Over the last two decades, many social scientists have argued that the stableclass politics of industrial capitalism is giving way to newer types of socialand attitudinal cleavages. Some scholars have gone further to associate whatthey see as significant declines in the anchorings provided by class with therise of new political movements, parties, and even politicians standing foroffice completely outside traditional party systems. Advances in class theoryand statistical methods coupled with the availability of high quality data haveled others to reexamine the issue. They have suggested that these argumentsreflect a misreading of the empirical evidence and/or exaggerate the significanceof these developments. We conclude that despite the absence of a clearconsensus in the field, theories asserting a universal process of class dealignmentare not supported.