Following the party conventions the past two weeks has brought to mind a book often discussed in historiography seminars at Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute: Lee Benson’s The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, written in 1961. In this classic work, Benson argued that voting behaviour in the Jacksonian period was determined not by ideology or class, but rather by ethno-cultural factors such as ethnicity, religion and community association. Does Benson’s argument have any relevance in 2012? Any observer who watched the shots of the delegates in the convention halls saw the obvious way that Benson’s thesis pertains to today’s politics. African Americans, who were so much more visible in Charlotte than Tampa, are almost uniform in their support for Obama. Latinos are gravitating in that …

This is a common question following the row over Congressman Todd Akin’s comment about abortion and rape. In a 2004 book, Thomas Frank, the liberal columnist and author, asked a similar question about Missouri’s western neighbour, Kansas, which has lurched far to the right in recent decades (indeed, its current governor Sam Brownback might well be the most extreme right-wing governor in the union). Yet there is little mystery about Kansas: its rightward shift is part of a broader trend in the Great Plains, which now rivals the South for the status as the heart of the GOP. But Missouri’s rightward shift, which Todd Akin so demonstrated, is perhaps more surprising. Missouri has the makings of a state that could go blue …