ABSTRACT
Many analyses of attitudinal change in American politics have relied on an examination of differences between generations. The underlying premise is that there are basic differences in the outlooks of generational cohorts, differences that are the direct result of the particular historic circumstances in which a cohort was reared and when it achieved political maturity. The New Deal realignment produced a major reshuffling of electoral politics in the United States. The political agenda changed, the parties took opposing views on salient issues, and the Democrats emerged as the majority party. A key claim of the theories of conservative shift is that the excesses of Democratic liberalism drove many Americans to embrace conservatism and the Republican party. Members of the Watergate generation were significantly more favorable toward the conservative party and more hostile toward the liberal one than other age cohorts. The theories are correct in that generational replacement has played a relatively modest role in producing the conservative shift.
