OCCOM BILL wrote:nimh wrote:Or, to put it in a more simplistic way: [..] if there is a significant slice of voters that shifted from explicitly Republican to Independent-leaning Republican, wouldnt it be a logical guess that a similar slice moved from Independent-leaning Republican to dead-center-middle-of-the-road (and thus into tossup voter status)?
I suppose that would be a logical guess, but a guess just the same. I'd find that argument more compelling if the Democrats had seen a similar surge... but they didn't. In a two party system, by that logic, shouldn't there be a measurable increase on the Left side if we're assuming a shift towards middle also pushes the middle over center?
Again, a fair enough point. I still think that a decrease in Republican self-identification of that size does indicate a decrease in appeal of the kind of hard right politics that the Republican Party has pushed through the last six years. But its true that while the repellent effect of the Republican label has been marked, there is indeed no complementary increase in appeal of the Democratic Party...
According to Rasmussen.
However, I've finally found that graph I was looking for (when instead I found the generational graph, in one of my previous posts). I thought it was on pollster.com, but it wasnt. It was on the site of the Pew Research Center.
Pew does its own opinion polls. They tend to go along with the pack, no strange deviations this way or that way. Pew doesnt have a worse track record than Rasmussen. Rasmussen reports proudly on its site that
Slate declared it "#1 in accuracy for Election 2004", which is true, but it fails to say that it was declared a tied #1 in a comparison of just five pollsters. Meanwhile, when it came to the national percentages of the presidential vote, as
I calculated here at the time, Pew had come the closest to the actual result out of 17 polls, including Rasmussen.
OK, so what have Pew's numbers on voter ID been, over the years? In March, it
published its latest numbers. Here is the graph:
So the two polls agree that Republican identification has gone drastically down in recent years (since 2004, according to Rasmussen; since 2002, according to Pew); and according to Pew, Democratic identification has gone significantly
up in the same years.
The result of the latter is a wider party ID advantage for the Dems now than has been seen for either party since at least 1990.
Does that change your take on this?
I must protest. From my very first posts on A2K I made my independence, as well as my lack of respect for Bush clear... even while agreeing more often with the Republican mindset. However; the Republicans have virtually always been wrong on Separation of Church and State, Immigration, Environment, and a wealth of related issues. Moreover; in addition the Republicans join Democrats in a Bi-Partisan campaign that insures corruption that disgusts me to no end. There has been no new found nor re-found independence. You mistakenly interpret my anti-liberal biases as pro Republican when they are not. To the extent I repeat talking points; I submit this only happens if I happen to concur, and NO bias leads me to do so. You also seem to forget that my voting record in no way supports your assumption. Frankly; YOU, despite your citizenship, are far more hinged to the Democrats than I am to the Republicans... and I would consider that link negligible... and usually irrelevant. I can think of few American members of A2K who can be relied upon to offer "their own opinion" as consistently as myself. I'll grant you that your assumption that I'm a closet Republican has more foundation than those on the immigration thread who consistently accuse me of being a closet Liberal but you are just as wrong.
I was astounded to see Obama actually passed her by in the latest Gallup poll (released today). While Giuliani still looks like a winner over Hillary in the General; The percentages reverse when you replace Hillary with Obama... and Obama becomes the polling favorite.
