Each election, whether it is a race for the presidency, a senate seat or a seat on a city council, captures the unique snapshot of a region or group of people in history.

Many people are referring to this year’s presidential election as the most important election in our lifetime, and no matter what the outcome might be, it will be remembered for the distinctive circumstances it is taking place under.  Photo courtesy of pexels.com Download Full Image

Many elections in the history of the U.S. have been seen as important and all of them for different reasons. Before you head into Election Day, learn about a few elections that may be just as novel as the current one.

Historians in Arizona State University's School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies spoke about other important elections in the U.S. and the context in which they took place. 

The election of 1800

The election of 1800 took place a little over a decade after the first presidential election in the U.S. when the country was still figuring out how the government should be established. In fact, the election of 1800 established new rules about elections that are still in play today.

The main candidates in 1800 were John Adams, who was running for reelection after serving as the second president since 1796, and Thomas Jefferson.

“There was not yet the modern system in which a president and vice president run together,” said Catherine O’Donnell, professor of history. “Instead, each elector in the Electoral College cast two votes; the person who received the most became president, and the person who received the second most became vice president.”

At the time, Jefferson's supporters wanted Aaron Burr to be his vice president, and Adams' supporters wanted Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. With Jefferson running as a Republican and Adams running as a Federalist, the country was divided between two different visions for the country. 

“Thomas Jefferson favored a limited national government and was eager for the new nation to remain distinct from European societies,” O’Connell said. “Although a slaveholder, he imagined that the U.S. would do best as a republic of yeoman farmers and he understood himself to be a defender of the common man.

“Adams believed that all human societies inevitably contained hierarchies, and government should be strong enough to direct elites' interests toward the common good. He thought that the U.S. needed to develop manufacturing and banking in order to survive in a dangerous world. He also favored policies that restricted speech and immigration, policies that Jefferson found destructive to the republic.”

The election led to heated rhetoric to the point where the American people wondered if the republic could survive. Many Americans didn’t think there should be political parties, so each party saw the other as an unwelcome challenge to democracy and a betrayal to the ideals of the American Revolution. 

“Then came the vote,” O’Donnell said. “At the time, all action occurred within the Electoral College, that is, there was not a popular vote. Supporters of Jefferson and Burr had a slight numerical advantage. They meant to withhold one vote for Burr, so that Jefferson would be president and Burr vice president. Instead, each of them cast one ballot for each, and both men received 73 electoral votes.”

The vote was moved to the House of Representatives because of the tie and the House was mostly in favor of Adams. They saw an opportunity to stop Jefferson by supporting Burr as a way to advance their political interests.

“There were 36 rounds of balloting that extended deep into February of 1801,” O’Donnell said. “Finally, in part because some of those who mistrusted Jefferson mistrusted Burr even more, Jefferson emerged victorious.”

The election proved to the American people it could survive a difficult, partisan struggle and a contested election. 

"Adams accepted his loss without complaint, setting a crucial precedent for peaceful transfer of power,” O’Connell said. “In his inaugural address, Jefferson welcomed both supporters and opponents, saying, ‘We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans.’”

Of course, no one wanted to go through a similar election in the future. This led to the ratification of the 12th Amendment, which establishes the current system of choosing a president and vice president together.

'The County Election'

In 1854, the painter George Caleb Bingham painted a scene of a county election day in Missouri. The painting gives some clues to the political culture at the time.

There are no voting booths and no barriers between voters and the candidates running for office. 

“Citizens of Missouri and several other states voted viva voce or live voice,” said Calvin J. Schermerhorn, professor of history. “You got up in front of the recorder and spoke your vote. The men tipping black top hats are handing out tickets — vote for me and my party.”

Yet the painting depicts important omissions from the democratic ritual. No women and no African Americans are voting.

“The most prominent Black man is pouring cider on behalf of a candidate to a voter who apparently needs a lot of it to decide,” Schermerhorn said. “In 1854 only five states permitted Black votes, and they were all in New England. Women didn’t get the vote nationwide until 1920, though states like Wyoming permitted it in 1869 and New York in 1880.”

Beyond the poll, there appear to be voters consuming alcohol and others having discussions. 

