Sixth Party System

Experts have debated whether American national politics is currently in the era of Sixth Party System, or the Fifth Party System continues in some form to the present. Opinions also differ on when the Sixth Party System began, ranging from the 1960s to the 1990s election cycles. Maisel and Brewer (2011) argue that the consensus among specialists is that the Sixth System is underway based on American electoral politics since the 1960s:
The Sixth Party System is characterized by an electoral shift from the electoral coalitions of the Fifth Party System during the New Deal: the Republican Party became the dominant party in the South, rural areas, and suburbs; while the Democratic Party increasingly started to assemble a coalition of African-Americans, Hispanics and white urban Progressives. A critical factor was the major transformation of the political system in the Reagan Era or "Age of Reagan" of the 1980s and beyond led by Ronald Reagan.