Democrats once again had the advantage in terms of party affiliation in 2012, according to estimates released by Gallup on Wednesday, with the latest results breaking the tie seen in 2010 and 2011.
Gallup said an average of 47 percent of Americans identified as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, while 42 percent identified as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents.
While Democrats moved back into the lead after the ties seen in the two previous years, the Democratic advantage is much narrower than the 12-point gap seen in 2008.
Democrats have usually held the advantage since Gallup began measuring party identification in 1991, with Republicans only seeing an advantage in that first year.
Gallup said 31 percent of Americans identified as Democrats, while an additional 16 percent said they were independents that leaned toward the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, 28 percent of Americans identified as Republicans and another 14 percent said they leaned toward the GOP.
Eleven percent of those that identified as political independents said they have no leaning, up slightly from 10 percent in 2010.
Gallup analyst Jeffrey Jones said, “The percentages of Republican and Democratic identifiers were essentially unchanged from 2011 to 2012.”
“The new Democratic advantage is mostly due to an increased proportion of Democratic-leaning independents and a decreased proportion of Republican-leaning independents,” he added. “Thus, the movement comes almost exclusively among Americans with weaker attachments to the political parties.”
While 2012 was an election year, the 40 percent that initially identified as independents matched the record high from 2011.
Jones noted that the usual pattern is for the percentage of Americans identifying as independents to decline in a presidential election year.
“The rise in independence is perhaps not surprising, given the low esteem in which Americans hold the federal government and the political parties,” Jones said.
He added, “But with most Americans willing to at least express a leaning to either party, it does suggest the potential for the parties to gain more solid adherents in the future.”
Gallup said the estimates are based on an aggregate of all Gallup and USA Today/Gallup polls in 2012, representing more than 20,000 interviews. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.
by RTT Staff Writer
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