“Election days were public festivals, and parties routinely offered their arguments with cider or whiskey chasers,” Schermerhorn said. “In fact, distiller Edmund G. Booz packaged his whiskey in glass bottles resembling log cabins since politicians liked to point to candidates’ humble origins.”

The key issues happening in the painting are not clear, but during the 1850s, Americans were divided by those who wanted slavery to expand westward and those who wanted it to stop. At the time the painting was made, Missouri was a slave state.

“Violence on the Kansas-Missouri border flared in 1854,” Schermerhorn said. “Most of the issues involved local matters of taxes and restrictions, but the government was small and there was no income tax.”

The country was in the midst of major political realignment. A new Republican Party was forming in states like Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan since the old two-party system had collapsed. In just seven years, the country would be thrown into the Civil War as politics couldn’t contain the growing divide regarding slavery in the country. 

The election of 1964

After the assasination of president John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency and worked to fulfill Kennedy’s commitment to the civil rights struggle. He passed the Civil Rights Act in July 1964 and launched the War on Poverty, a series of social programs designed to ameliorate the worst economic forms of discrimination during his short stretch as president. 

Johnson decided to run for election in 1964 as a Democrat from Texas against Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, a U.S. senator from Arizona.

“Goldwater, a staunch fiscal conservative who was a fierce believer in rugged individualism and American patriotism, disapproved of how Johnson handled several political crises during the president’s short tenure in office,” said Katherine Bynum, assistant professor of history. “The chill of the Cold War and the first long, hot summer intersected at a crucial moment during the presidential election of 1964.”

By attacking Johnson’s administration for their policies of Cold War liberalism, Goldwater held a political advantage. He regularly criticized the president for being too accommodating with the Soviet Union, for excessive government funding of the War on Poverty and blamed him for the urban rebellions that erupted that summer in Chicago, and Harlem and Rochester in New York.

“Like many other Americans, Goldwater disapproved of the civil rights movements and he often made erroneous links between the growth of civil rights protests in the 1960s and War on Poverty spending to the rising crime rates across the U.S.,” Bynum said. 

As a response to Goldwater’s attacks, the Johnson administration launched “one of the most controversial and successful television advertisements in our nation’s history.” They portrayed Goldwater as a "hot head" who would likely lead the country into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. 

The advertisement was a success, but Johnson worried about Goldwater’s accusations about his excessive government spending, the rising crime rates and the spread of communism would hurt him and he ended up adjusting both his foreign and domestic policies.

“Not only did Johnson accelerate the nation’s involvement in Vietnam by falsely claiming that North Vietnamese forces attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, but he also undercut many of the Great Society’s programs by unleashing the War on Crime,” Bynum said.

Johnson, like Goldwater, was disturbed by the rising urban rebellions happening during the summer of the election year, which arose from cases of police brutality. 

“Though Black residents who participated in the uprisings did so in response to racist policing and economic and racial exclusion, Johnson labeled them as criminals, arguing that the civil rights legislation and the War on Poverty provided Black Americans with tangible solutions,” Bynum said. “Instead of confronting discriminatory policing, Johnson introduced increased federal spending in local police agencies on an unprecedented level by passing a series anti-crime laws that not only derailed the War on Poverty but also contributed to the rise of mass incarceration.”

When the election took place in November of that year, Johnson won in a landslide, but his victory was significant for other reasons. He accommodated Republican talking points by asserting he was tough on crime and communism. 

“In doing so, he significantly undermined his commitment to Cold War racial liberalism by trying to disprove Goldwater’s claims,” said Bynum. “The acceleration of the war in Vietnam and the ill effects of his anti-crime legislation became the central focus of the presidential election of 1968 that ultimately led to the rise of the New Right.”

Participate in the historic democratic process and vote. You can vote early on any ASU campus, or you can vote by mail or in-person.

Come AZ You Are, a minifestival celebrating spaces of affirmation and radical joy through art as social (inter)action, kicks off Oct. 23.

The interdisciplinary festival is inspired by the vogue and ballroom culture rooted in LGBT communities and is open to all. The program bridges the diverse communities on campus and outside of Arizona State University to foster transformational community through arts and culture.  X-Savior Thomas performs during Come AZ You Are 2019. Download Full Image

This year's festival hosts dynamic local and national artists and includes a performance, exhibition battles and a panel discussion. The event is part of the School of Music, Dance and Theatre’s Sol Motion series and cuts across the disciplines of dance, fashion, theater, design, music and more.

