At the Washington Post Sean Bock and Landon Schnabel report that more Americans than you might expect are switching parties:
Many observers of U.S. politics talk about contemporary “polarization.†The word suggests two camps of people firmly entrenched in their views, growing further and further apart on issues, and increasingly disliking each other, implying that we are a nation divided.
This narrative leads people to assume that party identities are strong and stable, that Republicans stay Republican and that Democrats stay Democrats. But is that the case?
It can be hard to track party switching. Surveys may ask the same questions over time, but they tend to ask them of different people. It often looks like the percentage of people who are Republican, Democratic and independent remains fairly steady over time, making those identities seem stable. But researchers don’t know whether that’s because people aren’t switching or because they are — just in a way that leads to a generally similar distribution of Republicans, Democrats and independents from year to year.
To better understand this, we took advantage of new General Social Survey panel data, which tracks the same people over time. The General Social Survey is a nationally representative survey of American adults, conducted since 1972 out of the National Opinions Research Center at the University of Chicago. The survey monitors trends in attitudes, opinions and behaviors and is often considered the gold standard in the social sciences. In a new study, we considered whether the particular individuals that the GSS interviewed in 2016 had different party identities in 2020.
We found that 70 percent of partisans — Democrats and Republicans alike — kept the same political identifications between 2016 and 2020. But that leaves a significant minority who did not. About 10 percent of Democrats and Republicans switched to the other party. An additional 15 percent of both Democrats and Republicans in 2016 identified as independents by 2020. The most volatile group was independents: Over 50 percent of independents in 2016 identified with either the Democratic or Republican party in 2020.
I suspect that their finding on “independents” (I think that “non-affiliated” or “neither of the above is acceptable” would be more accurate) is more complicated than that. Here in Illinois for example, you must request either a Democratic ballot or a Republican ballot to vote in those primaries, respectively. I interpret that as indicating that you can’t tell much by it.
I wish they reported more numbers in their analysis but, sadly, it is largely qualitative. For example, it would be interesting to know the statistics on party switching in people of different age brackets. Some studies have suggested that people are impelled to switch parties by certain life events, e.g. marriage, having a child, buying a home, etc.
However, the more notable factor than people merely switching from Republican to Democrat and vice versa, from either to “independent”, or from “independent” to either is reflected in Gallup’s regular party affiliation report which they have been updating regularly since 2004. The percentage of people reporting that they are Democrats is nearing its low water mark for the period while the percentage of those reporting they are Republicans is nearing its high water mark for the period but higher than either is the percentage of those reporting they are “independents”.
That suggests to me that under a proportional representation system American government would look a lot different than it does at present. While it might mean that more extreme splinter groups would gain representation, I suspect it means that a considerable number would not vote reliably for either party.
