Antecedents of Realignments and the Case for Secular Realignment in Denmark

This study starts with the premise that political norms and structures determine national electoral propensities toward critical or secular realignments in partisan affiliation, ft is hypothesized that historical and structural characteristics of the Danish political system mitigate against rapid changes in partisan affiliations and voting patterns. Empirical evidence is presented to demonstrate that observed changes in the partisan distribution of the Danish vote in 1973–1977 resulted from a gradual redistribution of partisan affiliation with origins in the 1950s.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the study concludes that a secular, not critical, realignment occurred in Denmark during the 1970s