This year's Come AZ You Are series of events focus on connecting communities together with an online experience through two days of Zoom events. 

The first day includes a docuseries screening of “My House” featuring Precious Ebony, Tati Mugler, Alex Mugler, Jelani Mizrahi, Lolita Balenciaga and Relish Milan, and a panel discussion featuring Marlon Bailey, Enyce Smith and alumni Caress Russell and Rylee Locker. 

During the second day, attendees will get the chance to meet eight members of the West Coast ball scene and watch them represent their category in a demo ball. "Face," "runway," "realness" and "vogue performance" are in the lineup for the night. Other festivities include performances, a vogue workshop with Enyce and a session on learning how to make your vote count. The event will include Calypso Balmain, Rosie Ninja, Torie Balmain, Legendary Mike Mike Escada, Teyana Garcon, Jaylen Balmain, Pink Escada and Rigo Ninja.

The event is co-sponsored by Performance in the Borderlands and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.

Jim Hemauer, former associate director of Arizona State University’s Disability Resource Center (now known as Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services), died on July 17, 2020, at age 65.

A leader in the disability community, Hemauer devoted his academic and professional life to ensuring that accessibility was a priority at the university and beyond. Jim Hemauer, former associate director of Arizona State University’s Disability Resource Center (now known as Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services), died on July 17, 2020, at age 65. Download Full Image

He began his time at ASU as a graduate student, earning a master's degree in counseling with an emphasis on higher education and disabilities. Prior to that, he received his BS in social work from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.

After graduating from ASU, Hemauer worked as a counselor for Disabled Student Services at Scottsdale Community College and as a program coordinator for the Disabled Student Resource Center at the University of Arkansas.

Hemauer returned to ASU in a professional capacity in 1985 and held various positions within Disabled Student Resources throughout his 25 years working for the university. He started as a program coordinator focused on orthopedic disabilities, and in 1988, transitioned to a disability specialist, senior. In 2006, he was named associate director of the Disability Resource Center, the position he held until he retired from ASU in 2010.

Along with his dedication to helping students succeed, Hemauer also devoted his time and expertise to numerous projects, boards and trainings focused on equity and inclusion for people with disabilities.

He consulted with the National Football League for Superbowl XXX, the Grand Canyon on creating accessible facilities and the National Science Foundation on accessibility for the Arizona Science Center. He served on the Arizona Governor’s Commission on Head & Spinal Injuries, the Nina Mason Pulliam Scholarship advisory board, Valley Metro’s Phoenix Community Council and many others. He also presented at conferences like the National Association of College Residence Halls, was a frequent guest lecturer at ASU and spoke at many schools throughout the Phoenix area. 

Hemauer is remembered fondly by his colleagues as someone who valued hard work and doing things well, loved the ASU community and had a lasting impact on those he served.

Jim Hemauer on Palm Walk on ASU's Tempe campus.

Chad Price, director of Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services, said Hemauer “was part of the team that made services for students with disabilities what it is at ASU.”

“Jim modeled the charter of ASU before it was the charter,” Price said. “He valued others and found ways to encourage them to be better and seek out ways to improve the space and practices to ensure accessibility. He invited others to be a part of the effort and showed by example.”

James Morin, supervisor for Student Accessibility Transportation, noted that, “Jim brought the (Disability Resource Center) to the community. Accessibility, whether architectural or academic, were his priorities on and off campus.” 

“He brought visibility and a can-do spirit with a humble heart to all of his work,” said Lori Johnson, manager of Student Accessibility services for the deaf and hard of hearing. “There was a strong sense of humanity to his leadership position, which endeared him to many across the four campuses.”

“Jim's quiet strength, great sense of humor and sense of self are missed tremendously," Johnson said. "He came from an era where disability rights were just starting out, and he worked quietly and tirelessly to make sure that those rights were given the recognition they should be. He ensured that today's students have much greater access in all areas of this ASU campus and community.”

Benny LeMaster, assistant professor of critical/cultural communication and a performance scholar in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, was awarded the 2020 Best Book Award from the National Communication Association (NCA) ethnography division for "Gender Futurity, Intersectional Autoethnography: Embodied Theorizing from the Margins."

