Chalk another one up for President Obama and the Democratic leadership. The Gallup organization has found that more Americans now identify as Republicans than Democrats:
PRINCETON, N.J. — Since the Republican Party’s strong showing on Election Day last month, Americans’ political allegiances have shifted toward the GOP. Prior to the elections, 43% of Americans identified as Democrats or leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 39% identified as or leaned Republican. Since then, Republicans have opened up a slight advantage, 42% to 41%, representing a net shift of five percentage points in the partisanship gap.
Everybody loves a winner, right? However, that’s merely continuing a long slide that began after Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008 and is the lowest showing for the Democrats in 25 years. “The Republicans are even worse” is no longer a particularly good argument.
The argument will now turn to whether the Democrats should try doing something different or do more of what they’ve been doing. The persistence of the slide suggests that the former would be a better strategy but I suspect that the Democrats will rely on doubling down as their best response.
Hidden in Gallup’s findings they may find some solace: the percentage of Americans who identify with either party or even lean towards either party is the lowest since Gallup has been polling this question.
“Everybody loves a winner, right?”
People having a “bandwagon mentality” go with winners, that’s for sure. However, a growing number of people are tired of the symbolic “nothing” produced by winners, of late. That’s the reason for the dispirited condition of both parties, and why there’s a greater movement towards registering as an “independent.”
“The Republicans are even worse†is no longer a particularly good argument.
It never was!
Incidentally, I feel better about my non-vote this year than about any vote I’ve actually ever cast. If I had been in Florida in 2002 I probably would have felt good about voting for Jeb for re-election, though. He was one hell of a governor.
Ice, that’s the first compliment I’ve heard you give a government official!
Credit where credit is due, jan.
We’ve had decent government locally, for the most part. (I mean in Orange County and many of the cities here, as well as some of the counties adjacent.) But that’s easy to do when the money pours in so easily. We get lots and LOTS and fucking HUGE AMOUNTS OF LOTS of money through taxes on tourists. So local government doesn’t completely suck, though I’m not sure it has anything to do with the quality of the pols.
As for Jeb – he was a fantastic governor. He was even better than Bob Graham. He generally did fine work all the way around (save for fucking with the schools, but every government official in the country does that, from what I can see), and his work during the hurricane season in 2004 was phenomenal. Seriously, four major hurricanes hitting in the span of six weeks – terrible. But he was everywhere, seemingly at once, for months on end.
You will note that even though we took fuck all more serious hits than LA did in 2005, we came thru it quickly. It helped that we had learned great lessons from Andrew back in 1992. (Immediate lesson learned: do NOT use staple guns on roofing shingles. Conceptual lesson learned: building codes matter. That last is another reason to mistrust libertarians.) But Jeb really busted his ass, and even hardcore Democrats look back on his governorship wistfully now.
…
Incidentally, the hurricanes, and the response to them, put the nail in the coffin for any chance Kerry had of getting elected President in 2004. We had one of the debates down here, don’t remember where exactly, that year after some of the hurricanes had hit. After the debate that night, all the TV assholes commented on how confident and in command Kerry had been – just how GOOD & RELAXED he looked. And how haggard Bush had looked. Well, Kerry had spent several days resting physically and preparing for the debate. Bush had spent the day of the debate handing out supplies in areas hard hit. I noted a lot of locals picked up on that, though the TV assholes never did figure it out. I don’t think Kerry had a chance down here anyway with the booming bubble economy, but he really didn’t after his great debate win. And as went Florida, so went the Electoral College….
* The hurricanes were Charley, Frances, Ivan (the satellite pictures of that one adorned my work computer for years – an epically large storm), and Jeanne. Three of them went over our house, and I worked with a woman who lived in a town which basically had three eyes go over it. Charley was one scary sumbitch.
** And no, I would not vote for Jeb for President. First, too damned many Bushes. Second, I think his national level policies suck balls. He’d be a serious danger to be a competent versus of his brother or Obama.