Partisan ID--Dems Rising: NYT Tie-Breaker, More From Pew

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Mar 07, 2009 at 10:30

Rasmussen, which showed Republicans falling, Democrats rising, and Independents holding fairly even, and Harris, which showed Republicans falling, independents rising, and Democrats holding fairly even.  Well, all along there was a tie-breaker hiding in plain sight from earlier in week--at the New York Times:

The two driving trends here appear to be the decline of Democratic dominance in the South, which appears to have come to an end, and the increase in the Democratic advantage among younger voters, which is growing increaingly strong. Put this together with almost year-old data from Pew, that has long-term trend comparisons behind it (on the flip), and the case for rising Dem identification is increasingly strong.

First, Pew's basic finding, from its April 28, 2008 report, "Gen Dems: The Party's Advantage Among Young Voters Widens":

In addition to its most recent data being a year old, Pew also combines party identifiers with party leaners.  But studies indicate that party leaners tend to be reliable voters, and a good chunk of them tend to be folks who simply don't like to think of themselves as "belonging" to a party, so they aren't about to go anywhere.  This, plus the fact that Pew is doing an apples-to-apples comparison would make its data reliably supportive of the over-all argument that Democratic party identification is strengthening.  Furthermore, the 14-point widening between the parties from 2004 to 2008 was evenly split between a 7% increase for Dems and a 7% decrease from Reps.

What's more, as expected, a breakdown by age is even more encouraging:

While the Dems have gained across all demographics, it's the still-growing Gen-Y voting population that's the strongest source of their support, and it's only growing stronger.

Democratic strength is particularly evident in the following two graphs that provide age profiles of the electorate from 2008, compared to 1992:

Comparing the two charts above, one sees two things immediately about these two voter-age profiles:  First, that the parties were converging in 1992 (with a Democratic advantage dwindling to nothing) while they are diverging today (with a Democratic advantage rapidly growing).  Second, that the two lines were signifincantly farther apart, overall, in 2008 than they were in 1992.

Most notably, the 20-years olds in 1992, who were 36 in 2008, have gone from evenly split in 1992, to roughly a 10-point Democratic advantage in 2008.

Furthermore, the gender breakdown shows that even men now lean Democratic, though only slight, while the gender gap remains huge:

The fact that men under 30 now lean Democratic as strongly as all women is a sure sign of how deep in the hole the GOP now is.

Finally, this breakdown of age with a wide range of demographic subgroups is particularly encouraging when one looks down at the regions:

Here we see that under-30 voters lean Democratic by almost 2-1 in the Midwest, by exactly 2-1 in the West, and by just over 2-1 in the Mortheast.  Can you say, "Regional remnant party"? Sure you can!  Can you say, "Just like the Federalists in the late 1810s?"  Sure you can!

Finally, just to indicate that the one-year old data Pew us using is almost certainly an understatment of current Democratic strength, here's a more recent Pew release (from Jan 29) showing sharply increased favorability ratings:

While not the same thing as party-ID, the spike in favorability is a strong indication that Dems are almost certainly doing better on the party-ID front as well.

Pew stated:

As Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress battle over President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package, the latest survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds the Democratic Party with a vast favorability advantage over the GOP. More than six-in-ten Americans (62%) say they have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, compared with 40% who say they have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party.

The current Democratic favorability advantage is the largest measured in nearly two decades. The widening gap is primarily a result of an increase in favorable views of the Democratic Party since the election, up from 57% in late October 2008. In December 1994, following the Republican takeover in Congress, the GOP held a 17-point advantage, that party's largest. Two-thirds (67%) said they had a positive opinion of the Republican Party and 50% had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party after the 1994 election.

In short, the totality of data from Pew strongly indicates that Harris's findings of Dems holding flat is almost certainly an understatement of Democratic strength.