If you deconstruct each party you find that they both serve as coalitions of groups with common purposes ~ and many of those groups cross lines.
Each party tends to be governed a little bit differently than the other. The Democrats tend to demand party organization people come up through the ranks in one of the coalition partners. The Republicans find party organization people for the most part among business managers or owners.
There's a crossover when it comes to doctors and lawyers so you do find those guys moving back and forth across lines when they vote ~ and in many cases you find them participating in party organization work for both major parties (over time of course ~ probably why they think there are independents).
Over the last 75 years we've seen the African-American interest group move from the Republican to the Democrat coalition. More recently we've seen that interest group became the largest in the Democrat party.
During that time we've seen Southern whites switch from voting Democrat to Republican ~ and that happened as the Democrats abandoned their group.
Other major switches have involved whole states ~ considered as interest groups. Mississippi is thoroughly Republican but most of its mayors are black Democrats.
Massachusetts is overwhelmingly Democrat, but they regularly elect Republican (?) Governors. The understanding is the voters want these governors to serve to veto the more egregious pieces of Democrat legislative nonsense ~ Mitt failed in that job 'fabulously'.
The situation is so bad in Massachusetts that the state is actually losing population at an increasing rate.
During this phase in America's continuing development, private interest groups are of greater importance than states in defining the probabilities of political affiliation, but we still use the terminology of era of state dominance to describe what's going on ~ probably why everybody missed out on what was going to happen in the Southwest ~ Democrats are being replaced left and right. They could actually disappear everywhere but Nevada inside a decade.
Not quite sure what we ought to do with outliers from "the fringe" but at the moment we've got one of them thinking he's going to be President. We know he's an outlier though because he IGNORED the existence of a Conservative majority within the framework of the Republican Coalition. You don't win elections if you do that.
Really good post muawiyah. Lots of interesting information here.
One thing that jumped out at me is your comments about the Southwest. Did you mean Democrats are going to continue declining throughout that region over the next decade? What about increasing legal Hispanic populations shifting the balance in places like Arizona to the left?
Need shut eye at the moment, but will return to this tomorrow.
Cheers.