E.J. Dionne thinks that the recent shift in party identification favoring the Democrats “could prove the defining fact in November.” Yuval Levin agrees that the trend is trouble for the GOP. However, he notes that while Democrats now outnumber Republicans 37 to 28 percent, the GOP has only been above 28 percent in one presidential election year since 1968; that was in 2004. Levin adds that party ID statistics themselves are not great predictors of electoral outcome, citing both 1980 and 1992 as examples.
In 2006, a commenter at Pollster.com named “yetanotherjohn” compared the data on party ID from the American National Election Study (ANES) with the actual election results:
[L]ooking at the last 14 presidential election years, the percentage of people voting democrat has been less than those identifying themselves as some sort of democrat (strong, weak or independent leaner towards democrats) in the ANES polls 93% of the time. While the percentage of people in the last 14 presidential election years who voted republican have always been more than those calling themselves some sort of republican (strong, weak or independent) in the ANES polls. In fact, 9 of the 14 times, it would seem that 100% of the independents were also republicans. 12 of the 14 times, it would seem that more than 85% of the independents were also republicans. So the ANES has 13 of the last 14 presidential election years over counted democrats (and the one time they didn’t over count, they were only under by 0.05%), 14 out of 14 times undercounted republicans and 9 out of 14 times all those claiming to be independent independents were really republicans (or at least people who voted for the party).
Moreover, elections (particularly presidential elections) are contests between candidates as much as between parties. As has been noted recently, compared to poll questions asking whether voters would prefer a Democrat or a Republican in the White House, Barack Obama underperforms, while John McCain overperforms. Moreover, there is a wealth of past polling showing that people may despise Congress, yet be happy with their Member of Congress.
Thus, while the shift in party ID should trouble Republicans, it is difficult to know the degree to which it will ultimately affect voting patterns. We cannot exclude the possibility that the generally overwhelming public opinion that the country is on the “wrong track” has made Democratic-leaning independents more comfortable self-identifying as Democrats, while the distaste of some Republicans for Pres. Bush (over issues ranging from education to illegal immigration to unchecked domestic spending) and the Congressional GOP (over spending, ethics and more) has moved previously self-identifying Republicans into the Independent column (where they may still tend to vote Republican, though not necessarily for McCain — or vice versa).
Hmmmm.
I think many are like me. Former Republicans.
As a conservative I’m frankly appalled at the crazy-ass nonsense going on in the GOP and want little to do with it.
Vote for Barry, and soak up his conservatism!
There are too many people who support Hillary and won’t vote for Oooooobama, and the opposite. Mc should not even be a republican in my book… he should really be an independent (leaning tward the left) like Liberman… I don’t want to vote for Mc and would absolutely HATE to see a Mc/Liber ticket. I just can’t stand the thought of Mc being president, he is a liberal trying to wear conservative clothes, but at least he is not a real Marxist like Ohhmama. I do believe Hillary is too proud to be number 2 which throws the Dems’ “dream ticket” out the window. Before the election there will be a lot more shit comming to fruition about the former dealings of ohhmama and will utimately kill his run.
With that said, I will probably end up voting third party because no matter how it is sugar coated – McCain is NOT conservative.
I am so sick and tired of the this Division game, Black, White, Male, Female Independent, Moderate, democrate, Repugnicans, left, right, center left, center right, come on give us all a break, All of this keeps us from the real issues we as American people have been Duped, Abused, Uses, Controlled and manipulated from the current Administration and the Status Quo folks all of this time. It is truely time for change and I do not care what party, male of female brings it. It can be the alien from out of space for all that I care, WE NEED CHANGE NOW. It is WE THE PEOPLE who will be bringing that change through whom ever you decide to vote into the next administration. WE have to hold that person or party male or female black or white accountable and hold their feet to the fire to bring on that change. We the people in unity are the only one’s with whoever get in to make that change occur. Vote your heart, if it is pure without the divisions which are bia’s… vote the answer your heart gives you. Wipe all learned bia’s from your mind get quiet and truely listen to what your heart has to tell you. You will find the answer go with it and stop trying to let the EGO justify what you and only you have decided to do. Blame it on your heart.
The important factor is that, thanks to George Washington, parties in the United States are extraconstitutional. As a practical matter, Party affiliation is important for coordination, but we don’t divide our Legislature up by Party as a matter of legal organization, and we don’t employ the concept of “forming a Government” meaning that the winning Party gets all or most of the marbles.
