Individualistic political culture promotes strong party organizations, with long-term party loyalty expected of voters and political office seekers. .
Millions of Americans moved westward during the nineteenth century. Along with these people, political cultures also spread towards the west. By 1840, the frontier of settlement had reached as far west as southern Michigan and Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. Many westward migrants were motivated by the availability of cheap land. Throughout the nineteenth century, government policy encouraged the distribution, settlement, and improvement of the land. Land in the Old Northwest, the Louisiana Purchase, and the federal government distributed other newly acquired territories. Federal land sold for $2 per acre in 1800, and was reduced to $1.25 by 1820. For the most part, residents of the Middle Atlantic States and of the West itself favored the wide distribution of cheap or free land, while Southerners and New Englanders opposed it. After the secession of the South, Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862. The Homestead Act offered free government land in the West to native-born and immigrant settlers. The Homestead Act dramatically increased the spread of westward expansion and reinforced migration patterns. Not everyone benefited from laws intended to promote the westward movement. Native Americans were driven further and further west. Between 1816 and 1836 alone, most of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, along with substantial areas of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, and Iowa were taken, usually by force, from various Native American tribes by the federal government. .
The westward movement also resulted in the spread of moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalistic political cultures across the United States. Moralistic political culture spread to upstate New York and the states of the upper Middle West, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and the Dakotas.