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Historians have analyzed American elections not only because they are the ultimate source of political power and authority in the United States, but also because they have important symbolic significance. Often the contest between opposing groups, interests, or ideas has been more important to historians than the individual who was elected to a particular position. Historians have seen in the election of Andrew Jackson the triumph of the common man over aristocracy and in the election of Abraham Lincoln the ascendency of northern commercial interests over southern agriculture. Recent analysts have contended that nineteenth-century elections were battles between opposing religious perceptions and opposing constellations of native and immigrant cultures. Despite the symbolic importance of elections and their effects on public policy, historians have generally worked with primitive models of election results. Where each of the opposing groups, particularly each of the major political parties, has been perceived as having a chance to win, historians have implicitly used a model that predicts each election will be a tie. They have then proceeded to explain the deviations from their model-victory by one party or the other in each election. Ad hoc causes, involving the particular political, social, economic, and military context of each individual election, and specific events during the campaign have usually been advanced to explain why one party got more votes than the other. These have ranged from world wars and severe economic depressions to a private letter from a foreign diplomat to an American citizen. Recently, however, political historians have developed the concept of the party system, consisting of a series of elections with common characteristics. Most of the electorate retains its party identification and partisan preferences, and most individual voters choose candidates of the same party election after election. Political issues, and public opinion about them, change little, while