The Incredible Shrinking GOP: Party Shrunk By One-Fourth In Five Years

[babylonsister]

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/republican-party/the-incredible-shrinking-gop-party-shrunk-by-one-fourth-in-five-years/

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.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

1. Good news only if you're a prostate. nt

[napi21]

2. I wonder if they got together and sent Shrub a BIG thank you for

all he's done for them?

[babylonsister]

3. Exactly. I'd hang so much of this on him, though they all blindly

agreed to follow, so they're all responsible for their downfall.

[predfan]

4. The old "chicken's come home to roost" syndrome.

You can only demonize people and ideas so long, without coming up with some better ideas of your own........

Couldn't happen to nicer folks.