Repeated surveys of American public opinion have shown that for<br >many years a wide margin of voters have considered themselves<br >Democrats rather than Republicans-and yet the Democratic Party s<br >presidential candidates have not been able to win a majority of the<br >presidential elections held in the last three decades. Heightening<br >this seeming paradox is the Democratic success in winning party<br >control of Congress which， with the exception of two very brief<br >periods， has been maintained by the Democrats since 1932. This<br >situation exacerbates the division of governmental power by politi-<br >cally insulating Congress and the President from each other s<br >electoral fortunes， frequently leaving them in the hands of oppos-<br >ing parties， and permitting each party to avoid clear responsibility<br >for emergent public policies.<br > This book will focus primarily on the growing instability of the<br >Democratic presidential coalition， a condition which has prevented<br >joint control of national policy， and will seek to explain the decline<br >in the power and consistency of the majority coalition. The Demo-<br >cratic coalition has long served， as V. O. Key often noted， as the<br >popular underpinning for much of the innovation and change in<br >