More Americans Now Call Themselves Democrats

Posted on March 29, 2006

A new Gallup poll shows that more Americans now consider themselves Democrats than Republicans, with 33% considering themselves Democrats. 32% consider themselves Republicans and 34% consider themselves Independents.

Republicans had gained the upper hand in recent years, but 33% of Americans, in the latest Gallup poll, now call themselves Democrats, with those favoring the GOP one point behind. But Gallup says this widens a bit more "once the leanings of Independents are taken into account."
Independents now make up 34% of the population. When asked if they lean in a certain direction, their answers pushed the Democrat numbers to 49% with Republicans at 42%. One year ago, the parties were dead even at 46% each. This shift indicates, Gallup says, why its polls show Democrats leading in this year's congressional races. The latest poll was taken from January to March 2006, with a national sample of about 1,000 adults.

Ten years ago, almost no one called himself an Independent. This is a direct result of the hijacking of the Republican party by the religious right. Most people originally joined the Republican party because they oppose big government, deficits, government interference in private matters, and burdensome taxes on small business and the middle class.

As Governor Christine Todd Whitman notes in her recent book, It's My Party, Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America, the religious right has turned the GOP into the party that wants a theocracy in which the government dictates policy on social and health issues, while running the largest deficits in American history. The result is a flight to the ideological middle and the creation of a large voting block of Independent voters who don't have party loyalty in the least: all they care about is a candidate's stance on the issues that matter to them.

Now we'll see if anyone in 2008 can turn that voting block into a political base.