LeMaster co-edited the book with friend and colleague Amber Johnson, an associate professor of communication and social justice at Saint Louis University. They will receive the award at the NCA virtual conference in November.  Professors Benny LeMaster and Amber Johnson on the ASU Tempe campus in 2019 with Johnson’s pop-up museum designed to engage community members in discussions and activities around bias, social justice and empathy. Download Full Image

The book is aimed at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional degree students in the humanities and social sciences, such as communication and gender studies, that utilize qualitative methods. 

“Their work represents an important milestone as it helps give individuals voices and vocabularies from which to explain, enact and embody their identities," said Hugh Downs School Professor and Interim Director Paul Mongeau. "It foregrounds important concepts and lessons that have been largely ignored in communication scholarship.”

LeMaster says they created the book after receiving requests for classroom activities that affirm trans students. 

“Because there wasn’t much trans-affirming content, we decided to fill this need,” said LeMaster.

Johnson says their goal is to replace all other gender communication textbooks with this one: “The gender communication textbooks with new editions, where the authors mention ‘trans,’ think that they did their job. But they didn’t.”

LeMaster, who uses they/them pronouns, adds that most gender communication books rely on “science” to justify people’s gender rather than a person’s sense of self.  

“It’s frankly insulting for those of us who are outside of the normative sort of understanding of gender, and it can be really frustrating as an academic trying to enter into a space that’s clearly exclusionary by design,” they said.

Reviewers have called the book "spectacularly diverse" and an "intimate, nuanced and cutting-edge" collection that "fills a void in ethnographic research." They noted that "there was a revelation with every turn of the page," with writing that prompts self-reflexivity and challenges readers to examine themselves to "expose places of bias." Overall, reviewers noted, this book "exemplifies the tremendous promise of autoethnography to do critical and pathbreaking work."

"This award recognizes the cutting-edge value of Professor LeMaster's co-edited collection, including its capacities to touch readers, through narrative and autoethnography, with a wide range of voicings, embodied experiences and critical reflections,” said Daniel Brouwer, an associate professor at the Hugh Downs School.

“Professors LeMaster and Johnson envisioned a project that questions what we think we know about gender and its intersections — via discourses, institutions and structures — and they set an agenda for imagining and mapping new gender futures. Working with 25 different contributors on more than 20 distinct entries, they have created a series of creative meditations, in multiple styles and genres of composition, on repression and violence as well as play, joy and survival.”

LeMaster says the book is about “understanding gender through lived experience, as opposed to something reductive like a predetermined identity category.

“The book covers all kinds of gender expressions and embodiments, not just variant ones. We also have cisgender people in the book. I am really proud of what we did.”

They’re future diplomats, entrepreneurs and community advocates. But they’re also effecting change in the present day. Currently 110 Sun Devils make up the cohort of Latino Partnership Scholars, a collaboration between Arizona State University and partner organizations that was founded in 1984 to support underrepresented students and make a collective impact for access to education in the Latino community.

Originally launched as the Hispanic Community Partnership Program, the initiative established an endowment thanks to an investment from Freeport-McMoRan to the Una Promesa Para el Futuro Campaign. In 2007, the program became known as the Latino Partnership Scholars, with current partners including Chicanos Por La Causa, the ASU Chicano/Latino Faculty and Staff Association, Hispanic Business Alumni, Los Diablos Alumni and the Si Se Puede Foundation. Los Diablos Alumni scholarship recipients are part of the Latino Partnership Scholars group of 110 students at ASU. Download Full Image

Together, the scholarships have supported students earning 605 degrees from 2011–19 alone, to the tune of $6.5 million total. The awards support students who are already serving their communities, and one award focuses on science, technology, engineering and math majors. The percentage of Latino Sun Devils among enrolled students at ASU has grown from 14.6% in 2009 to 23.7% in 2019.

Celina Villa, an ASU junior majoring in psychology and minoring in human and family development, said her scholarship through Chicanos Por La Causa has fundamentally changed not only her academic life but her professional track and her mental health during COVID-19. 

“I was personally in a really, really dark spot because COVID hit and I think a lot of kids went through an anxiety and depression phase,” she said. “It kind of felt like they pulled me out of that hole and were like, listen. You’re doing great things. You need to realize that. And realize how many lives you’re impacting right now by being a part of this.” 

