The poll also has plenty of other good news for Democrats. It shows that the Republican Party is getting grayer, more conservative, and becoming a regional party concentrated in the Southern United States. Young people are fleeing the Republican Party in droves, as are moderates and college graduates. It doesn't get much better than that!
There was a time when Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News crazies were a real threat to progressives and the Democratic Party. No longer. They've spent years pushing Republicans to the right, enforcing a rigidly conservative ideology, and driving away anybody with the least hint of human decency and common sense. That strategy was successful for quite a while, but they overdid it and now it's killing them.
Below is a chart from the Gallop poll showing the decrease in Republican Party ID among various groups from 2001 to 2009. The only group that hasn't become less Republican is people who attend church frequently. Interesting that another recent poll shows that this same group is also most strongly supportive of torture. Click on the image for a a larger version.
4 comments:
Just out of curosity, are these states turning democratic because people have changed parties, or because people who are republican or conservative are leaving for lower tax states.
The Republican Party is in disarray nationwide due to disagreement in the party on the degree of conservatism to incorporate. But conservative ideas are alive, and will be reborn, strengthened and sharpened from countering the exteme leftist leaders going too far. It is the old yin and yang, the push hands dance. Neither side will die. But rising too far, too fast will cause imbalance, and a fall.
Anon, the survey doesn't answer your question, but as far as I can tell there's no indication that the current party shifts are a result of selective migration to (or from) the South. It really looks like these changes are due to people deserting the Republican party because it has moved too far to the right and is now out of sync with majority opinion in our country.
Jill, I think you have it kind of backwards. It's not the left in our country that's become too extreme. It's the right, and that's why you're losing.
I do agree that politics is cyclic, but it think it's unlikely that the right will recover until they dump their crazies (otherwise known as the Republican base) and rebuild as a centrist party. That might not make ideological conservatives very happy, but you're all just going to have to live with it if you ever want to win elections again.
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