ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to evaluate the claim, in its various incarnations that America has grown more conservative. The "cultural backlash" theory holds that the American electorate became more conservative in response to the Great Society programs put in place by the Johnson administration, to urban unrest, and to a perceived breakdown of traditional morality. If this theory is correct, then evidence of changing political preferences should appear between 1968 and 1972. The "sweeping mandate" theory, a synthesis of the first two, holds that the rightward movement that began in the late 1960s reasserted itself in the late 1970s and that the conservative turn was not limited to any specific issue area. Many political observers have characterized the 1968 presidential election as a watershed in American politics. The cultural backlash theory suggests that racially based resentment derived in part from developments in American cities in the late 1960s, racial riots in particular.
