Realignment is the action of changing or restoring something to a different or former
position or state. Party realignment is when the balance of power between a country’s political
parties changes greatly. Their electoral coalitions change dramatically. Sometimes, this
happens when political parties die out or are created. We see examples of this back in the early
nineteen hundreds in the United States of America with the minor parties such as the Whig
party, which was active in the middle of the nineteenth century in the United States and
considered a major party alongside the Democratic party. The Whig party was founded in 1833
and only lasted a little longer than twenty years. Twenty-three years later, the party collapsed
when all of its members split and went different directions, the northern Whigs joining the
anti-slavery Republican party and the southern Whigs joining the nativist American Party after
the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. The collapse of the Whigs occurred right
before the outbreak of the Civil War. The Civil War is a big example of political realignment in
the United States. Two sides, the north, and the south fought for their beliefs and knew that in
the end, one party would reign superior over the other. After the civil war, the Democrats were
forced to dissolve their pro-slavery side. This led to a major political realignment in the future
when African Americans gained the right to vote. Because the Republican party was the driving
force behind their gaining of freedom, most African Americans chose to vote republican. This
created a large shift where even though Democratic voting percent may not have been lost,
Republican voting percents increased significantly. This is not the same as the political
realignment that was thought to have happened during the 2016 election. There was no
significant event that led to their being evidence of a political realignment occurring at that exact