That leaves us free to declare our “Party affiliation” according to how we feel at the moment, and may or may not have anything to do with who we will vote for, especially in national elections. Polls like this are more a matter of mood swings than of political realignment. Other factors come into play in the voting booth, principally (IMO) that Republicans are associated with Management and Democrats with Employees; the President is above anything else a manager, and it makes sense to choose an experienced manager over somebody who has never done it.
Erosion of the sentiment favoring Republicans over Democrats for the Presidency has come hand in hand with the evolution of the system toward permanent incumbency. John McCain has no readily perceivable large advantage on those grounds — it’s been thirty years or longer since he’s been anything but a Senator, and before that he never rose to sufficient rank to be considered “management” in a Navy context. Note the more extreme example of Nancy Pelosi, who has never had a non-political job (and, thrust into a management position, has demonstrated incompetence). The trend is more damaging to Republicans than it is to Democrats, because Democrats aren’t identified with Management in the first place.
Caveat: this definitely falls under Ric’s Rule #1 (“It ain’t that simple”) and isn’t fully developed, even in my own mind. Discuss.
Regards,
Ric
– Last time around sKerry got an almost total plurality from the entire spectrum of Left voters, and lost by something like 4-5% when all the counting was finally in. Nothing close to a split in the Dem party.
– McCain is right of center on only one issue, Iraq, and tries to pretend on other things like vorders etc. So hes a claffic example of a RINO, essentially another Bill Clinton in a lot of ways, sans the military difference for McCain. A Republican Bill Clinton with war creds.
– That means Republicans and Independents, looking at the prospect of a hard Left Socialist in Obama, will hold their noses and vote McCain, even though he is slightly Left of center, because with Obama theres no doubt where he’d take the country.
– Assume Obama gets the same Plurality sKerry got, minus even a modest group of disenfranchised Hillery supporters, and here all the temporizing and hand waving is not going to woe over a goodly number of the FemBots who are convinced they got screwed over by their party, I see no way for the Left to win in the end.
– If sKerry couldn’t do it with the entire body Dem behind him, then the numbers just don’t add up, and I don’t care how many demographic maps the media sticks up on the wall to try to keep it interesting and sell cars, insurance, beer, and cleaning products.
–
…principally (IMO) that Republicans are associated with Management and Democrats with Employees…
In the context of the extended government bureaucracy and all its attendant unions, you could say Republicans are management and Democrats are Labor quite literally.
– So theres your choices people. You want a closet Marxist, or another Bill Clinton without the cigar that keeps his zipper up.
Also it should be noted that from 1996-2006 there was a constant shift from Democrat to Republican in terms of party registration, so this doesn’t represent a gain by Democrats so much as a partial return of lost membership. Meanwhile blacks, the most trustworthy and reliable bloc of voters for the party, continue the trend of registering independent rather than Democrat.
The management/union paradigm would work were it not for the great muddle which constitutes a rough third of the electorate. McCain is the champion of the muddle, he has exhibited a level of muddledness throughout his career that has a great appeal to those unable or unwilling to give a thought to other than the present.
In respect to muddledness, America appears little different today than it did at the time of the Revolution, when that same muddle (constituting the same rough third) stood on the sidelines, watching sullenly and hoping that the unleasantness would be over before they had to pay any personal price for the misfortune of having an army pass in any proximity.
Tell me what the muddle will be “thinking” come November 4th, where their greatest fear will lie, and you will have told me the outcome of the election. I don’t believe that Obama can overcome McCain’s edge with the muddle because of his predilection for tax thievery and the fact that, for all the efforts of the media regarding the state of the economy, it really isn’t bad at all. After all, even the muddle has the ability to read their pay stub.
Rick,
Don’t be too sure about that last point. People can also read a gas pump, which is where a lot of people form their opinions about the economy. For that matter the economy wasn’t nearly as bad as advertised in 1992, either — but there was a lot of advertising as to how bad it was by the media.
Karl,
I would agree about gas prices 100% if I believed that the KSA was kidding. Next week is going to be very interesting in the oil markets.
I am so sick and tired of the this Division game,
First of all, it’s strategy: someone, Democrat or Republican, has to think about it. The fact is, most journalists think that (electoral) strategies and polls are the most important part of the campaign as opposed to actual issues. Think of it as NFL, NBA, MLB, sports geek talk for those who were never very good at sports.
Besides, why would you be tired of the “Division game”? It’s Standard Operating Procedure for the Democrats. If you’ve spent any time at all on this site (hah!), you’d know that and how most of us feel about Identity Politics and the idea of pitting group against group for personal political gain. Obama’s handlers have, in Obama, a truly gifted entity who can play politics as usual, call it new, and get away with it. For chumps like you.
