ly about a third" of that vote, and in the 1990s Clinton and Gore, two white Southern Baptists, could not carry any part of the South for the Democrats (Reddy 46). This trend continued in the 2000 Presidential election with Bush carrying a majority of Southern states including the 'Bible Belt.' In the urban North social issues (such as abortion) began to drive Northern urban ethnic populations away from the Democratic Party. 1960, when these voters went nearly three to one for Kennedy was the last time more than half of them voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. The third important change that affected party alignment was suburbanization, in 1994 the suburban populations of America cast the majority of the vote for the first time in history and this change has ensured that Republicans today can, for example, carry Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and California without getting a single vote in Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, or San Francisco.But the changes have meant more than a mere shift in numbers and regions. The Democrats retained the liberal, minority, and much of the labor constituencies while the Republicans gathered in conservatives of various kinds. Yet neither party represents a distinctive ideology and, in the struggle to gain or retain control they have taken in many factions that do not see eye to eye on many important questions. The Democrats are divided between their strong liberal base in the Northeast and the increasingly disaffected labor vote which have very different agendas. In a 1994 study the Democratic Leadership Council found that among party members 75 percent said they thought of themselves as what has been called "GOP Democrats (who believe government should help equip people to solve their own problems) as opposed to 20 percent who said they thought more like traditional Democrats (who believe government can solve problems and protect people from adversity)"(Leiter 7). Republicans, on the ...
