The Incredible Shrinking GOP: Party Shrunk By One-Fourth In Five Years
If you look at the bigger picture of the Incredible Shrinking GOP over time, it’s striking: Since its 2004 heyday, the party appears to have lost roughly a forth of its base.
After I pointed out yesterday that the number of self-identified GOPers had dropped to 20%, an official with Pew Research sent over some new data dramatizing the larger trend. Take a look at this chart, which shows the party’s losses in self-identified Republicans since 2004:
The number of self-identified Republicans has dropped from 30% in 2004, when President Bush won re-election and seemed to have a fairly stable Congressional majority, to 23% today. Since 2004, of course, Bush and the GOP’s policies caused his popularity to crater, triggering the loss of Congress in 2006, the White House in 2008, and the loss of “roughly a quarter” of the GOP’s base, as Pew puts it.
Self-identified Democrats, by contrast, have increased from 33% to 35% since 2004, which is not much of a gain and suggests that Dem numbers aren’t increasing as a result of GOP losses. Indeed, Pew also finds that since the beginning of the year the number of self-identified Democrats has dropped at the same rate as among Republicans, with Independents showing big gains.
But one other trend at work here is the gradual merging of the political views of Independents with those of Dems. So its unclear yet how detrimental the Dem losses will be to the party over time.
Either way, the larger picture of what’s happening to the Republican Party is really striking.
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I’m not a big fan of these polls, but considering how important the news channels think they are, can we agree that ratings are not their first priority? And that they are becoming less effective as a propaganda source?
Greg – my assumption here would be that it is cognitively simpler (and socially less complicated) to say “I’m independent” than to say “I am an X.” It’s less work all around.
Your notion that there’s a merging of independent towards Dem is likely correct given the evidence of the past elections and other polling not to mention the drop in Republican affiliation. Pretty clearly, there’s a major shift taking place.
Damn this is striking. At the same time I was freaking out over rightwing control of the country, we were moving away from the right.
The cultural swing back from the far right actually started when Bush stole the 2000 election. He wouldn’t have been able to steal ‘04 but for 9-11. It really did change everything – temporarily. Very temporarily.
Let me make another suggestion. The Pew graphs (party ID by region) show Dem self-identification dropping in all four regions and the ‘independent’ identification rising in each.
I don’t think we can make sense of this without taking into account the sustained propaganda enterprise waged from various corners of the right directed at portraying government as parasitic and politicians/public servants as corrupt and motivated by self-interest. From Reagan (’government is the problem”) through the Club for Growth, this line of propaganda has been pushed relentlessly via the burgeoning talk radio market, through Murdoch’s Fox and via the numerous think tanks and front groups set up and funded by Scaife, Coors, Bradley, etc. We ought to expect, I think, that the size, scope and duration of this enterprise will have had effects on how the polity has come to view government’s role and performance.
Clearly, one fundamental component in Obama’s strategy is to do damage to this notion of governance by actually working to make goverance effective and truly helpful. I think it was Krugman who made the bright observation (re the Bush administration and modern conservatives) that people who hate government and think it ‘the problem’ probably aren’t going to be very good at governing.
ps…I’d love to see the iterations of that graph going back three decades.
Part of the Republicans’ problem feels cyclical and part of it feels endemic to them. Cyclical in that institutional rot and idea exhaustion are bound to set in. Endemic because their brand attributes are doing them in. Their legendary discipline and their voraciousness for power are speeding their demise. Maybe the Democrats’ legendary disorganization is really an advantage. A kind of creative chaos that happens because we stick to our values, and are too busy arguing to sink to the depths the Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Bushes and Roves do.
I know that my right wing cousin, usually a cool, smug customer, is foaming. Obama Derangement Syndrome. It’s a nice switch for me!
Kathleen – it’s a very interesting question in your mention of the foaming cousin. You note something of an equivalence between your prior reactions to Bush and his to Obama. And it is this equivalence which points to the interesting question.
How could this be? Just to compare the two men’s smiles alone ought to be enough to make some pretty profound conclusions as to character. One is open and joyous and the other, amost always, suggests something rather less commendable. Or education and intelligence. Or the openness and confidence in presenting oneself in townhalls and press briefings for unscripted questions. Or the family ties to national power and economic centers (oligarchy) on the one hand and the complete lack of such on the other. And then there is the past eight years.
All of this makes your cousin’s responses deeply counter-intuitive. But what it does tell us is how effectively the right has been at rabble rousing citizens using powerful emotional symbols and language.
DanP, the ratings at FOX News have been just fine. As the world conspires against them, conservatives have “clung” to FOX “bitterly”. Without this cheerleading, FOX viewers might have to admit they’re wrong about everything.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/03/fox-news-ratings-remain-s_n_171455.html
“After a strong month of February, in which the network ranked #3 in primetime among all cable channels, Fox News posted even stronger ratings for the week ending March 1.”
I’d say FOX has this demographic locked in for the next four years. Now let’s get back to discussing secret Muslims!
Bernie — My cousin foams because the Republicans are not just out of power but are being repudiated, blamed and shamed. She foams because the ultra-liberal left wing media distorts and lies about Republican achievements and motives. (She thanks God that the beloved market is going to put the Times out of her misery.) She foams because, while she doesn’t hate Obama , she gets his appeal, she hates that he gets away with murder. The plane! The plane! And the swooning media giggling at beauty contest press conferences serving up softball questions (”enchants” interrogation). And the fact that the media conspires against revealing the true Democratic roots of evil. (Did you know, for instance, that Al Gore first brought up Willie Horton in ‘88? That’s one of the Repub talking points. Everybody said Bush and Lee Atwater were racists, but Gore brought up Horton first. Except that he didn’t, he attacked the Mass. prisoner furlough program, Repub oppo checked it out, landed on Horton and the rest is history.)
She foams because she is vehemently pro-life, with a Notre Dame ‘08 bride daughter-in-law who is apoplectic over this year’s graduation. At least this is what I’m gleaning from her Facebook wall posts. The spittle flies off the screen.
Back to my earlier point about Republican discipline being ultimately destructive, I think it’s no accident that we often call right wing extremists Nazis. I’m not a great student of history, but it seems to be that after WWII, the Germans (and the Japanese) had to come to grips with and neutralize their tendencies towards uber-nationalism and, well, bossiness. That same Type AAA strain lives in the worst of the Repub rump, methinks. And power is a petri dish for it.
Right now my cousin lives on Fox and Rush and sturm und drang. I hope her garden brings her peace.
Republicans are mean people and they suck, of course no one wants to be in their crappy party. It was bad before but Bush and Rove totally destroyed it. Man, that guy knows how to destroy things. Here’s a short list: Arbusto, The Texas Rangers, the presidential election process, Iraq, the U.S military, the U.S economy, U.S. reputation overseas, the U.S. dollar, the CIA, the city of New Orleans, John McCain’s career (although Sarah Palin helped) and the Republican party. I’m sure I’m missing a ton of stuff.
Americans defeated the Nazis
Americans defeated the Communists
Americans are defeating the Republicans [Greedy Old People G.O.P]
I agree with everything that was posted in this article, I
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