If you have listened to the political media in recent years, they would have us believe that the Republican Party is on its last legs, that 2016 is the last chance the GOP has to elect a president and that the party will soon cease to be relevant for a decade or longer.
Meanwhile, they tell us the Democratic Party is alive and well, growing briskly and on its way to retaking the House and the Senate, maybe as early as this November – especially if Donald Trump is the GOP nominee.
Well a surprising new report finds just the opposite! Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you should read the following and prepare to be surprised. The facts and statistics below came from a recent American Enterprise Institute report that was analyzed in the Washington Examiner on Monday. I will summarize it for you today.
Since Barack Obama became president, the political media have complained about what they call the Republican Party’s “lurch toward right-wing extremism.” The rise of the Tea Party, GOP resistance to President Obama’s agenda, opposition to gay marriage, abortion, etc. – all of it has been depicted as evidence of extremism and being out of touch with the public.
This superficial and self-serving analysis ignored the existence of the reciprocal phenomenon – the Democratic Party’s lurch to the left.
According to a recent American Enterprise Institute (AEI) report, the ideological make-up of the Republican Party actually hasn’t changed much over the last 15 years. Looking at Gallup data, the researchers found that the share of Republicans who identify as “conservative” increased modestly from 62% in 2000 to 68% in 2015 – I would have thought it moved lower.
Yet the percentage of Democrats who identify as “liberal” has soared during that same time period from 29% to 45%. The number of white Democrats who identify as liberal has nearly doubled, from 28% to 50%. The report also found that only about a third (37%) of Democrats describe Hillary Clinton as a liberal; about half call her a moderate. Can you believe that?
Michael Barone, an AEI resident scholar who contributed to the report, analyzed exit poll data from the early primaries this year. Exit polls and vote totals in the early Democratic primary states found that the Democratic electorate is “much more liberal” than it was eight years ago.
More importantly, he found not only that the Democratic electorate is getting more liberal, but it is shrinking.
More than two-thirds of voters in each of the first three Democratic primary states (Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada) call themselves liberal. That share increased 14% in Iowa, 11% in New Hampshire and 25% in Nevada from 2008.
Barone emphasizes that this leftward trend is not due to a surge of new liberal voters coming into the Democratic electorate. That’s not happening. Barone also notes that Democrat turnout was down significantly in all three of these state primaries.
The reason the Democratic Party is turning increasingly liberal, Barone insists, is due to “a flight of moderates and conservatives from Democratic contests.” The number of moderates and conservatives in those contests plummeted by 46%, 38% and 64%, respectively, in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Wow!
Barone concludes that the liberal policies promoted by Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are leaving centrist and conservative Democrats on the sidelines or looking for other options.
This is not the first or only study to arrive at such a finding. A study published last fall by a team of political scientists found that state Democratic parties are moving further to the left than state GOP parties are moving to the right.
This might explain why Gallup recently found that for the first time “red” states outnumber “blue” ones. Gallup found that 20 states are now solidly or leaning red (meaning Republicans outnumbered Democrats) and only 14 that are solidly or leaning blue. Did you know that? Neither did I.
Not only is the Democratic Party shrinking and becoming more extreme, Barone found that the Republican base is expanding, in large part due to the addition of evangelical voters.
Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders’ popularity and early primary success has fed the popular myth that demographic shifts and other changes in the electorate have produced a country that is more liberal. But that’s a false narrative, says Barone.
Sure, there are issues on which the country is more liberal, such as same-sex marriage. But there are others on which it has moved in a conservative direction, including on gun rights and others, on which the country remains divided. Yet it is the Democratic Party, not the nation as a whole, that has become more liberal.
Who knew? We certainly don’t hear this from the liberal political media! What else is new?
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