ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the understanding of realignment by examining national and state elections in the period since World War II. It focuses on the eight states of the Mountain West--Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. Two things stand out about the patterns of change among the eight states of the Mountain region. The first thing is that the states respond to national electoral forces in the same way. The second is that the states differ in the degree to which they have been moving toward the Republican party. The Southern and Pacific states roughly match up to expectations. The South shows a steady march away from the Democratic party. The eight states in the Mountain region all respond similarly to national political forces. The political "center" of the Mountain states is somewhere on the right in the spectrum of national politics.
