The most incisive twentieth century students of language converge from different premises on the conclusion that language is the key creator of the social worlds people experience, and they agree as well that language cannot usefully be understood as a tool for describing an objective reality. For the later Wittgenstein there are no essences, only language games. Chomsky analyzes the sense in which grammar is generative. For Derrida all language is performative, a form of action that undermines its own presuppositions. Foucault sees language as antedating and constructing subjectivity. The “linguistic turn” in twentieth century philosophy, social psychology, and literary theory entails an intellectual ferment that raises fundamental questions about a great deal of mainstream political science, and especially about its logical positivist premises.

While the writers just mentioned analyze various senses in which language use is an aspect of creativity, those who focus upon specifically political language are chiefly concerned with its capacity to reflect ideology, mystify, and distort. The more perspicacious of them deny that an undistorting language is possible in a social world marked by inequalities in resources and status, though the notion of an undistorted language can be useful as an evocation of an ideal benchmark. The emphasis upon political language as distorting or mystifying is a key theme in Lasswell and Orwell, as it is in Habermas, Osgood, Ellul, Vygotsky, Enzensberger, Bennett, and Shapiro.

Albert Camus' ironic judge-penitent, Jean-Baptiste Clemence, remarks to his compatriot in the seedy bar, Mexico City, in a shadowy district of Amsterdam, the mist rising off the canals, the fog rolling in, cheap gin the only source of warmth, “Somebody has to have the last word. Otherwise, every reason can be answered with another one and there would never be an end to it. Power, on the other hand, settles everything. It took time, but we finally realized that. For instance, you must have noticed that our old Europe at last philosophizes in the right way. We no longer say as in simple times: ‘This is the way I think. What are your objections?’ We have become lucid. For the dialogue we have substituted the communique: ‘This is the truth,’ we say. You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right.”

Now this is still an imperfect method of control—the enforcers are clearly identified and the coercion is too obvious. Not so in Orwell's 1984. As Syme, the chilling destroyer of language proclaims: “It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” Speaking to Orwell's protagonist Winston Smith, Syme continues: “Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought. In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten…. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”

Many commentaries on the recent American elections conclude that the United States has taken a long-term move to the right. This shift seemingly began in the late sixties as a reaction to the turmoil occasioned by militant, sometimes violent protest tactics used by the civil rights and antiwar movements, and by the sharp challenge to traditional values encompassed in the changes in family and sex behavior, dress styles, the increased use of drugs, and the like. The Republicans have been victorious in four out of the last five presidential elections, those held from 1968 on. Only one of these, that in 1968, was close, but in that contest a right-wing and racist candidate, George Wallace, received 13 percent. The one election of the five which the Democrats won, that in 1976, was the first one after Richard Nixon's resignation following the Watergate scandal.

Yet the conclusion that America has been in a conservative mood for some time is challenged by the results of the races for Congress and state offices and by the findings of the opinion polls. In 1984, in the same election in which Ronald Reagan received 59 percent of the vote, eight percent more than in 1980, his party lost two seats in the Senate and gained only 14 in the much larger House, leaving it behind the Democrats by 252 to 183. The Democrats still hold 34 of the 50 governorships, down by only one. Judged by which party holds most electoral offices, the Democrats remain the majority party.

In 1948, pollsters and journalists learned that campaigns mattered. In 1984, the lesson may be that sometimes campaigns may not matter at all. The major question for analysis of this election, therefore, is not what did Ronald Reagan do to insure victory, but why did anyone think Ronald Reagan could lose?

This year is an awkward year for analysis for other reasons as well. This was a landslide election; landslides tend to be massive rejections of one candidate or massive affirmations of the winner's policies or performance. This year, the voters were clear in their approval of Ronald Reagan's economic programs. They were less clear in their support for increased spending on defense or in support of the Reagan social agenda. Straightforward analysis of the election provides indications of somewhat increased confidence in government and the prevalence of economic issues dominating the reasons for candidate support. The election seems a mandate for continued economic success, with little concern for how that is achieved. The groups who voted against Ronald Reagan were those who did not think they benefited from administration policies—blacks, Hispanics, and the poor—as well as self-described liberals and the traditional supporters of American liberalism, Jews.

However one wishes to characterize Walter Mondale's campaign for the presidency, his loss was only the latest in a series of Democratic presidential candidate defeats beginning in 1968. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey got 43 percent of the popular vote. In 1972, George McGovem received 38 percent of the popular vote. And in both 1980 and 1984, the Democratic presidential tickets got 41 percent of the popular vote. Only in 1976 did a Democratic presidential candidate receive a (very slim) majority of the popular votes cast. Indeed, Democratic presidential candidates have received only 42 percent of the total votes cast between 1968 and 1984.

Although Democratic presidential candidates have not been faring well for 16 years, party identification has remained about the same—with the Democrats as the majority party. Until 1984. And that is what makes the 1984 election interesting, for in this election the voters finally seemed to change their party identification to correspond with what now appears to be their habit of electing Republican presidents.

In 1980, when Jimmy Carter received the same proportion of the total votes cast as did Walter Mondale in 1984, self-styled Democrats were still in the majority. But, by 1984, Republicans and Democrats were at a virtual tie nationwide, as these figures from NBC News election day voter polls demonstrate.

One autumn out of four, election forecasting surpasses baseball as America's national pastime. Then, everyone wants to know who will win, and everyone has a guess. Now, with the ballots carefully counted, forecasters await their awards. Below, I evaluate the quality of a wide range of 1984 presidential and congressional forecasts. The evaluation proceeds from nonscientific to scientific approaches, although this distinction is sometimes blurred. To lower the level of suspense, I should say that some forecasts turned out to be quite good. By way of conclusion, I offer a set of rules for selecting a high-quality forecasting instrument.

Lucky Guesses

Many popular election forecasting rules take advantage of chance, which has been working in their favor. Perhaps the most famous is the World Series forecast, which says, “If the American League wins the World Series, then the Republican presidential candidate will win.” This technique was accurate from 1952 to 1976, missed in 1980, but worked again in 1984 with the victory of the Detroit Tigers. A lesser known rule of this type, which is my personal favorite, is based on the Beaujolais wine harvest. Accordingly, “If the Beaujolais vintage looks bad, then the Republican will take the presidency.” This has held post-1960, and continues to do so with the poor 1984 crop (yielding a wine too light, with little color). There are other such rules that relate more directly to the candidates themselves and, in that sense, have more verisimilitude.

With the exception of 1976, all national elections since 1964 have generated commentary among both media analysts and political scientists about the possibility of realignment. Reports have varied from the straightforward—yes or no—to the contrived—realignment has been realized at the presidential but not the congressional level. In this essay, we outline our view of those factors that are necessary for a realignment, and we evaluate the 1984 elections with respect to those factors. Our focus in this analysis is on the tripartite structure of American party systems: party in the electorate, party in government, and party as organization. In addition, we discuss the policy consequences associated with realignments.

Theories of Realignments

Schlesinger (1984: 371) reminds us that “[the parts of parties] are treated as though each leads a life of its own with little attention to what if anything holds them together.” This admonition also holds for students of realignments. One school of thought, centering around the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center, focuses attention on party in the electorate. In this view, a realigning election is one in which the normal party vote shifts from one party to another, and because of the influence of individual partisan identification on electoral outcome, this new majority party dominates elections for a generation or more. This emphasis on the distribution of party identification in the electorate is beneficial in that it gives us an operational definition of realignment and allows us to assess both critical and secular (gradual) realignments.