Lindsey Gingerich’s Reviews > The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump > Status Update

Compared with the 70s and 80s, the electoral fortunes of House incumbents now depend much less on how effectively they cultivate their constituencies and much more on those constituencies' partisan makeup. To an even greater extent, people vote for the party, not the person.

The widening of the racial divide between both parties electorates since the 1980s-a divide evident among the candidates and elected reps at all levels of the gov- has reflected 2 mutually reinforcing trends: A continued overwhelming democratic advantage in party identification in the growing nonwhite share of the voting population, and a growing rep. advantage in party identification in the shrinking white share