Editing New Deal coalition (section)

==Legacy==
The big-city machines faded away in the 1940s with a few exceptions that lingered a bit such as [[Albany, New York|Albany]] and Chicago. Local Democrats in most cities were heavily dependent on the [[Works Progress Administration|WPA]] for patronage; when it ended in 1943, there was full employment and no replacement patronage source was created. Furthermore, World War II brought such a surge of prosperity that the relief mechanism of the New Deal was no longer needed.<ref>Steven P. Erie, ''Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840—1985'' (1988).</ref>

Labor unions crested in size and power in the 1950s but then went into steady decline. They continue to be major backers of the Democrats, but with so few members, they have lost much of their influence.<ref>Stanley Aronowitz, ''From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and America's Future'' (1998) ch 7.</ref> From the 1960s into the 1990s, many jobs moved to the Sun Belt free of union influences, and the Republican Party frequently painted unions as corrupt and ineffective.

Intellectuals gave increasing support to Democrats since 1932. The Vietnam War, however, caused a serious split, with the [[New Left]] unwilling to support most of the Democratic presidential nominees.<ref>Tevi Troy, ''Intellectuals and the American Presidency: Philosophers, Jesters, or Technicians?'' (2003).</ref> Since the 1990s, the growing number of Americans with a post-graduate degree have supported Democrats. In recent years, White Americans with a college degree have tended to support the Democratic Party, especially among younger voters, while non-college graduates are more likely to support the Republican Party—a reversal of the pattern before 2000.<ref>Nate Cohn, "How Educational Differences Are Widening America’s Political Rift: College graduates are now a firmly Democratic bloc, and they are shaping the party’s future. Those without degrees, by contrast, have flocked to Republicans." [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/politics/how-college-graduates-vote.html ''New York Times'' Oct. 8, 2021]</ref>

White Southerners abandoned cotton and tobacco farming, and moved to the cities where the New Deal programs had much less impact. Beginning in the 1950s, the southern cities and suburbs started voting Republican. The White Southerners believed the support that northern Democrats gave to the [[Civil Rights Movement]] to be a direct political assault on their interests, which opened the way to protest votes for [[Barry Goldwater]], who, in 1964, was the first Republican to carry the [[Deep South]]. [[Jimmy Carter]] and [[Bill Clinton]] lured many of the Southern Whites back at the level of presidential voting, but by 2000, White males in the South were 2–1 Republican and, indeed, formed a major part of the new Republican coalition.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Earl |last1=Black |first2=Merle |last2=Black|title=Politics and Society in the South|year=1987}}</ref> Since the 2010s, younger non-evangelical White Southerners with a college degree have been trending towards the Democratic Party, such as in Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina.

The European ethnic groups came of age after the 1960s. [[Ronald Reagan]] pulled many of the working-class social conservatives into the Republican party as [[Reagan Democrat]]s. Many middle-class ethnic minorities saw the Democratic Party as a working class party, and preferred the GOP as the middle class party. In addition, while many supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they were generally opposed to [[racial integration]], and also supported the Republican stance against rising urban crime. However, the Jewish community has continued to vote largely Democratic: 74% voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in [[2004 United States presidential election|2004]], 78% in [[2008 United States presidential election|2008]], and 69% in [[2012 United States presidential election|2012]].<ref>{{cite book|first1=William B. |last1=Prendergast|title=The Catholic Voter in American Politics: The Passing of the Democratic Monolith|year=1999}}</ref>

African Americans grew stronger in their Democratic loyalties and in their numbers. From the 1930s into the 1960s, black voters in the North began trending Democrat, while those in the South were largely disenfranchised. Following the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, black voters became a much more important part of the Democrat voter base. Their Democratic loyalties have cut across all income and geographic lines to form the single most unified bloc of voters in the country, with over 87% of black voters voting for the Democratic presidential candidate since 2008.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Hanes|last1=Walton|title=African American Power and Politics: The Political Context Variable|year=1997}}</ref>