Every Latino Partnership Scholar participates in networking, community service and mentoring activities. For Villa, her service work has put her in a leadership position in Chicanos Por La Causa's information technology office, where she coordinates the distribution of hundreds of computers to local families who need devices for at-home schooling. Experiences like this have showcased how the scholarship impacts her “beyond education.” Villa said she has met a lot of people who have influenced her life. 

“I’ve been taught so many things,” she said. “It’s really awesome, especially for someone who had no idea what IT is. I think I’ve taken on the perspective of how can I apply my degree to something that's very out of the ordinary.”

Villa, who is from Laveen, graduated with her associate degree through dual enrollment and AP credits in high school. Though her ultimate goal is to pursue her master’s degree and open her own psychology practice as a trauma specialist for children, Villa said she wants to stay in the Valley and stay involved with Chicanos Por La Causa and the community. 

For first-year Sun Devil Genesis Rivas, her Laura Rendón Scholarship through the ASU Chicano/Latino Faculty and Staff Association was a poignant moment as a first-generation college student. She grew up acutely aware of the hardships her parents faced, and her family had been facing financial stress for months before she was about to start college.

Her mother immigrated from Culiacán, Mexico, and endured family separation, having to sleep outside in sweltering temperatures and acclimating to a new culture when she arrived in the United States. Rivas, who is majoring in marketing, said she wants to radiate pride for her family and her culture. 

(The scholarship) just gave me a moment to reflect on what I come from,” she said. “We have so many more privileges than my mom ever had. I put my energy toward making her proud, my dad proud.”

Rivas already has a lot to be proud of. As a high school student she was involved in the Make a Wish Youth Leadership Council, student government and also in March for Our Lives Arizona as a special projects director. She helped organize summits, lobby days and town halls about gun violence prevention in her junior and senior years at Westview High School in Avondale. She helped pass a resolution in Tolleson Union High School District to provide more mental health services for high schoolers; she even met some of the student advocates who had been affected by the Parkland, Florida, shooting in 2018, an event that inspired her to get involved in youth activism. 

“The 2016 election was the start of everything for me. It kind of woke me up into the state our country is in,” she said. “And then once Parkland happened, there was never really a movement for youth. And I saw that. I was so amazed. I got to meet a bunch of the creators.”

Although she’s spent her first semester at home, attending classes through ASU Sync, she’s involved in Undergraduate Student Government’s internship program and also became a member of Alpha Chi Omega. Rivas wants to pursue advertising and digital communication and eventually work for Twitter. 

She said it was emotional when she received her scholarship because she had been panicking about loans. The news came right in time, and she’s loved being a part of her cohort so far, attending heritage events and connecting with peers and mentors. 

“I screamed and showed (the scholarship letter) to my mom,” Rivas said. “She stood up, started screaming, crying, and it just made me so happy to see that my hard work finally paid off for something.” 

Rivas said she’s happy to have the chance to meet her fellow scholarship recipients and connect with them. “It’s a close-knit community,” she said. 

A sense of community also looms large with business and Chinese language and culture sophomore Armando Hernandez, whose scholarship is through Los Diablos Alumni. Hernandez is passionate about representing the intersections of his identity as both Latino and gay, and he is very inspired by his fellow scholarship recipients. 

“(The scholarship) has meant so much. … It is the connections. I have found amazing people who are some of the most compassionate and motivated people I have ever met,” Hernandez said. “It’s so inspiring to see another group of Latinx students who are not only motivated but they have goals and dreams.”

Hernandez said he’s inspired to be surrounded by friends who have such impressive goals.

“Some of these people want to be an astronaut and they want to go to Mars, and that motivates me and that makes me very happy to know that my Latin Hispanic community is out there,” he said. 

Hernandez, who is from Phoenix, said he has also gained invaluable professional development in service, mentorship and networking for his future career in the foreign service. 

“They have provided me with so many amazing opportunities to meet new people within my field,” he said. 

Growing up surrounded by his entrepreneurial family, Hernandez was drawn to the business field and has been busy working on his Chinese, working with the Arizona Human Rights Campaign and keeping students civically engaged through his job as a resident assistant at Hassayampa (he has a goal that all his residents will be registered to vote).

