PARTISAN DEALIGNMENT AND THE DYNAMICS OF INDEPENDENCE IN THE AMERICANELECTORATE, 1953-88

Since the 1950s, the dominant pattern of partisan change in the Americ an electorate has involved movements between party identification and independence rather than direct or indirect shifts between parties. Th is article employs switching regression analyses to investigate the lo ng-term evolution and short-term dynamics of independence between 1953 and 1988. The analyses reveal that a new 'independence regime' develo ped rapidly in the mid-1960s, with the 'tipping point' in the transiti on occurring in the second quarter of 1967. Under the new - but not th e old - regime, short-term changes in the size of the independent coho rt have reflected economic conditions as well as political events. The se findings argue that future research on the dynamics of public suppo rt for political parties in the United States and elsewhere will profi t by developing dynamic models which assess processes of long- and sho rt-term change in tandem.