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The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government Is Up for Grabs—and Who Will Take It,  is Sean Trende’s first book, but it’s an important one. When I was taking political science courses many years ago we were taught that there were long periods—generally about 32 years apart—in which one of the two major political parties had a natural national majority in elections. The majority party didn’t win every election, to be sure, but it won most of them and controlled government for a long generation.