Dealignment, in political science, is a trend or process whereby a large portion of the electorate abandons its previous partisan affiliation, without developing a new one to replace it.
This dealignment shows that short term factors might play a larger role than usual in whether a candidate receives a vote from someone of their party.
Several factors can be attributed to partisan dealignment, such as a greater political awareness and socialisation, intensive mass media coverage and decline of deference; disillusionment both with parties and politicians, and most importantly, the poor performance of government.
Class dealignment took place in Britain post-1960s, when people were more likely to pursue tertiary education, have professional jobs and consequently more affluence.
An example of this would be the Barking and Dagenham results in the 2006 local elections, in which a traditional Labour area voted for the extreme-right British National Party.
The result was that traditional Labour seats, such as Great Grimsby, voted to elect a Conservative MP for the first time in decades.
An example of there being class realignment is in the US where, in the 2020 and 2024 Presidential Elections, Donald Trump, a Republican, lost support amongst wealthy fiscally conservative and socially moderate voters in the suburbs, but made huge gains with Latino voters nationwide especially in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, in Los Angeles and in the Imperial Valley in California, in the Latino-heavy areas of New York City, and the Latino-heavy areas of Chicago and Cook County.