Shout it from the rooftops. The Sacramento Bee reports today that Field Poll contends GOP is isolated as California shifts left.
The report on the new Field Poll begins:
The climbing number of independent voters over the past 30 years has fueled a more liberal shift in attitudes among Californians about hot-button issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, according to a Field Poll survey released Tuesday.
That trend has favored Democratic candidates who have counted on independent voters to provide crucial swing votes in close elections, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the non-partisan Field Poll.
More specific bad news for the Repub Party in California (and the nation) below.
The new Field Poll shows two important political facts of life:
- California Independents have shifted "leftward" (i.e., progressive), particularly on social issues.
- California Republican voters have shifted "rightward" (i.e., retrogressive).
But California Democrats and Independents together constitute the large majority of the voters. Thus the Repub Party is becoming ever more isolated and UNABLE to reach out beyond its base. Repub voters "are moving in the opposite direction [from the population at large] and have hardened their stance against same-sex marriage and euthanasia over the past three decades, the study found."
"What you're seeing on a number of social issues is California voters have become more accepting and tolerant," DiCamillo [Field Poll Director] said. "Republicans are not moving and hold the same opinion as 30 years ago."
According to the Field poll, 49 percent of registered voters in California approved of allowing same-sex marriages this year compared with 31 percent in 1977. Similarly, 70 percent of registered voters approved of allowing abortion in 2006 compared with 51 percent in 1975. Republican approval of same-sex marriage has gone in the opposite direction, actually dropping from 30 percent in 1977 to 23 percent this year.
Independents now are a fifth of California's registered voters, compared with just 7.8 percent in 1978, and made up more than a third of the state's 7 million new registered voters. Democratic registration in the state dropped by 12 percentage points from 1978 to 2009, while Republican registration dropped by only 3.2 percentage points. But the reality is that the Repub Party has no room to grow, whereas:
Many of those new independent voters are "basically Democrats" who disapprove of what some say has been the Republican Party's tack to the right, said Ethan Rarick, director of the Center on Politics at the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. "Why do they lean toward the Democrats?" Rarick asked about independent voters. "A lot of the answer is the increasingly conservative base of the Republican Party."
California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton says he isn't too concerned about the growing numbers of undeclared voters, since they generally support Democratic candidates. "We're interested in how they vote for candidates rather than what their party registration is," Burton said.
This Field Poll confirms that the Repub Party = GOPASAURS. Pretty soon they won't be known as the Grand Old Party (GOP), just the Old Party (OP), which is appropriate for the Party that is just OPposed to everything.