In the study, Republicans were at rough parity with Democrats in party ID, trailing them by three percentage points. GOP identification drops

Americans aren’t just having a tough time seeing themselves pulling the lever for Republicans these days. Fewer are seeing themselves as Republicans, period.

That’s the conclusion of one of the party’s most respected polling firms, based on a compilation of its national surveys conducted so far this year. Public Opinion Strategies, based in Alexandria, Va., counts among its clients about one-fourth of all Republican members of Congress and is half of the bipartisan team that conducts polling for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal.


Party identification — or affiliation, as it’s also called — measures whether people consider themselves to be Republican, Democratic or independent. In 2004, according to the firm’s merged polling data (think of it as one huge data set compiled over the course of a year), Republicans were at rough parity with Democrats in party ID, trailing them by three percentage points.

At this point in 2007, they trail Democrats by seven. Other, nonpartisan national surveys show a similar disinclination to identify with the GOP.

The development provides another angle from which to view the party’s plight in being defined in the public’s minds by an unpopular president sticking with an unpopular war and a group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill who continue to serve up easy fodder for late-night talk shows.

The lag in self-identified Republicans is another worry bead for the string of polling measures that warn of an uphill battle for the party next year. Barring improvement, it will affect their 2008 prospects as much as, if not more than, the far-more-hyped job approval rating of the outgoing president.

The party will not be starting the 2008 general election campaign from the same position George W. Bush occupied in either 2000 or 2004 — races that were both decided at the margins.

Some geographic areas and voter groups where Public Opinion Strategies found that the GOP has lost ground are not surprising, given the results of last year’s midterm elections: in New England, where only one Republican House incumbent was left standing after Election Day; in the now decidedly purple mountain states; and among suburban women.

Of real concern, however, is the firm’s finding of fewer self-identified Republicans among men over the age of 55 and men who live in rural areas — groups that have been GOP mainstays for most of the Bush era.

Data compiled by Public Opinion Strategies this year also reaffirms a more widely acknowledged point in political circles: that the GOP continues to trail dangerously on the question of whether voters would be more inclined to elect a Democratic or Republican member of Congress, aka the generic congressional ballot test.

According to the firm’s merged polling data for 2006, the party was at a 10-point disadvantage during a year that landed Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress.

At this point in 2007, the party remains at a nine-point disadvantage.

Much of this erosion is due to independents increasingly favoring Democrats. As the data show, self-identified Republicans and Democrats have been answering the generic ballot question basically the same way over the past few years; it is among independents that support for Republican members of Congress has plunged.

Democratic pollster Jay Campbell of Hart Research, which works with Public Opinion Strategies on the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, suggests that these shifts demonstrate the power that one overarching issue — in this case, Iraq — has to move the electorate.

In 1992, a banner presidential election year for Democrats, a similar shift in their favor on party identification was driven by Americans’ unhappiness with the economy.

And until recently, Campbell notes, GOP congressional leaders have pretty uniformly supported Bush on the war. “Republicans get blamed for Iraq, the public wants no part of it, so they begin to abandon the party, both in name and at the ballot box.”

Between their growing deficit in party ID and loss of favor among independents, the math does not add up for the GOP — at least not at the moment. Even if their presidential nominee continues to receive about 90 percent of his party’s vote, that 90 percent will be smaller than the 90 percent of the Democratic vote going to that party’s nominee, and independents cannot be counted on to help the GOP compensate.

But with the future leader of the party still to emerge, the current leader still struggling to make his case for an unpopular war and the party’s ranks on Capitol Hill still fending off scandals, this can of worms will get kicked down the road.

Primary season typically is not party-building time, but a time when parties look inward. Since this primary season began as soon as the midterm elections wrapped up, there wasn’t a great deal of post-midterm discussion among Republicans about how to grow the party.

GOP candidates for president are consumed with charting courses to the nomination which run through the heart of the party’s traditional base and which won’t be affected by any shrinkage of the GOP voting pool.

But barring improvement, the candidate who emerges as the nominee will face an uphill general election battle with a smaller army than the party had four years earlier.

Elizabeth Wilner is a Politico contributing editor.