From his perspective, his entire university experience has been amplified by being part of the Latino Partnership Scholars program.

“A lot of us would not be here in university if it weren’t for the scholarship,” Hernandez said. “It has really truly enriched our educational experience here at ASU. Just providing us with more resources and allowing us to make connections with people who are like-minded.”

Vice President of Outreach Partnerships Edmundo Hidalgo said that the Latino Partnership Scholars program is an opportunity to multiply the impact that scholarships have on students who deserve support. The program also helps work toward ASU’s goal of parity in six-year graduation rates across racial and ethnic groups. ASU provides funding annually for the program, and fundraising is ongoing to build on that financial base. 

“The collaboration and investments from community members and our partner organizations have made an enormous impact for ASU and for hundreds of deserving students,” Hidalgo said. “Our financial foundation and the collaboration of our partner organizations amplify our efforts to support students and help them reach their full potential.”

Maria Elena Coronado-Sutter is a co-coordinator for Chicanos Por La Causa's scholarship program and can’t help but see the connection between the ASU students who formed Chicanos Por La Causa more than 50 years ago and modern day scholars, many of whom are first-generation students and low-income students. Chicanos Por La Causa's Executive Vice President of Strategy and Relationship Management Max Gonzales said that the organization is proud to have been a partner for more than 15 years, interviewing scholarship applicants and connecting them with resources for student success as well as instilling a sense of service to the community. 

“After they graduate they don’t forget that they also have a responsibility to bring others with them,” he said. “We hope that they achieve all the success they want to achieve in their lives, but let’s not forget that you have a whole community behind you that we need to lift up. And if we can instill that in the forefront of their mind when they’re out there and they’re succeeding, then we have been successful.”

You can support the Latino Partnership Scholars program by donating through the ASU Foundation to the Los Diablos scholarship, the Hispanic Business Alumni scholarship, the Chicano Faculty and Staff Association scholarship, the Chicanos Por La Causa scholarship and the Si Se Puede Foundation scholarship. 

This fall there is more on Americans' minds besides cooler weather and autumn colors. With the changing of the season comes talk of elections.

Election season brings with it the discussion of topics like health care, immigration, national security and racial issues. Have varying opinions on these topics always existed amongst political parties in the United States? Does that divergence hold true among racial and ethnic groups as well? Download Full Image

Arizona State University Assistant Professor Narayani Lasala-Blanco, Robert Y. Shapiro  and Joy Wilke take a deeper look in their recent article “The Nature of Partisan Conflict in Public Opinion: Asymmetric or Symmetric?” published in American Politics Research.

Lasala-Blanco, who is part of the School of Politics and Global Studies, spoke with ASU Now about a few takeaways from their research.

Question: What were some of your key takeaways when looking at the political parties as a whole?

Answer: The main takeaway is that reports in the media and think tanks incorrectly give the impression that all groups are equally polarized on all issues and that this polarization is symmetric — due to Republicans becoming more conservative and Democrats more liberal over time. If it weren’t for people of color, especially Blacks and Hispanics, the partisan conflict would be a lot more bitter and polarization in the country would be more extreme. This is very important as Blacks and Latinos are often portrayed as too liberal or even radical in issues such as immigration, racial issues and welfare when in fact, both Republican and Democrat Black and Latino opinion continue to be more moderate than their fellow white partisans.

Also, taking the time to track partisan opinion over time and for different groups allowed us to find out that symmetric polarization is a rare phenomenon; it only happens for a few issues even among white partisans.

Q: Do these partisan trends hold true when looking at those with and without college degrees?

A: Yes, the only difference is that those without a college degree had a much more conservative starting view on most issue areas. For example, Republicans especially have not changed their positions about race or immigration in the past four decades.

Q: Looking ahead, might we expect a continuation of partisan divergence when looking at political opinion on these issues? Or is there reason to expect less partisan polarization?

A: It seems like partisan divergence is here to stay in certain issues. However, the picture this data paints opens up significant opportunities for more moderate leadership and candidates in both parties to seize this opportunity and get elected, which in turn would contain partisan divergence in the general public. Also, population replacement will matter if trends continue as they are among groups. The bigger the influence Latinos and Blacks have, partisan divergence and extreme partisan conflict should decrease.