category and the gender cleavage attest to the growing presence of
women in both the labor force and in the electorate.

This chapter has examined changes in the impact of major social groups
on U.S. party coalitions between the 1960s and the 1990s. Some of our
key findings have been anticipated by other scholars: for example, the
growing importance of African-Americans and the declining contribu-
tion of working-class voters to the Democratic coalition. The current
analyses provide a useful corroboration, however, given our use of
multivariate models that take into account group-specific turnout rates
and adjusted group size. They also underscore a critical dynamic of the
contemporary racial bases of the two parties: elections in which
Democratic presidential candidates do well reduce the overrepresenta-
tion of black voters in the party's coalition.

Another finding that confirms and extends the conventional wisdom
concerns the shrinking impact of liberal Protestants on both parties.
Declining numbers of liberal Protestants in the electorate has meant
that both parties receive fewer votes from this group than before. The
impact is magnified within the Republican coalition, however, due to
the erosion of liberal Protestants' once strong alignment with that
party. Indeed, it may not be an exaggeration to say that the increased
prominence of the Christian Right in the Republican Party is due not so
much to a rapid increase in votes from conservative Protestants, but
instead from the loss of the moderating influence of liberal (and
moderate) Protestant voters.

Our analyses also deliver some new, counterintuitive findings about
the social group basis of major party coalitions. For the Democrats, the
most significant development is the striking growth of professional
voters in their electoral coalition. Professionals were twice as numerous
among all Democratic voters in 1992 as they were in 1960. Nonskilled
workers--who were three times as large a presence as professionals in
the 1960 coalition--provided only a handful more votes than profes-
sionals by 1992. The ratio of working class to professional/managerial
votes in the party has gone from 2.8:1 in 1960 to an astounding 1.1:1 by
1992. The claim that the social bases of the 'new' Democratic Party
have made that party increasingly receptive to the demands of more
affluent voters--a point widely asserted on the political left--is clearly
borne out by these figures.

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