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interesting numbers, and good news.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/upshot/democrats-keep-lead-in-party-identification.html?ref=politics&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1Political
Calculus Democrats Keep Lead in Party Identification

APRIL 10, 2015

<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nate_cohn/index.html>

Nate Cohn
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nate_cohn/index.html>

The party identification of American voters was one of the most hotly
debated topics among analysts before the 2012 presidential election. Many
Republicans thought there were roughly equal numbers of Democrats and
Republicans, and so doubted polls showing President Obama with the lead. In
the end, the polls were right. This week, a
<http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/>
Pew
Research report
<http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/>
based on about 25,000 interviews in 2014 took a new measure of
partisanship. Here are the most interesting findings:

Despite the president’s sagging approval ratings in 2014 and the strong
Republican performance in the midterm elections, the Democrats retain a
nine-point advantage among adult Americans who lean toward a party
identification, 48 percent to 39 percent.

The tally is nearly unchanged from the 10-point Democratic advantage in
2012, when President Obama won re-election.

The stability of the Democratic advantage in party identification suggests
that disappointment with Mr. Obama’s performance hasn’t caused
traditionally Democratic voters to reassess their partisanship. That’s very
different from the reaction of Republicans in the middle part of the last
decade, when dissatisfaction with the Bush administration allowed Democrats
to build the wide advantage that persists today.

Non-Hispanic whites lean Republican by a nine-point margin, one of the
party’s largest advantages among white voters over the last 20 years. But
the advantage is about the same as in 2004, when Republicans had an
eight-point advantage, and 2012, when it was a seven-point advantage.

Notably, there isn’t much evidence of a trend against Democrats. Since
2010, the Republican advantage has held between seven and 11 points.

The Democrats have faced equal or larger deficits.

Perhaps because of the growing Democratic affinity for liberal cultural
politics, Republicans have made steady gains among white evangelical and
Catholic voters over the last decade. Since 2004, the Republican advantage
among white evangelicals has grown by 12 points, from 34 to 46 points. Over
all, 68 percent of white evangelicals lean Republican, compared with just
22 percent leaning Democratic.

The traditional Democratic advantage among white Catholics — who were
equally likely to lean Republican or Democratic in 2004 — has turned into a
modest and persistent Republican advantage for five straight years,
including a nine-point edge in 2014.

Political scientists delight in debating about the political leanings of
the young voters who reached voting age after Mr. Obama’s 2008 election.
One theory has held that younger millennials will be significantly more
Republican than older millennials, since their politics would be defined by
the Obama years, not by opposition to the Bush administration. Others have
argued that Democratic strength among younger voters is the result of
cultural and demographic changes, not the national political conditions of
the end of the last decade.

The Pew data, which includes 2,693 voters who are 18 to 25, suggests that
the youngest millennials are about as Democratic as older millennials. The
youngest millennials lean Democratic by 15 points; older millennials lean
Democratic by 17 points. Fifty-one percent of the youngest millennials lean
Democratic, compared with 50 percent of older millennials.

There is, however, one intriguing weak spot for Democrats among the
youngest millennials: minorities. While young whites are far more
Democratic than their elders, the youngest nonwhite adults tend to be
somewhat more Republican.

According to the Pew data, 17 percent of 18- to 25-year-old black adults
lean Republican — far more than any other age group among blacks. The
sample is small — just 354 black adults between the ages of 18 and 25 were
queried — but it is not the only piece of evidence supporting this
possibility. In the 2012 exit polls, just 80 percent of black men 18 to 29
supported Mr. Obama, although the number of respondents was quite low.

The Pew data isn’t enough to definitively state that Republicans fare
better among the youngest nonwhite voters, but it’s something to keep an
eye on.

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Alexander Snyder Mackler
(302) 598-867