Well, that would be an historic shift,
if it ever actually happened:
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.
I suppose I should be a smart, non-vindictive blogger and trumpet this as good news. After all, it does not really matter how different polling firms compare with each other. Every polling firm has a different
"house effect" that skew in one direction or the other on average, and so the more salient results are found within the historic trends of any individual polling firm. Thus, it isn't really important how Gallup's numbers compare to Harris, Pew, or the National Election Survey, but rather how Gallup's numbers compare to themselves. In this regard, for Gallup to show a shift in favor of Demcorats is undeniably a good thing for Democrats.
However, I am a vindictive blogger that holds long-term grudges against a small number of people and organizations, and as such I would like to point out how the only thing historic about this shift is probably that Gallup is now at least somewhat in line with the other three major polling organizations that conduct major studies of national partisan self-identification. While Gallup showed a very narrow one or two point Democratic lead for 2005,
Harris, which polls about 6,000 people a year, showed a 6-point Democratic margin for 2005. In late 2004, when Gallup was showing a 2-point edge for Republicans,
the National Annenberg Election Survey of over 67,000 registered voters showed a 2.8% edge for Democrats (PDF). In 2004, when Gallup was showing a 2-point edge for Republicans,
Pew, which polled 19,000+ registered voters, showed a 4-point edge for Democrats (I can't find Pew info on 2005).
In other words, 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? It has now been nearly twenty months since I first began to ask these question on MyDD, and I cannot remember ever receiving a satisfactory answer. Let the truth be known.
