10.3The New Deal coalition

Roosevelt's response transformed the parties. He assembled a broad and durable alliance—the New Deal coalition—that made the Democrats the nation's majority party for a generation. It united Northern urban workers, immigrants and their children, union members, farmers, white Southerners, and, in a historic shift, most Black voters, who moved from the "party of Lincoln" to the Democrats.

The Democratic Party now stood for active government, economic security, and support for labor and the "common man." Republicans became the party of business and limited government, warning that the New Deal threatened liberty and fiscal soundness. This alignment—Democrats as the party of government activism—would frame American politics into the 1960s and beyond, even as its internal tensions grew.