Scholarship commonly implies that the major political parties in the United States are configured as mirror images to each other, but the two sides actually exhibit important and underappreciated differences. The Republican Party is primarily the agent of an ideological movement whose supporters prize doctrinal purity, while the Democratic Party is better understood as a coalition of social groups seeking concrete government action. This asymmetry is reinforced by American public opinion, which favors left-of-center positions on most specific policy issues yet simultaneously shares the general conservative preference for smaller and less active government. Each party therefore faces a distinctive governing challenge in balancing the unique demands of its base with the need to maintain broad popular support. This foundational difference between the parties also explains why the rise of the Tea Party movement among Republicans in recent years has not been accompanied by an equivalent ideological insurgency among Democrats.

We analyze affiliation networks of interest groups that endorse the same candidates in primary elections, donate to the same candidates in general elections, and voice support for the same legislative proposals. Patterns of interest group ties resemble two competing party coalitions in elections but not in legislative debate. Campaign endorsement and financial contribution ties among interest groups are consistently correlated but legislative ties do not follow directly from electoral alliances. The results challenge the consensus in the emerging literature on the expanded party organization; interest groups have distinct incentives to join together in a party coalition in elections but also to build bipartisan grand coalitions to pursue legislative goals. We also modify conventional views on party differences. The Democratic coalition is not fractured into many small constituencies. The Democratic campaign and legislative networks are denser than equivalent Republican networks, with a core of labor organizations occupying central positions.

How did political factors and public health affect state and local education decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the continuation of in-person schooling? Using an original data set of state policies, we find that governors ordered school closures in spring 2020 but left decisions to districts in the fall, regardless of partisanship. Analyzing local district reopening plans, however, we find that decisions were more tied to local political partisanship and union strength than to COVID-19 severity. Republicans in the public were also more favorable than Democrats toward in-person learning. States’ decisions to leave reopening plans to their districts opened the way for the influence of local partisanship.

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