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American politics have often been tribal, starting with the War for Independence, where merchants with established trade with England, much of the Anglican clergy, recent immigrants from England, Indian nations such as the Iroquois, and ethnic groups like the Highland Scots in North Carolina the and Dutch in New York and New Jersey sided with the British. The Civil War had both sectional and ideological elements. In the North, certain groups, such as settlers of the Ohio Valley one or two generations removed from the South, Irish Catholics in the large Northeastern cities, and Middle Atlantic residents who had resided in that region for many generations were skeptical of Lincoln and the effort to stop Southern independence. Many Union supporters mistrusted military units from New Jersey because of that state's lukewarm attitude toward the Union. In the South, many Scots-Irish residents of Appalachia and the Ozarks, German and Mexican settlers in Texas, and settlers in the Southwest one or two generations removed from the North were reluctant supporters of or actively hostile to Southern secession.

Tribal loyalties determined voting patterns from Reconstruction and the period of mass immigration between 1880 and 1920 through the 1960s. Generally speaking, most white Southerners and white Catholics, along with smaller groups like Jews and Eastern Orthodox, voted Democrat. A majority of white Protestants of British, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian ancestry outside the South and Border states voted Republican, as did blacks, at least when they were allowed the franchise.

Politicians have manipulated tribalism from the earliest days through our time. Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama, among others, were more successful at mass manipulation than their Republican opponents. The Democrats' microtargeting of select population is not much different than techniques used by Pendergast in Kansas City or Curley in Boston. The only difference is the advances in technology.