Division of Parties

A Fresno State professor said that cleavages is what causes the division of the parties that formed what this nation knows as the Democratic and Republican parties.

Dr. Alfred Evans is a professor emeritus in the political science department at Fresno State, and he stopped by a Mass Communication and Journalism classroom on the 20th to give information that formed the divisions between different groups of people.

“Cleavages is a division between different groups of people. In American politics by the 1930s, the main cleavage is the social class division, economics based,” said Dr. Evans.

“On one side, the middle class, the business professional people, which we used to call white-collar people. On the other side, laboring people, factory people, factory workers, minors, other mainly labor manual, which we used to call blue-collar people,” said Dr. Evans. “This is the main divisions, and it was the main divisions that shape the difference between the two major parties in America, the Democrats and the Republicans.”

The Democrats are known as the working class and the Republican shows interests in the middle class, Evans said, of course, later in the 1950s, society was changing.

The two areas of changes were the civil rights movement and demography that followed.

“The number of jobs and manufacture us decreasing,” Evans said. “The percentage of manufacture such as auto manufactory has been going down since the early 1950s.”

Donald Trump is this election’s nominee for the Republican Party. Evans said Trump has succeeded in this spot due to taking a position that relates to issues such as anti-immigration.

Evans said that this is due to the reflection of the shift in the character of the population.

“Trump gained attention in the very early point of his campaign before the first Republican primary, by which see to be an outrageous but certainly controversial statement about statement about Mexicans coming into the USA, primarily those coming in illegally,” Evans said.

Due to taking in the position standing on immigration, Evans said, “he got the supports.”

“The other big issue that he has stressed in all of this,” said Evans, “has somewhat been overshadowed by other subjects that you heard, well, overall now is trade, against free trade.”

Evans said, the higher the employment rate, the lower the education. This also mean that the lower the employment rate, the higher the education rate. And this is all caused due to the fear of free trade.

“During the Republican’s primary, Trump, Mr. Trump was getting a bigger percentages of votes from lower level of education than higher level education,” Evans said.

Evans said Trump received this support from those voters from stating that “he loves those poorly educated.”

Due to this statement, Evans said Trump is more popular among those with less education than others.

“I don’t necessarily agree,” said Victoria Tiscareno, a mass communication and journalism student at Fresno State. “He could be right, but there could be other reasons that there is an increase in the amount of people working. It could be that there has been a push for people to get an education and enter the workforce and they value hard work.”

Evans received his Bachelor and Masters from University of Texas and his Doctorate from University of Wisconsin. Evans specializes in comparatives political and special emphasis on Russia. Evans is now a professor emeritus in the political science department at Fresno State.

Evans contributed to the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and the American Political Science Association. Also from scholar publication, Evans has published journal articles and books, including Soviet Marxism-Leninism, and worked as co-editor of “Restructuring Soviet Ideology: Gorbachev’s New Thinking, The Politics of Local Government in Russia, and Russian Civil Society: A Critical Assessment.”

Evans said, “We find in the present time that in the polls where you might think historically, that people with lower level education will be likely to say they’re going to cote for the Democratic candidate due to the cleavage that I mention earlier, but no, Trump is more popular among people with lower level of educations.”

For more information, contact:

Dr. Alfred Evans (559) 435 – 7439

Victoria Tiscareno (559) 493 – 0746