People Leaning Republican and Democrat Equal After RNC

A consistent media meme for all of 2008 was that this was the year of the Democrats inasmuch as party identification in poll after poll had shown greater percentages of folks leaning left than right.

Not so fast!

The success of the recently-concluded Republican National Convention has so changed this calculus that a new Gallup poll revealed folks leaning towards Republicans and Democrats is now almost equal.

It should be interesting to see how much coverage this report from Gallup gets (emphasis added):

The percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans has increased from 26% immediately before last week's Republican National Convention began to 30% immediately after it. That increase, combined with a slight 2-point drop in Democratic identification from 37% to 35%, has reduced the Democrats' formidable advantage in national party identification from 11 points to 5.

Democrats have held a large advantage on party identification for much of 2007 and 2008. But the GOP convention -- and the exposure it gave to John McCain and Sarah Palin as the Republican ticket -- has encouraged a greater number of Americans to identify as Republicans, thus narrowing the Democratic advantage for the moment.

Republicans saw an even larger increase in "leaned" party identification, which is computed by adding the percentage of Americans who initially identify themselves as independents but then say they "lean" to a party to the percentage who identify with that party. Before the GOP convention, 39% of Americans said they identified with or leaned to the Republican Party, but that number has increased to 47%. Forty-eight percent now identify with or lean to the Democratic Party, down from 53% prior to the GOP convention.

Fascinating. 47-48?

I got your year of the Democrats right here </Brooklyn accent>.

As a post facto aside, one must wonder how much this shift is being caused by female Independents identifying with Palin. Stay tuned.