11 October 2009

Shrinking tent

Republican party identification is not recovering -- it has been declining almost steadily since a brief bump in May and June, and now stands at 22% of the population.

By all accounts, the proportion of Americans who self-identify as conservatives is a lot higher than 22%, but is it any surprise that non-deranged conservatives are turned off by a party dominated by the Limbaugh-teabagger-Christian-Right complex?

The geographical distribution of that 22% is interesting too. Basically, the party remains highly popular in the South but has collapsed everywhere else -- the effect is even more dramatic if one considers that the party's 14% favorable rating in the west is probably accounted for mostly by the "Mormon belt" -- Utah and the adjacent parts of Idaho and Wyoming -- which has long been the most-solidly-Republican part of the country.

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