Gallup: Democrats Gain Edge In Party Identification During Last Year

[Mark E. Smith]

March 29, 2006

Fewer Americans identify as Republicans, more as independents.

Gallup News Service

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans are about as likely to identify as Republicans as they are Democrats according to a review of recent Gallup polls. However, once the leanings of independents are taken into account, the Democrats gain an advantage. Democrats have been on par with, or ahead of, Republicans in party identification since the second quarter of 2005. Since that time, the percentage of Americans identifying as Democrats has held steady, but fewer have identified with the Republican Party and more as independents.

In the eight national polls Gallup conducted in the first quarter of 2006, an average of 33% of Americans identified as Democrats, while 32% identified as Republicans and 34% as independents. More Americans have identified as Democrats than Republicans in each of the last four quarters, although in each case the advantage was small -- from less than one percentage point to three percentage points.

The quarterly calculations involve very large sample sizes (approx 8,000 for the first quarter of 2006), so even small changes from quarter to quarter are likely to be statistically significant. The small but meaningful change observed during recent quarters is due to a gain in independent identification and a decline in Republican identification. Democratic identification has been remarkable consistent at roughly 33% since the beginning of last year. Republican identification fell from 35% in the first quarter of 2005 to roughly 32% since that time. Independent identification has increased from 31% to 34% during the same period.

http://poll.gallup.com/content/?ci=22168

[electropop]

1. Does this mean they'll weight the exit polls differently?

In 2004, they pretended that Dems were equal to Pukes when weighting the falsified exit polls, to bolster the fraudulent "election" results.

[Inland]

2. Less party identification all in all.

The trend is, I think, less party identification, both in numbers of identifiers and in the strength of identification. But anything that lessens republican party i.d. is a good thing, both for the elections and the avoidance of the ascist-fay ou-cay.

[salin]

3. why this is big

for many folks party-identification is a part of self-identity, and is thus hard to change. Breaking that bond per self-identity from party a to independent is very significant. It allows the person to be more discriminating per views, per "loyalty" to particular figures, and to do one-eighties on positions which one accepted rotely due to that identification rather than based merits of particular positions/policies.

Had a friend who came of age in the Reagan era - loved Ronnie. Went to college in the Bush1 years - studied a lot of political science and history. Her views became much more complex. After many phone calls over time, and listening to her beliefs, I warned her - laughingly (she always referred to me as the idealist liberal in the past) - that the moment she declared herself independent it was all over for her, because her beliefs on so many issues were right in line with the Democratic party. She laughed and admitted she had come to that conclusion (step 1 followed quickly by step 2) over the past year.