Democratic Gains, GOP Losses: The Changing Tea Leaves on Partisan Trends
This week, furious speculation has attended the switch of Senator Arlen Specter from the Republican to the Democratic Parties in his quest for reelection in 2010. Columnist E.J. Dionne has suggested that this event ratifies a decisive shift in American politics. Pundits and politicians have been musing about the significance of the switch, predictably either greatly inflating its importance, or discounting it, according to their own politically-motivated wishful thinking.
Notably, however, for all the discussion of the gains in Democratic party identification in Pennsylvania and nationally, this trend may be leveling off, signaling a more temporary shift than many have come to believe. Intriguing recent evidence appears in a Pew Research Center summary of recent polling trends posted on Wednesday (4/29).
One of the key findings in this set of surveys is that once we move beyond November 2008, the Democrats begin to lose ground again. The key graphic is here:
Republicans, to be sure, are also in decline. But it appears that these Republican losses are not to Democrats, but to the ranks of a rising bloc of independents — which in this case includes weak partisans. This is an important set of facts to reckon with as we review the 2008 election and interpret its meaning.
The bad news for Republicans is that their losses may not have bottomed out, according to the above figures (bearing in mind that these are estimates with a margin of error that could either flatten out the trend or make it steeper). The good news for Republicans is that these weak partisans and independents are exactly the people that will drift back when political circumstances change. The move from Republican to independent is not as grave for the GOP as a more drastic move from Republican to Democratic. I suspect that if we had a longer series in these graphs, we would almost certainly see that the Republicans have been in this position before, just as Democratic fortunes have waxed and waned, suggesting nothing like a permanent shift.
The Pew research also estimates that Democratic party identification in Pennsylvania is back to where it was in 2004, after a notable surge last year, and that GOP losses may even be leveling off there. Independent identification is on the rise, as it is nationally.
This research definitely speaks to the provocative political science paper authored by David Brady, Doug Rivers and Laurel Harbridge, appearing late last year in Policy Review. In this interesting paper, the authors suggest that the partisan changes from 2004 to 2008 indicate a fundamental shift in party loyalties that could well be permanent and lasting. Parroting much conventional wisdom, they fault the Republicans for taking overly conservative positions on issues such as gay rights, gun control and abortion. This was a familiar line echoed this week in reference to the Specter switch: social conservative capture of the GOP is leading it into permanent minority status.
The Pew data begin to cast doubt on how lasting this shift will be. Notably, the Brady, Rivers and Harbridge paper shows that most of the partisan movement is among weaker partisans, with far more weak Republicans having moved toward the Democrats than weak Democrats moved toward the Republicans. The question is how long will these ‘drifters’ stay there. They are weak partisans precisely because they aren’t highly committed to party stands and positions.
We can gather that weak Democrats are not hopelessly beyond the reach of Republican appeals anymore than weak Republicans were beyond the reach of Democratic appeals in 2006 and 2008. We will need additional months of polling on party identification, to say nothing of another election or two, to know for sure whether 2008 signals a permanent shift. Meanwhile, it does not appear quite as hopeless for the GOP as some have suggested — or at least it could be much worse.
Comments
To me, the movement away from the Republicans and towards independents is most likely caused by Republican identifiers skeptical of their own party.
The symbolic manifestation of this comes from the tea parties, which I saw a mostly an internal fight within the conservative movement. Populist conservatives were angry at the more institutionalist components of their movement and party. They felt ignored after 8 years of increased spending by W. Bush and the selection of the too-moderate-to-their-eyes John McCain as their 2008 standard bearer. Republicans in Congress seem to be paying attention to these libertarian impulses within their movement. Are any potential 2012 candidates, though?
Posted by: Brian Arbour | May 2, 2009 11:10 AM
You are fundamentally misreading what’s happening. In the run up to the election, weak partisans gravitate towards the party that they intend to vote for. After the election, they revert back to their internal view of their “Independent” status. This does not mean that they are available to the Republican presidential candidate in the next election. The vast majority of these voters will vote for Obama in 2012. By the time 2016 rolls around, they’ll consider themselves Democrats.
Posted by: William Ockham![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.themonkeycage.org/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 2, 2009 11:02 PM
How does this data comport with the 2000 AJPS article by Larry Bartels, which argues that party ID has been increasing since the late 1970s? Has there been a new dropoff since the endpoint of Bartels’ analysis (which was 1996, I believe)?
Posted by: JJ | May 3, 2009 12:19 AM
William, That’s a pretty bold prediction…you might be right if the election were held tomorrow, with the GOP still apparently in decline. 2012 is some distance in the future. 2016, a political lifetime away.
JJ, So much depends on how weak partisans are categorized and studied. On the one hand, political behavior research has found that there is some tendency for them to behave like partisans once in the voting booth. On the other hand, there’s a reason they’re identified as weak rather than strong - they are neither as informed or as predictable as strong partisans. They are the ones to watch for the near future, I would say.
Posted by: Jim Gimpel | May 3, 2009 09:40 AM
The Republicans aren’t apparently in decline. They are shrinking more slowly but much more inexorably in the way that matters most, in the number of people who will vote for Republican candidates. Take a close look at the generation of voters born since 1978. They skew Democratic by 2-1. This cohort is larger than the mostly Republican cohort that proceeded it. And they are about to enter their 30’s when voter participation rates and partisan identification increase. Unlike the New Deal Democrats they are replacing, this generation will consistently vote for the Democratic presidential nominee. There’s no indication that this trend will change. To appeal to this generation, the Republicans would have to figure out how to appeal to somebody besides white social conservatives and free market ideologues. I’m willing to bet against that happening.
Posted by: William Ockham![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.themonkeycage.org/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 3, 2009 06:48 PM
William, Ahh, but how strong is that identification? It isn’t “strong” Democrats who have seen the big gains.
Moreover, there is a tendency to forget just how close the 2008 election was: 52-46. It doesn’t take many of these partisan ‘drifters’ to completely change the outcome — and the election would then matter in a very different way, and everyone would be interpreting the results very differently. Maybe the real question we should be asking is why President Obama didn’t win by much more — given how bad the fundamentals were for the GOP.
Posted by: Jim Gimpel | May 4, 2009 08:29 AM
anecdotal:
I’ve only recently parted ways with the GOP due to the torture issue (and the fact that the majority of those speaking or writing on behalf of the GOP are pro torture), but my disaffection with the party goes back further. I did not cast a single vote for George W. Bush and in the most recent election I voted for Bob Barr.
I also support our President. His economic policies make me instinctually uncomfortable, but I look at them as bitter medicine that will hopefully lead to future economic health. I agree in theory that the market will self-heal over the long term, but in practice I don’t think we can wait that long. I’m all for less misery whenever possible. And it’s not like I’ve seen any viable counter-proposals from fiscal conservatives.
I also scoff at the teabaggers. The outrage of many participants might be genuine, but the event itself was hardly grassroots driven in the end. If the teabaggers are sincere, they might join the Libertarian Party, which at this point is actually less crazy and less mean spirited than the current GOP.
Posted by: Marcos El Malo | May 7, 2009 10:38 PM