The political parties are changing.
Democrats are increasingly winning college educated voters
and Republicans are performing better with Latino and black voters.
I think it's the most important electoral trend of our time.
And some people are already calling it another great realignment.
Last week on this show we talked about how the parties had shifted their views on trade policy.
And this week we're going to talk about why parties shift on ideology at all
and why the coalitions that make up the parties shift as well.
The most often cited example of one of these changes has to do with civil rights.
The Republican Party had been founded in 1854 as an anti slavery party
and had been seen as the party of racial liberalism through the 19th and early 20th centuries.
But by 1964, it was democratic President Lyndon B.
Johnson who signed the Civil Rights act into law,
and his opponent, Republican Barry Goldwater, who opposed it.
In order to understand what might be happening now,
I wanted to talk with Georgetown University political scientist Hans Knoll.
Hans has written a book that has been very influential to my thinking.
Published in 2013,
Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America explores why Democrats
and Republicans seemingly flipped sides during the 20th century.