the tide is turning
Editor & Publisher mentions the latest Gallup survey of party identification:
In a (perhaps) historic shift, more Americans now consider themselves Democrats than Republicans, the Gallup organization revealed today.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.
The full Gallup analysis is quite encouraging.
(Thanks to John at AmericaBlog for the tip.)
update (3/30 at 9:05AM):
Chris Bowers at MyDD says that these results are not quite as newsworthy as they seem:
… no matter how many people they poll (roughly 8,000 every three months), Gallup has consistently measured the country about 5% more in favor of Republicans than the other three major pollsters who conduct huge, national studies of partisan self-identification. Rather than trumpeting a historical shift that was only historic because their data from 2004 and 2005 disagreed with everyone else's, maybe Gallup should develop some sort of explanation as to why their random sampling methodology consistently turns up more Republicans than every other major public, political polling firm in the country.All four firms, Harris, NAES, Pew and Gallup, are polling enormous sample sizes with minuscule margins for error, and yet somehow Gallup has consistently been the pro-Republican outlier. In fact, Gallup outlies so heavily from these other firms that margin of error in the different samples cannot by itself be the answer. What is the answer? Why is Gallup finding so many more self-identifying Republicans relative to self-identifying Democrats than other polling firms? [emphasis added]