The New Deal Coalition

The New Deal Coalition was the alignment of interest groups and voting blocs that supported the New Deal and voted for Democratic presidential candidates from 1932 until the late 1960s. It made the Democratic Party the majority party during that period, losing only to Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. Franklin D. Roosevelt forged a coalition that included the Democratic party, big city machines, labor unions, minorities (racial, ethnic and religious), liberal farm groups, white Southerners, people on relief, and intellectuals. The coalition fell apart in 1968, but it remains the model that party activists seek to replicate.