With a treasure trove of data and trends, Pew has released a report on party affiliation recently that’s well worth the time to read through. The big picture shows the pool of registered voters diversifying and changing—and one of the two parties changing along with it.
Below, we’ll discuss a few intriguing takeaways from the report, but first: test yourself! See if you can match the pie chart to the dataset description in the figure just below:
Overall, including leaners, partisan identification has changed very little since 2009. However, this seemingly static picture belies an ongoing transformation in the body politic, as older white voters increasingly identify as Republicans, but not so quickly that they outweigh the influx of younger, more Democratic voters.
It’s still looking a lot like 1950 in the Republican Party.
Starting in the latter half of the 20th century, the United States population began diversifying racially at a faster pace. The latest estimates from the census show only about three-fifths of the nation is now non-Hispanic white.
The Democratic Party has changed too, and now looks about the same as the nation as a whole (see pie charts “B” and “D” in the figure above). The Republican Party … not so much. (This is mathematically possible because non-voters counted in the census are less white than the pool of registered voters interviewed by Pew.)
Age distributions are diverging.
As millennials age into the voting pool (and yes, they are still just as Democratic as always, even the youngest ones), the most Democratic of our elders are aging out, while older generations are simultaneously trending Republican. This leads to skewed age distributions within each party, with Democrats tilted more toward youngsters and Republicans more heavily weighted toward oldsters.
The Bush Bump is obvious.
In most of the trendlines, it’s pretty easy to see when the country soured on President Bush between 2005 and 2008. But as soon as he was of office, his effects on partisan affiliation seem to have quickly dissipated.
Religious diversity is increasing too.
Alongside (and in part because of) changing racial demographics, we also have changing religious demographics. While the nation as a whole is becoming more religiously diverse, both parties are following suit, although Democrats are doing so to a much larger extent than Republicans. In fact, the share of Republicans who identify as white evangelical Protestants has actually increased since 1992.
No, Jewish voters are not abandoning Democrats.
This bit deserves its own section because every four years we have to swat down this stupid meme. Here we are again: Pew says no. Which, by the way, is consistent with a recent American Jewish Committee survey as well. The only year on record where Democrats have matched or exceeded their performance among Jewish voters in these two measures is the year when the Democratic nominee for vice president was Jewish.
Hey, what about education?
Education will get its own separate post. Two, actually, including David Jarman’s story, which has a great discussion on education levels and voter preferences at the state level.