The number of Democrats is falling, does this mean the sky is also falling on the chance of a President Obama? Well, no. This Rasmussen report details the trend:
During July, the number of Americans who consider themselves to be Democrats fell two percentage points to 39.2%. That’s the first time since January that the number of Democrats has fallen below 41%
This quote gives an idea what is actually going on. As most states held closed primaries or caucuses over the first five months of the year, many people are going to register* for a party in order to be eligible. Many of these people will switch back to Independent once the primary is over. Thus we see a peak during the primaries and a return towards normal after the primaries.
Yet, if you set this expectation as the new norm, suddenly things look pretty positive for the Democrats. On one hand, only the Democrats had a primary bounce in registration, voting for Democrats was the popular thing to do. Part of this is that it went on much longer, part is that the likes of Rush Limbaugh encouraged people to vote for Senator Clinton, but some of it is that more people were leaning Democrat this year than Republican. Additionally, only half of the primary bump has dissipated. Democrats still have a 2% advantage relative to January, a 1.5% advantage over their dominant performance in the 2006 midterms, and a massive 4.5% advantage over this point in the 2004 Presidential election.
So things are still pretty rosy for the Democrats this fall, unless the Party ID advantage continues to fall sharply over the next three months. For now let’s not get too excited by polls.
*Admittedly, the polling is self-identification rather than registration, but the latter may have some impact on the former.
