The Fourth Party System was the political party system in the United States from about 1896 to 1932 that was dominated by the Republican Party, except the 1912 split in which Democrats captured the White House and held it for eight years.
American history texts usually call the period the Progressive Era. The concept was introduced under the name "System of 1896" by E. E. Schattschneider in 1960, and the numbering scheme was added by political scientists in the mid-1960s.
The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term is used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on plantations and slavery, generally Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. East Texas, North Florida, the Arkansas Delta, South Arkansas, West Tennessee, and the southern part of North Carolina are sometimes included as well. Following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the region experienced significant economic hardship and became a focal point of racial tension during and after the Reconstruction era.
Before 1945, the Deep South was often referred to as the "Cotton States" since cotton was the primary cash crop for economic production. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped usher in a new era, sometimes referred to as the New South. The Deep South is part of the highly religious, socially conservative Bible Belt and currently is politically a stronghold of the Republican Party, after historically being one for the Democratic Party.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 1932. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Republican ticket of incumbent President Herbert Hoover and incumbent Vice President Charles Curtis were defeated in a landslide by the Democratic ticket of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York and John Nance Garner, the Speaker of the House. This realigning election marked the effective end of the Fourth Party System, which had been dominated by Republicans, and the beginning of an era of Democratic dominance under the New Deal coalition.
Despite disastrous economic conditions due to the Great Depression, Hoover faced little opposition at the 1932 Republican National Convention. Roosevelt was widely considered the front-runner at the start of the 1932 Democratic National Convention, but was not able to clinch the nomination until the fourth ballot of the convention. The Democratic convention chose a leading Southern Democrat, Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas, as the party's vice presidential nominee. Roosevelt united the party, campaigning on the failures of the Hoover administration. He promised recovery with a "New Deal" for the American people.
The Fifth Party System, also known as the New Deal Party System, is the era of American national politics that began with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States in 1932. Roosevelt's implementation of his popular New Deal expanded the size and power of the federal government to an extent unprecedented in American history, and marked the beginning of political dominance by the Democratic Party that would remain largely unbroken until 1952. This period also began the ideological swapping of Democrats and Republicans into their modern versions. This was largely due to traditionally Republican Black voters switching to the Democratic Party, while conservative, White, and southern Democrats shifted to the Republican Party. This occurred as Democrats began increasingly prioritizing civil rights, a process that accelerated into the 1960s. The Fifth Party System followed the Fourth Party System, also known as the Progressive Era, and was succeeded by the Sixth Party System.
The New Deal coalition that cemented the Fifth Party System and allowed Democrats to dominate the White House for 40-some years arose from the realignment of two similar third party factions into the Democratic Party: the Progressives in the Western Coast and the greater Rust Belt region (which includes New York, Massachusetts, Baltimore and New Jersey), and the Socialists in the Western Coast and Sun Belt. Realigning these two factions after the 1932 and 1936 elections allowed the Democratic Party to make inroads in the North for the first time since the Second Party System and made other non-South regions competitive.
Elections were held for the 63rd United States Congress, occurring during the Fourth Party System. Amidst a division between incumbent Republican president William Howard Taft and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, the Democratic Party won the presidency and both chambers of Congress, the first time they accomplished that feat since the 1892 elections.
In the presidential election, Democratic governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey defeated Republican President William Howard Taft and former president and Progressive Party nominee Theodore Roosevelt. Socialist union leader Eugene Debs, running his fourth campaign, took six percent of the vote. At the 1912 Democratic National Convention, Wilson took the nomination on the 46th ballot, defeating Speaker Champ Clark and several other candidates. Roosevelt left the Republican Party after an unsuccessful challenge to Taft at the 1912 Republican National Convention. Though Wilson carried just over 40% of the popular vote, he dominated the electoral college and won a greater share of the electoral vote than any candidate since Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. Wilson's election made him the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland. Roosevelt's candidacy finished second in the popular vote and the electoral college, the only time a third party candidate accomplished either feat.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 3, 1896. Former Governor William McKinley, the Republican nominee, defeated former Representative William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee. The 1896 campaign, which took place during an economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, was a political realignment that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System.
Incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland did not seek election to a second consecutive term (which would have been his third overall), leaving the Democratic nomination open. An attorney and former congressman, Bryan galvanized support with his Cross of Gold speech, which called for reform of the monetary system and attacked business leaders as the cause of ongoing economic depression. The 1896 Democratic National Convention repudiated the Cleveland administration and nominated Bryan on the fifth presidential ballot. Bryan then won the nomination of the Populist Party, which had won several states in 1892 and shared many of Bryan's policies. In opposition to Bryan, some conservative Bourbon Democrats formed the National Democratic Party and nominated Senator John M. Palmer. McKinley prevailed by a wide margin on the first ballot at the 1896 Republican National Convention.