Here's Gallup:
The percentage of Americans who identified as Republicans in 2007 is the lowest of any of the 20 calendar years since 1988 that Gallup has conducted its interviewing primarily by telephone. An average of 27.7% of Americans identified as Republicans, based on more than 26,000 Gallup interviews in 2007. The previous low in Republican identification was 28.1% in 1999.Meanwhile, 32.5% of Americans identified as Democrats and 38.6% as political independents last year. The latter percentage is on the high end of what Gallup has measured in the last two decades, surpassed by only the 39.1% independent identification average from 1995. The high point for Democratic identification came in 1988, when 35.6% said they were Democrats.
[...]
The Democratic advantage is even greater when taking into account the partisan leanings of independents. In addition to the 32.5% of Americans who initially identified as Democrats in 2007, another 18.1% initially said they were independents but expressed a Democratic leaning, for a total of 50.6% Democrats and Democratic leaners. A total of 39.6% of Americans identified with, or leaned to, the Republican Party.
That 11-point gap in partisan leaning is the largest Gallup has observed since it began regularly measuring partisan leanings in 1991, topping the previous high gap of 10.2 points from last year.
The latest Associated Press poll isn't too far off:
More people say they are Democrats than said so before voting started in this year's presidential contests while the number of Republicans has remained flat, a survey showed Thursday.[...]
The poll showed 52 percent call themselves Democrats, up from 45 percent in an AP-Ipsos survey in mid-December. Thirty-five percent say they are Republicans, about the same as December's 37 percent.
When one of America's major political parties finds itself hemorrhaging support to the point where fewer than 2 in 5 voters will admit to affiliating with it while the rival party enjoys the support of a majority of the American people, it's in a whole heap of trouble. So while it may be the case that a brutal fight to the convention on the Democratic side would cause more harm than help for the party -- I'm not willing to concede it's the case, but for the sake of argument let's say it is -- it's well worth noting that the Democratic Party nevertheless is standing on much firmer ground than is the Republican Party, which has fallen below 40 percent in voter identification and is seemingly continuing to fall in this key metric of viability as a party.
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