THE VOTE: Splintering the Great Coalition

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PRESIDENT Nixon's massive victory splintered a once dominant force in national politics: the Democratic coalition. Welded together by the despair of the Depression and the charisma of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it consisted of an unlikely amalgam of minorities: Southern whites, Jews, "ethnic"* blue-collar workers, blacks and campus-oriented intellectuals. Despite the disparate backgrounds and views of these blocs, the coalition was remarkably durable. It produced 20 consecutive years of Democratic Administrations, survived the virtually unbeatable heroic appeal and victories of Dwight Eisenhower, and regrouped to elect John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Severely split by the riotous Chicago convention in 1968, it began to reunite in the last weeks of that campaign and fell just short of putting Hubert Humphrey in the White House. But in 1972, while the coalition held much of its strength in electing Democrats to Congress and the statehouses, it came completely apart at the seams in the presidential election.

The fragmentation of the coalition was assured by the nomination of George McGovern. The resulting disaster was clearly foreseen by Kevin Phillips, author of The Emerging Republican Majority, who believes that the nomination "locked" the Democratic Party into the "new left side." In a remarkably prescient assessment, he wrote that "the Democratic Party is going to pay heavily for having become the party of affluent professionals, knowledgeable industry executives, social-cause activists and minorities of various sexual, racial, chronological and other hues." Indeed, the convention that nominated McGovern in Miami Beach may itself have impressed that change on the voters and put the election out of George McGovern's reach.

While speakers in Miami repeatedly stressed that the Democratic Convention, because of the "McGovern rules," was the first that was truly representative of Democratic voters, much of the public got another impression. The party seemed to be largely composed of antiwar radicals, militant women, blacks and eccentric youths. For the first time in 40 years, white Southerners, ethnics, many Jews and older voters could not identify with the Democratic Party leadership.

To assess the impact of McGovern's candidacy on traditionally Democratic voting blocs, TIME correspondents across the nation kept a close watch on carefully selected representative precincts on Election Night. The precinct voting percentages (compared with 1968 figures) and interviews with voters clearly point to the magnitude of the damage done to the Democratic coalition:

ETHNIC BLUE-COLLAR WORKERS: A startling switch to the G.O.P.

After giving Humphrey a substantial margin in 1968, many of the ethnics rejected McGovern this year. Angered by his support of legalized abortion, his attitude toward drugs, his proposed "surrender" to Communist North Viet Nam and amnesty for draft dodgers, these lower-and middle-class Catholic voters deserted the Democratic national ticket in record numbers, contributing significantly to Nixon's margins in the industrial Northern states. The ethnic exodus from the