Election by the Numbers
It may not have been the “red wave” that many forecasted, but according to Gallup, there was plenty of movement to the GOP in last November’s general election.
The Gallup Company was, of course, founded by Jefferson, Iowa native and University of Iowa graduate George Gallup.
The company added up all its 2022 polls and found that last year, 45 percent of Americans identified as Republican or Leaning Republican…compared with 44 percent who called themselves Democrat or Leaning Democrat.
At first blush, that might not seem like big news…after all, the U.S. House and U.S. Senate are nearly evenly split, and we have become accustomed to Americans being divided politically.
But Gallup says the results are striking because Democrats usually hold a multiple-point edge…now, it’s Republicans leading by a point, and marks the first time in 31 years that Republicans had a higher number in the survey at all. That was in 1991, right after the Persian Gulf War, and is the only time that significantly more Americans identified as Republican as opposed to Democrat…and that was only by 48 to 44 percent.
Dig a little deeper, and you find that the share of Democrats who call themselves “liberal” increased from 50 to 54 percent last year…that’s an all-time high. Meanwhile, the share of Democrats who call themselves “conservative” dropped to an all-time low, at only 10 percent of the party. And the percentage claiming to be a “moderate” Democrat also dropped, to 36 percent of the whole.
Gallup also noted that political independents have now reached an all-time high…41 percent of Americans identify as independent, as opposed to only 28 percent as Republican and 28 percent as Democrat.
That may well be the headline. As the parties grow more extreme, the number of folks who want nothing to do with either party grows. And we wonder why there’s such dissatisfaction with the whole thing.
