ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses both historical and continuing importance to American politics. American electoral history lends itself to geographical analysis of one sort or another. The recent literature on American national elections, especially presidential ones, has divided the elections since the late 18th century into five party systems. Burnham refers to these as the experimental system, the democratizing system, the Civil War system, the industrialist system and the New Deal system. The formal organization of electoral competition in the United States has long followed 'duopolistic' lines. The chapter then focuses on aggregate political behavior, provides an overview and attempts an explanation of regional and place-specific patterns of electoral behavior from 1880 to the present. It examines the links between place and political behavior in four specific places and explores the connection between place and political mobilization.
