Charlie Cook reviews Pew Research polling that brings bad news for the Republican party in the National Journal.
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center attracted a great deal of attention because it found that 62 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the Republican Party was “out of touch with the American people”; only 33 percent disagreed. Even 36 percent of Republicans thought their party was out of touch. Sixty-five percent of independents also held that view, and, unsurprisingly, 77 percent of Democrats. By 52 percent to 42 percent, Americans said the Republican Party was “too extreme.” Conversely, only 39 percent saw the Democratic Party as too extreme, while 56 percent did not.
Democrats had an 8 percentage point advantage in pure party identification for all of Pew’s 2012 polling: 33 percent called themselves Democrats, and 25 percent said they were Republicans. The current 14-point gap in leaned party identification, 51 percent leaned identification for Democrats, 37 percent for Republicans, is sobering. This is wider than what we are used to, and if the trend continues, it means the bone damage is burrowing toward the marrow.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
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2 comments:
I'm not sure what's going to happen to the GOP. I thought 2008 was a sign, until 2010 happened. Now I'm thinking that something is going to happen in 2014 to make me think they're not really going down hill.
Even if the data suggests otherwise. We'll just see, I suppose.
Andrew Sullivan has compared the GOP's current situation to that faced by the Tories, the conservative party in England in the late '90's.
After a devastating loss in Britain's 1997 election, which Sullivan compared to the GOP wipe-out in 2008, the Tories acted similarly, purged the party of moderates and moved further right like the Republicans have done here. In subsequent elections, they moved further and further right and lost by bigger margins. After about a decade of this, they finally went back toward the center and, combined with their opponents falling out of favor, made a comeback.
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