I've been watching the data at pollster.com to follow the latest polls, but also to follow the National Party ID's and how they've been trending in recent weeks. It seems that although Democrats are facing a negligible ID reduction since a year ago, but Republicans ID has gone through a very noticeable change.
I'll muse on these developments and their effects on the long term below the fold.
First, allow me to embed various party ID graphs from pollster.
Default trend smoothing and all polls: <script></script>
More sensitive smoothing with all polls: <script></script>
Less sensitive smoothing with all polls: <script></script>
Finally, let's go back to default smoothing and exclude Democrats from the graph: <script></script>
All of these graphs have shown that the Republican party is dwindling away in terms of how many people identify themselves as Republican. Although Democrats are also feeling a slight depression as a side effect of Democrat popularity going down (while remaining significantly higher than the GOP). But what's most interesting about the GOP slump is that the percentage of people who identify themselves as independents is rising in almost perfect tandem with the decline of the GOP.
It seems that the fall of the GOP is leading to the rise of those who do not identify with either party. Could this lead to the start of a new major party in the future or is it just a meaningless temporary trend? I have speculations, but there is not enough evidence that I have on hand to support any of them enough to state confidently. What do you all think on this? What theories would you like to share? Could the Republicans be going the way of the Whigs?
Also, are many of the Republicans that are leaving the party (presumably) to become independents are doing so because they think the party is shifting too far to the right? or is it because they don't think the party is far enough to the right?
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I leave you now with Groucho Marx singing a song that seems to perfectly match the modern GOP meme.