| In their 1981 book entitled Section and Party, J. Clark Archer and Peter Taylor identified a group of Rocky Mountain and Great Plains states as constituting the Western Periphery, one of the United States' three electoral sections in presidential elections. They further suggest Dwight Eisenhower's regional sweeps of the West in the 1950s began an electoral epoch of Republican popularity called the New Western Normal Vote. However, since the 1988 presidential election Democratic Party candidates have been able to win certain states in the Republican stronghold. This work examines the historical dynamics of Republican support in the West by identifying shifts in voting behavior between past and present epochs. This work also attempts to explain recent changes by exploring the historical character of the West, its recent demographic changes, and the recent turbulence within the Republican Party. County level election returns from 1952 to 2012 are used along with traditional and folded T-mode factor analysis, spatial regression modelling, and cartographic analysis. |
