Two new Gallup polls spell mega-trouble for the Democratic party: one finds that the Democratic party has now effectively lost the support it gained during the presidency of George W. Bush — and the second shows that independents now leaving the “independent” category are becoming conservatives.
Add that to a political mix where the party is being dissed by liberals/progressives (choose the word you want to use) for not being liberal enough and you get one more instance of how the 24/7 new/old media conventional wisdom needs to be swept under the rug. A new Democratic majority? The GOP merely a regional party? Not so faaaasssssst!
Here’s Gallup on the Democrats’ Bush years’ support evaporating:
The year 2009 marked the end of a three-year run of majority Democratic support among U.S. adults. Last year, an average of 49.0% of Americans identified as Democrats or said they leaned Democratic, the party’s first yearly average below 50% since 2005. Still, Democrats maintained an average eight-point advantage in support over Republicans last year, as 40.7% of Americans identified as Republicans or leaned Republican.
And, Gallup notes, the poll may not tell the whole bad-news story for Democrats:
The 2009 results are based on aggregated data from all Gallup and USA Today/Gallup polls conducted last year, encompassing interviews with more than 21,000 Americans. In each poll, Gallup asks Americans whether they consider themselves Republicans, Democrats, or independents. Independents are subsequently asked if they lean to the Republican or Democratic Party.
The 2009 results are based on aggregated data from all Gallup and USA Today/Gallup polls conducted last year, encompassing interviews with more than 21,000 Americans. In each poll, Gallup asks Americans whether they consider themselves Republicans, Democrats, or independents. Independents are subsequently asked if they lean to the Republican or Democratic Party.
Though total Republican support did increase last year, this came mostly from what can be considered “soft support.” The increase in overall GOP support is owing to an increase in the percentage of Republican-leaning independents…
Indeed, a second Gallup poll shows conservatives are now the country’s number one ideological group — a development that means as the Democratic leadership and White House try to juggle demands from its party base that wants more liberal policies, it risks losing overall support if it veers as far left as many liberals demand:
The increased conservatism that Gallup first identified among Americans last June persisted throughout the year, so that the final year-end political ideology figures confirm Gallup’s initial reporting: conservatives (40%) outnumbered both moderates (36%) and liberals (21%) across the nation in 2009.
More broadly, the percentage of Americans calling themselves either conservative or liberal has increased over the last decade, while the percentage of moderates has declined.
Since 1992, there have been only two other years — 2003 and 2004 — in which the average percentage of conservatives nationwide outnumbered moderates, and in both cases, it was by two percentage points (in contrast to the current four points).
The rather abrupt three-point increase between 2008 and 2009 in the percentage of Americans calling themselves conservative is largely owing to an increase — from 30% to 35% — in the percentage of political independents adopting the label. Over the same period, there was only a slight increase in professed conservatism among Republicans (from 70% to 71%) and no change among Democrats (at 21%).
And (not much of a surprise here and we have noted this before) many partisans don’t like the word “moderate”:
The proportion of independents calling themselves “moderate” held relatively steady in the mid-40s over the last decade, while the proportion of Republican and Democratic moderates dwindled. Between 2000 and 2009, the percentage of moderates fell five percentage points among Democrats (from 44% to 39%) and seven points among Republicans (from 31% to 24%).
Not surprisingly Gallup finds that:
The problem for the Demmies, Gallup concludes:
The effect of this shift among Democrats is most apparent when one reviews the trend in their ideological profile over the past decade. Whereas moderates constituted the largest bloc of Democrats in 2000, today they are about tied with liberals as twin leaders, and the proportion of conservatives has declined…
…Longer term, however, the 2000s showed a decline in political independence compared to the 1990s, with an average of 36.8% of Americans identifying as political independents from 1990-1999, compared with 34.8% from 2000-2009. Meanwhile, the proportion of Americans identifying as Republicans was a point higher in the 2000s (30.9%) than in the 1990s (29.9%), while Democratic support was steady at 33.3% in both decades.
Gallup’s overall conclusion is one we’ve noted here many times with many polls: it is further evidence of the polarization of American politics. Post-partisan, schmost partisan..
Political independents showed increased attachment to the “conservative” label in 2009, boosting the overall ranks of that group so that it now clearly outnumbers moderates in Gallup’s annual averages for the first time since 2004. Longer term, the proportions of Americans calling themselves conservative as well as liberal expanded slightly this past decade, largely because of increased partisan attachment to each label. At the same time, the percentage of “moderates” has dwindled, underscoring the heightened polarization of American politics as the nation heads into a new decade.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.