Summary: Gerald Pomper's Classifying Political Election

Pomper in 2016 Gerald Pomper is a political scientist recognized for his contributions in classifying political elections. Pomper categorizes elections into four basic categories: maintaining, converting, deviating, and realigning. Elections are categorized based on the victory or defeat of the majority party, and the continuity or change in the voter base. In a maintaining election, the majority party wins because of the consistency of its voter base. When the majority party wins despite a change in partisan commitments, it is considered a converting election. When the majority party is defeated because of a drastic change in its voter base, it is a realigning election. In a deviating election, the majority party loses despite maintaining

The victory or defeat criteria is straightforward, however determining the continuity and change of the voter base can prove especially difficult given the nature of the United States. In regards to continuity and change Pomper writes, “since both are partially present in every contest, there can be no simple solution” (Pomper 538). Demographics are a moving target and therefore exit polls do not always tell the whole story. Every individual can stand for a race, a gender, an income, an education, an age, or a combination of countless categories. Another criticism of Pomper is the complication of “critical elections” and “temporary peculiarities.” Pomper defines a critical election as “not usually part of (these) stable periods, but serve as breaking points, ending one era and leading to the next” (Pomper 547). A “temporary peculiarity” marks surprising changes in party electorate, but do not mark the end of one era and the beginning of another. This makes elections hard to accurately classify until after the long-term effects have been

Obama’s 2008 election threw a wrench in the works when it comes to classifying Clinton’s election and future elections. “When a stable persistent voter coalition is established, the vote is non-successive elections will be highly correlated” (Pomper 544). The non-successive elections of 2000, 2004, and 2016 certainly support this. The same might be said, however, for 2008, 2012, and 2020 if a democratic candidate puts up similar numbers to Obama. If that were so, does that make 2016 a “temporary peculiarity” and 2008 a critical election? It is impossible to know until the time comes that 2008 and 2012 can really be looked back on. Pomper encourages people to look at elections and candidates not as isolated events, but to “focus on the similarities between different elections, … classify them … abstract some patterns” (Pomper 535), but can this always hold true? Obama’s substantial victory in 2008 could be coughed up to Campbell’s fundamentals. The Republicans are in their second term, the economy is at its lowest since the Great Depression, and Bush’s approval rating is at 25% by the end of October (Gallup). In that case, the Democratic voter base may not have really changed, but more people voted Democrat because they were unhappy with Bush. “Either the ‘Obama coalition’ is very much Obama’s rather than his party’s, or that his victories are due to circumstances”