by the conditions of frontier life. They established a public culture that emphasized the work ethic, the sanctity of private property, individual responsibility, faith in residential and social mobility, practicality, piety, public order and decorum, reverence for public education, activists, honest, and frugal government, town meeting democracy, and he believed that there was a public interest that transcends particular and stick ambitions. Regarding themselves as the elect and just in a world rife with sin, air, and corruption, they felt a strong moral obligation to define and enforce standards of community and personal behavior.... This pietistic worldview was substantially shared by British, Scandinavian, Swiss, English-Canadian and Dutch Reformed immigrants, as well as by German Protestants and many of the Forty-Eighters.^[12]

Midwestern politics pitted Yankees against the German Catholics and Lutherans, who were often led by the Irish Catholics. Such large groups, Buenker argues:

Generally subscribed to the work ethic, a strong sense of community, and activist government but were less committed to economic individualism and privatism and ferociously opposed to government supervision of the personal habits. Southern and eastern European immigrants generally leaned more toward the Germanic view of things, while modernization, industrialization, and urbanization modified nearly everyone's sense of individual economic responsibility and put a premium on organization, political involvement, and education.^[12]

Religious lines were sharply drawn.^[13] Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Scandinavian Lutherans and other pietists in the North were tightly linked to the Republican Party. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism, especially Prohibition. While both parties cut across economic class structures, the Democrats were supported more heavily by its lower tiers.^[14]

Cultural issues, especially Prohibition and foreign language schools, became important because of the sharp religious divisions in the electorate. In the North, about 50% of the voters were pietistic Protestants who believed the government should be used to reduce social sins, such as drinking. Liturgical churches comprised over a quarter of the vote and wanted the government to stay out of personal morality issues. Prohibition debates and referendums heated up politics in most states over a period of decades, as national Prohibition was finally passed in 1919 and repealed in 1933. It served as a major issue between the wet Democrats and the dry Republicans.^[13]

Franklin D. Roosevelt led the Democratic Party to a landslide victory in 1932 and set up his New Deal in 1933 and forged a coalition of labor unions, liberals, religious, ethnic and racial minorities (Catholics, Jews and Blacks), Southern whites, poor people and those on relief.^[37] The organizational heft was provided by Big City machines, which gained access to millions of relief jobs and billions of dollars in spending projects. These voting blocs together formed a majority of voters and handed the Democratic Party seven victories out of nine presidential elections (1932–1948, 1960, 1964), as well as control of both houses of Congress during all but 4 years between the years 1932–1980 (Republicans won small majorities in 1946 and 1952). The cities were the center of the ethnic voting blocs, and Roosevelt built this coalition around them, as well as the big-city machines, and the labor unions that were associated with the ethnics. In 1936 the nation's 106 cities over 100,000 population voted 70% for FDR, compared to 59% outside the cities. Roosevelt won reelection in 1940 thanks to the cities. In the North, the cities over 100,000 gave Roosevelt 60% of their votes, while the rest of the North favored Wendell Willkie by 52%. It was just enough to provide the critical electoral college margin.^[38]

The European ethnic groups came of age after the 1960s. Ronald Reagan pulled many of the working class social conservatives into the Republican party as Reagan Democrats. Many middle class ethnics saw the Democratic Party as a working class party and preferred the GOP as the upper-middle class party. However, the Jewish community still voted en masse for the Democratic party, and in the 2004 presidential election 74% voted for Democratic candidate John Kerry, in the 2008 election 78% voted for President Barack Obama, and in the 2012 election 69% voted for President Obama.^[39] In the 2018 midterms, over 75% of Jews voted for Democrats.^[40]

African Americans grew stronger in their Democratic loyalties and in their numbers. By the 1960s, they were a much more important part of the coalition than in the 1930s. Their Democratic loyalties cut across all income and geographic lines to form the single most unified bloc of voters in the country.^[41]

In the present-day, progressive Christians (often found in denominations such as the United Church of Christ or the Protestant Episcopal Church) tend to vote for the Democratic Party (cf. Christian left), while those aligned with the Christian right tend to vote for the Republican Party.^[42]

• American election campaigns in the 19th century
• Culture wars
• Realigning election
• Second Party System
• Third Party System
• Pietism § Impact on party voting in United States and Great Britain
• Votebank, in India