– Democrats, the minority party in more ways than one, really have no choice but to play the “division game”. Its the only way they have to shake up the status quo, other than waiting around until the Republicans so badly screw things up, they lose by voter displeasure, (2006 Congressional), but thats a chance thing, so demographic wars it is.
Rick,
Good find. I’ve been wondering when that shoe would drop.
For the Saudis, the cost of production is so low that to a close first approximation they don’t really care what the price of oil is — whatever it is, it’s all profit to them. Their priority is therefore to ensure that the world continues to be dependent upon them for supply, and as the big Kahuna in the business they can pretty well dictate what the price will be (within limits).
What that story tells me is that they think the United States might be just before loosening some of the restrictions on energy production. That would be a disaster for them, as it would cut ‘way into their market and therefore income; they’re better off taking a short-term hit to preserve long-term profits. They’ve done it before. We had a major upswing in the “awl patch” in the early Eighties, and new production was coming on line. The Saudis cut the price below our production cost including environmental protection, and gave lots of money to the Greens; a year later, the joke was that if you opened a bank account in Midland with $100 you had a choice of a toaster or an oil rig, except they were out of toasters… Next year it’ll be a windmill, I reckon.
A sharp reduction in the oil price would also serve another Saudi purpose: reining Iran in a bit. Iran, like most of the Middle East, has become utterly dependent on oil revenues to finance their operations, including their nuclear ambitions, and has managed its oil resources so badly that they aren’t making nearly what they might even at the current inflated price. If the Saudis can swing a price cut, it’ll chop the mullahs off at the knees. This wouldn’t be an unadulterated good thing; desperate people tend to take dangerous chances.
Regards,
Ric
Sorry to hear that. Has momma gotten to your diaper yet?
Wipe all learned bia’s from your mind get quiet and truely listen to what your heart has to tell you. You will find the answer go with it and stop trying to let the EGO justify what you and only you have decided to do. Blame it on your heart.
What kind of New Age bullshit is this? Blame it on your heart! Blame it on your understanding, and/or lack thereof, the issues that affect you and the nation. My heart says, “FUCK YOU”! Meditate on that!
Yeah.
I think you hit the sweet spot, Roboc.
Chamomile tea and potpourri! There’s a XM station called “Landscapes”, otherwise known as soulless garbage for the near dead. Smuhamm need not tune in, he/she/it is set to that frequency already.
Ric – your comment mirrors a lot that I have written here. The seperation of powers – legislative and executive with the two houses of the legislature and the executive having their own sperate races to run and their own power bases makes for weak broad coalition parties. A parliamentary system where the executive comes out of the legislature produces stronger partisanship. Political parties are not mentioned in the unwritten British constitution, they are the result of the structure of the government. If the executive was elected seperately from the House of Commons in Great Britain, you would get an American result and an American party system.
But even there, voters in general are not as partisan as the parties they support and can switch support from one party to another – and do. Identification with a party, whether there or here is, as you said, a matter of preference. And here, definitely, different offices will draw different reactions from voters with voters splitting their tickets. Reagan Democrats, as an example. They voted for Reagan in great numbers, but still voted for their Democratic representatives. It is confusing if this analyzed through the lens of political parties, but makes sense if you see each race for each position as a seperate race (with some weak overarching ties through the parties), with each candidate viewed individually. Over-generalization shouldn’t be done, nor should hyper-partisanship or strong ideological preferences be considered the norm (these are actually very rare).
Regards,
Mikey NTH
Just a caveat – keep electric generation seperate from oil to an extent. Oil affects coal and transportation costs and maintenance (line crew) costs, but the bulk of US electricity comes from domestic coal. (Copper costs also effect electricity rates). Natural gas is generally used in peaking plants, for summer A/C demand. It is a part of the baseload plant numbers, but not the bulk that coal and nuclear represent. Oil fired plants are a small percentage of baseload plant numbers. (No link, this info is what I got from work.)
