Gallup has run a series of polls that complement what we already know: no one wants to be a Republican (corollary: leaving the GOP makes you an independent.) To set the table, let's look at pollster.com's party ID graph (we are not using the "sensitive" setting for this topic; the standard setting probably paints a more accurate picture due to the small number of available polls):
Gallup defines that a bit more:
Polls conducted in the first quarter of 2009, from January through March, find an average of 35% of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats and 28% as Republicans. The seven-point gap is similar to what Gallup has found since 2006, when the political tide turned in the Democrats' favor.
In fact, there has been no change in national partisanship since the last quarter of 2008, when 35% of Americans identified as Democrats, 28% as Republicans, and 35% as independents. That means the Democratic Party's advantage has neither expanded nor contracted since Barack Obama took office and began to pursue a largely Democratic legislative agenda.
So, no gain for the GOP in any of this despite their "just say no" philosophy. And the details are rather grim for the GOP if you look to future growth:
Republicans Face Steep Uphill Climb Among Women
Men increasingly identifying as independents, drifting away from GOP
At various times over the past decade, the plurality of male partisans have shifted between Republican and independent identification, with no more than 31% of men identifying as Democrats in any quarter. Since late 2006, however, the gap between the percentage of men identifying as independents and the percentage identifying as Republicans has grown, and independent men have outnumbered Republican men for the last two years running. Over this time, Republican identification among men has largely been on par with Democratic support, a clear negative sign for the GOP given the solid support the Democratic Party has among women.
Democrats Do Best Among Generation Y and Baby Boomers
Republicans do better among Generation X
Although Democrats currently enjoy a party identification advantage over Republicans among Americans at every age between 18 to 85, the Democrats' greatest advantages come among those in their 20s and baby boomers in their late 40s and 50s. Republicans, on the other hand, come closest to parity with Democrats among Generation Xers in their late 30s and early 40s and among seniors in their late 60s.
This doesn't make the party ID a lock for Democrats. On the other hand, there's simply no evidence that the asinine approach to governance currently being pushed by Republicans (aka 'just say no") is working with anyone other than their brain-dead base (and a few pundits who can't interpret either polls or election results.) But hey, it's a free country. If they want to be the party of Terri Schiavo fundamentalist, anti-science, anti-evolution, "just say no" dinosaurs, more power to them.
Nate Silver also peeks at the age thing via Gallup's data, and finds Bush to be the albatross around the GOP's neck that we saw during the election:
George Bush's disastrous job approval remains the albatross around McCain's neck. No one will vote for anyone associated with him. This joins CBS (22 approval) as the lowest ranking yet, putting Bush squarely in Nixon-Truman territory. The implications at the Congressional level are obvious.
The fact of the matter is they still haven't come to terms with how much being in the pocket of the social conservatives have hurt them with the majority of the American people (see the attention Sarah Palin still gets despite being the other disaster in 2008 besides Bush - 60% thought her not qualified for president in the 2008 exit polls, something the media forgets.) Until they do, they'll never be the majority party again in anyone's lifetime. But that's their problem. For the rest of us, no one wants to be a Republican, and they aren't going anywhere nationally, no matter how hard it is for the DC pundits, accustomed to Republican rule, to accept.