Americans identifying themselves as Democrats falls to its lowest recorded level in 7 years

democrat-logoA year ago at this time, it was “cool” to be a Democrat. Obama was the hope and change man. He was going to change the way Washington worked, get all the terrorists to love us and fix all the world’s problems. Yes last year at this time when Americans were polled about their political party identity, 41.6% of those polled claimed to be Democrats. Only 32.8% polled called themselves Republicans. What a difference a year of failed policies, and new terror scares makes. As of December 2009, the same Rasmussen poll finds that now only 35.5% of those polled call themselves Democrats while 34% of those polled call themselves Republican. According to Rasmussen, the Democrat’s identify of only 35.5% is the lowest in 7 years. No wonder Democrats are now attacking Scott Rasmussen for not oversampling Democrats like every other poll does.

In December, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell to the lowest level recorded in more than seven years of monthly tracking by Rasmussen Reports.

Currently, 35.5% of American adults view themselves as Democrats. That’s down from 36.0 a month ago and from 37.8% in October. Prior to December, the lowest total ever recorded for Democrats was 35.9%, a figure that was reached twice in 2005. See the History of Party Trends from January 2004 to the present.

The number of Republicans inched up by a point in December to 34.0%. That’s the highest total for Republicans since December 2007, just before the 2008 presidential campaign season began.

However, the number of Republicans in the country is essentially no different today than it was in November 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president.

The change since Obama’s election is that the number of Democrats has fallen by six percentage points and the number of voters not affiliated with either major party has grown by six. The number of adults not affiliated with either party is currently at 30.6%, up from 24.7% in November 2008.

Rasmussen Reports tracks this information based on telephone interviews with approximately 15,000 adults per month and has been doing so since November 2002. The margin of error for the full sample is less than one percentage point, with a 95% level of confidence.

Despite the changes, there are still more Democrats than Republicans in the nation. But the gap is down to 1.5 percentage points, the smallest since August 2005.

No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)

January 3, 2010 · Filed Under Democrats, Political Polling


Comments