“coal extraction and transportation costs”
The unsaid truth is McCain wants high energy (oil) costs. It only makes sense with his Green Political Thinking (if he truely believes that we are the cause/reason/excellerant for climate change) then he absolutely reasonable for him to want to cut “carbon emissions” and the “Greens” say that high energy cost will curb the emissions. I hope and want to believe McCain when he talks about renuable and alternate sources of enery to release the grasp of foreign dependancy… but I don’t trust him because the first and best thing to do is drill in Alaska which he completely dismisses… Ohmama is a closet Marxist but McCain could very well be a closet “tree hugger”
An update to my caveat – check the rainfall/snowpack in the watersheds for hydroelectric dams. This past year Edison Sault had problems because of low water levels in Lake Superior. Its hydro plant and ACoE plant couldn’t run full-out because water levels had to be maintained for shipping through the locks.*
As an historical note in the late 1920’s the carrier USS Lexington (CV-2, a turbo-electric drive ship) tied up in Tacoma, Washington for a month and supplied power to the city because the water levels in the dams were so low. When the water levels built up again the Lexington was able to leave.
*The eastern UP gets its power from the hydro plants at the Soo, or across the Straits of Mackinac, or from Wisconsin. There are very few sources they can tap, the direction they can get power transmitted to them is very limited, and most of those sources are far away which makes transmission costs a problem.
There are people who are truly virtuous, and there are those who merely like to feel virtuous. The latter are mostly Democrats and liberals. Saying “I am a Democrat” is like saying “I am more virtuous and you”. Thus those people are eager to tell others they are a Democrat. And that is why party ID doesn’t mean a damn thing.
“and” should be “than” in my previous post
– Actually it could work either way steven, in that al Gorish way of:
“There are three kinds of people, those that are good at mathematics and those that aren’t”. – (al Gore – 2000 election – on the state of public schools.)
“Is American kids good at reading in the past? Of course they was.” (al Gore 2000 election – On reading in public schools.)
I think it has a lot to do with local politics. My Congressman is a blue dog Democrat. He is nothing like Nancy Pelosi. That makes it easier for people to say Democrat without blushing. I do not think that spending and immigration had that much to do with the change. If it did the numbers would be larger for Independents not Democrats. I also think that some of that stuff does not make the same impression outside the base. I think it is fatigue with the war and high gas prices together with the fact that the Democrats were smart enough to run some moderates out here in the country.
– Terrye – Ever since 2006 Nancy can’t change the toilet paper in the Capital hill bathrooms without getting permission from the blue dogs. They are what gives the Dems a 1 seat majority, and they don’t talk, or think the same as San Franciscans.
My line is that I dislike the Republicans, but I despise the Democrats.
– Christopher Hitchens
– Obamas camp are ducking under their desks over the townhall formate for the debates, and its smoking him out. the fact he’s ducking McCains challenge is going to be the tip off to even people who do not follow this stuff, that he can’t stand the real scrutiny, and is truly an empty suit without a teleprompter.
– I guess this thing he came back with, offering a single townhall debate on the 4th of july was something his camp thought would be clever. All it did was prove, once more, how young and inexperienced they are.
– If Obama thinks he can skate all the way through this election without having to go front and center to the nation about just who he is, and what his ideas are on the issues, that will make it almost a slam dunk that he gets hammered in the general. Isn’t going to work.
The Democrats are living off the fumes of anti-incumbency – without taking the heat for *being* the congressional majority since 2006, anti-Iraq – without getting hammered for being wrong on doubting the surge and have an outmoded and wrong view on it, and anti-corruption – while having broken promises to clean things up.
This is one election where it really could go anywhere. The voters could mindlessly reaffirm the 2006 trend, or zigzag a bit to guarantee that we don’t have the most leftwing Congress and leftwing President combined in our history. I disagree about the Blue Dogs. The left controls the Democrat party and Blue Dogs are pawns in the game, to be used and sometimes sacrificed when needed to advance the goals of the king (Obama) and queen (Pelosi). Many of the blue dogs have talked right and voted left. Same old BS that was played for years and was cleared out in 1994.
– Maybe. But then again whatever happened to the “impeachment” thing that P}elosi was gnawing on like a dog with a bone. What happened is the Blue dogs told her to stuff it. All of a sudden, off the table. so maybe you’re right in general, but they do not share the ideas of their more Leftest bretheren.
I think the Democratic party will find that even if they get a bigger majority in congress (which at this point seems likely) they will still have a hard time getting some of their agenda through because most of the new Democrats being elected are Blue Dogs, not leftists.
[…] was unsure whether that dynamic was still in play. If Luntz is correct, it tends to support my hypothesis that the recent shift in party identification favoring the Democrats is bad for the GOP, but not as […]
[…] gap is not much more than the 8.5 % party ID gap that Rasmussen has been getting. Moreover, party ID is more an indicator of how comfortable people are in admitting a party affiliation than voting […]