Last week, I noted
the release of a report
by the Gallup Organization on long term trends in party identification. The Gallup surveys in 2006
showed a slight gain in the Democratic advantage over Republicans, increasing
from 0.4 to 3.9 percentage points. An average of the surveys
done by the Pew Research Center showed a similar trend, but Harris Interactive -
which also puts out an annual party ID average - had not yet released data for
2006. Well, Harris posted its 2006 report
on Wednesday, and it confirms the trends in the Gallup and Pew data:
The Harris Polls conducted by telephone
in 2006 show the Democrats continuing to increase their lead over Republicans
in party identification. Currently, the Democrats' lead over the Republicans is
nine percentage points, up from six percentage points in 2005 and three points
in 2004. This is now the largest Democratic lead since 1998, when it was also
nine percentage points.
See the Harris report for complete details on their 37 years
of trend data on both party identification and self-reported ideology.
Here is the table from my January 31 post, updated to
include the new Harris data:
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