(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
The Dog has talked about the downward spiral of the Republican party but until yesterday it was all based on gut feeling and perceptions of their actions filtered through a lifetime of political thinking and work. Now Gallup has come out with some data which confirms not just that the Gopasaurs are in trouble but that they are in trouble in every single demographic!
You can find the whole thing here, be sure to go and look for yourself! Gallup does not like you poaching their graphs (go figure? They spend all that time and effort then they want you to credit them!) so I won’t post them. They looked at 7000 people, which is a pretty big survey sample size, so this is going to be very accurate. The 7000 people either self identity as Republicans or lean that way, and were compared to a similar sample taken in 2001. In the last eight years the change is shocking
Male -7%
Female -5%
It is kind of common wisdom that men are more of the Republican base than women, but for whatever reason they are not losing women as fast as they are men.
East -6%
Midwest -9%
South -4%
West -5%
Just look a those numbers! Even in the South the Republicans are losing members. During the 2008 cycle the Dog was one of those who advocated abandoning the South, it looks like it is a good thing the Dog wasn’t listened to on that one. The nearly 10% loss in the Midwest is a huge blow, especially with the 2010 census and redistricting coming up.
College Graduates -10%
Non-College Grads -3%
It is pretty clear the GOP war on expertise and knowledge has turned off the College Graduates in huge numbers. This is particularly damaging long term for the Republicans as you have to have educated well spoken people as a candidate pool. If all you have to run is Joe the Plumber know-nothings you are going to get your ass handed to you at the ballot box on a regular basis.
Frequent Church Goers 0%
Occasional Church -6%
Never Church -9%
This set of numbers confirms what we have been seeing, namely that the hard core religious Right is sticking fast with the Republicans. As the size of the Party shrinks their influence proportionally grows. This is the really bad news for the GOP. It is the intolerant language that the Religious Right uses which is in part responsible for the shrinking of the Party. This is a set up for a classic vicious cycle as there are less and less moderating voices in the Republican Party and the hard core gains more and more power to enforce ideological purity.
The Dog wondered in this dairy who would win control of the Republican Party, the business interests or the social conservatives. These numbers tend to indicate it will be the Religious Right that takes leadership of the party. If that is the case then things for the next three or four cycles will really favor the Democratic Party.
All in all there is a lot of trouble in River City for the Republicans. There are going to be those who will say that we should not count them out and point to where the Democrats were in 1994 or even 2001 but the fact of the matter is we were never in this bad a shape. We had close majorities in Congress and for six of those years we held the White House. Is it too early to say the Republican Party is going to die? Probably, but it is not too early to say it is very grave peril of becoming irrelevant.
The floor is yours.
9 comments
Skip to comment form
…there is a great deal to indicate you are right on the money to say that it’s the fundy wing which is winning the battle for the GOoPers’ “soul” (as if they had one). Such folks — so ironically yet accurately described as “True Believers” — aren’t used to abandoning things just because logic and reality suggest they should, and they aren’t about to start doing so now. Well said, Dog.
It’s way too early to start writing eulogies for the Repug party. I watched good people make fools of themselves claiming that the Right was dead after Watergate. Sad
We need to stop congratulating them on their incompetence and start paying attention to making things better for the average citizen. The people who don’t understand that it was the Repug policy of believing that “Business Will Do No Wrong But Government Always Will” which landed the entire world in the cesspool. If the economy starts slipping again they can claim that it’s our “Anti-Business” policies keeping people out of work.
Time is our greatest enemy. It clouds memories and makes the indefensible look better. Like beer-goggles at 2am! We have got to start making life better for the majority of the American people or we’re going to lose our Brand advantage quickly
who is one of the demographics of this poll. He started out Democratic became disgusted with what he called the slimy Democratic pols who stood for nothing but high taxes. He took to listening to Bill OReilly and thought bush was a ‘good old boy’ who at least stood up for his beliefs. Even he with his grudge against the Democrats could not handle the reality of what the Bushies really were, plus the fact that his tax breaks gained him nothing in an economy like this.
He likes Obama ironically for the same reasons he went for Bush. ‘He’s a liberal, and he believes in what he’s saying’… I think for many the ideology of right and left are not as important as the perceived integrity, decency of the politicians. The religious fundies are always going to remain on the fringe, as they don’t seem able to grasp the concepts of democracy and the principles of our scared documents are heretical to them. Obama allowed my son to come in from the cold and if we want to hold these people we need to deliver more then the same, with actual changes not just the branding.