What proportion of American voters say they are Republican?

[Fly by night]

This past weekend, there was an article in our paper's Sunday magazine, co-authored by Cokie Roberts and her husband (whose name I can't remember now). The upshot of the article was that there were seven subgroups of voters (e.g., security moms) whose decisions would likely sway the election. From their analysis, most of the subgroups were trending slightly or strongly Democratic. But that's not what this thread is about.

Cokie and her partner prefaced their article by saying that 40% of American voters are Democrats, 40% are Republicans and the remaining 20% are Independents. (Sorry about that, Greens, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, et al.) That didn't seem right to me, so I googled to find out how American voters line up by party. I found one article that said that 43% of voters now self-identify as Democrats (down from 48% not too long ago), 33% self-identify as Republicans (a figure that has not changed much in recent years) and the remainder are Independents (or whatever). So that's why I'm putting this thread up. Can folks out there show me other break-downs of the electorate by party status? If, indeed, we go into this election (and every recent election) with a 10% advantage over the Repugs, no wonder they have to resort to their 72 hour turn-out-the-silicone-and-sleazy-software vote. How about it, DUers? Got any other analyses of party identification you can share?

If I get some authoritative responses, I will forward them to DINO Cokie and her hubbie. Don't want all "our" talking heads to be bobble-heads, particularly about such a bedrock issue as how party identification breaks down within the American electorate. Because while I can see many reasons why traditional Republicans would be disenchanted with the Smirking Chimp and his flying monkey minions, I can't imagine any self-identifying Democrat pushing the button for Bushitler. Consequently, we ought to kick ass and take names, unless of course, the votes don't get counted as cast. Peace out.

[OnTheOtherHand]

1. 43-33 sounds high

Pew has 34.9D-31.6R (here). You can go to the General Social Survey and obtain 34.0D-29.8R in 2004 (enter YEAR for row, PARTYID for column, and check row percentages). As Pew points out, people often aren't consistent in their responses from survey to survey. The question wording will influence how many people end up as independents.

Here Pew has a perspective over more time: http://people-press.org/commentary/display.php3?AnalysisID=95

No idea where 40D-40R would come from, except perhaps as a vague indication that presidential races are likely to swing between 60-40 and 40-60.

If you play with the GSS link (try PARTYID as a row variable and PRES00 / PRES96 / PRES92 / PRES88... as column variables, or something like that), you can see that a lot of Dems, especially "not strong Dems," apparently do vote for Republican presidents, depending on the year. (As I've pointed out before, some people misreport their past votes, so don't take these results too literally. Heck, don't take anything survey-based too literally.)

[Fly by night]

2. Thanks, OTOH, for the links.

The Pew link was most informative and encouraging, particularly these two paragraphs:

"Pew’s analysis of long-term trends in party affiliation also shows that independents “lean” more Democratic than in the past. Roughly a third of voters identify with neither party; among this group, 13.5% say they lean Democratic, compared with 9.8% who say they lean Republican, while 10.2% refuse to lean to either party. By comparison, at least as many independents leaned Republican (11.2%) as leaned Democratic (10.3%) in the 2002 election cycle. This has potential implications in this year’s midterm election campaign, where independents show a decided preference for the Democratic candidate.

"In surveys conducted in August and September, the Democrats held a 48%-30% advantage among independent voters in the generic ballot, which is a major factor in the Democrats’ 11-point lead in the midterm horserace (50%-39%). In the fall of 2002, the Democrats led by only six points among independent voters (41%-35%). However, independents are much less likely than committed partisans to actually vote on Election Day, and this is especially the case in midterm elections. "

We're enjoying a three times greater lead among independents now than in 2002. Great news.

If other folks have other sources for party break-out data, please post them. But thanks again, OTOH -- I thought the 40/40 split sounded weird also.