Party Animals

Republicans hoping to energize their base in this last week before the November 7 midterm elections might be disheartened to learn that their base is shrinking. According to Rasmussen Reports, “the number of people identifying themselves as Republicans has fallen to its lowest level since we began reporting this measure of partisan trends in January 2004. As a result, Democrats have their biggest net advantage of the past two campaign cycles.

“In October, just 31.5% of Americans considered themselves Republicans. That’s a startling decline of nearly six percentage points from 37.2% two years ago. It’s also down nearly a full point from last month.”

Although the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats has also fallen a fraction since the eve of Election 2004 (thanks to a greater number of people declaring themselves as Independents), Rasmussen points out that Dems still “have a 6.2 percentage point advantage over the GOP, their largest recorded over the past 34 months. In October 2004, the Democrats advantage was a miniscule 1.5 percentage points.”