As a former Republican turned Independent, I can relate to this poll.
WSJ
Recent voter surveys, including private polling done by a leading Republican strategist, suggest a broader erosion of Republicans' appeal. In particular, three groups crucial to Mr. Bush's goal of a "permanent Republican majority" are drifting away: younger voters, Hispanics and independents.
The reasons include the Iraq war, conservatives' emphasis on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion and stem-cell research, and a party-led backlash against illegal immigrants that has left many Hispanic and Asian-American citizens feeling unwelcome. The upshot is that Republicans face structural problems that stem from generational, demographic and societal changes and aren't easily overcome without changing fundamental party positions.
Longtime Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio this year conducted an exhaustive survey of his party's voters to update one he did in 1997. He found that the party is significantly older and more conservative than it was a decade ago. That, he says, suggests a Republican Party increasingly at risk of being seen "as very old-fashioned, very old and not in touch with the realities of today's society."
Those problems contributed to Republicans' loss of control of Congress last year. Overall, though, Republicans' defections to date haven't necessarily been the Democratic Party's gains. Many renegade Republicans instead are declaring independence of either party and becoming swing voters. ...
But if Republican erosion continues, the 2008 election could confirm a trend away from the period of conservative dominance in U.S. government and politics that dates back nearly three decades, to 1978.
The party's uncertainties turn on some of the most important groups of voters. Younger voters represent necessary new blood. Hispanics are the nation's fastest-growing demographic group, and are concentrated in big states such as Florida and California that are keys to presidential victories. Independents' ranks fluctuate but are expanding amid voters' disgust with partisanship. Each party needs them to win elections.
In the 2006 congressional elections, Democrats won all three groups. Voters 18 to 29 years old favored Democrats over Republicans by 60% to 38%, exit polls showed. Hispanics favored Democrats 69% to 30%; Republicans' share was 14 percentage points lower than its Hispanic vote in congressional elections two years earlier. Independents went for Democrats 57% to 39%; in 2004, Democrats only narrowly got more votes than Republicans.
"The state of the Republican Party is worse than any time since Watergate, and arguably this is worse than Watergate," says party strategist Vin Weber, a former congressman, "because that was about an event, whereas this may reflect a trend."
Republicans recovered quickly after the Watergate-related losses in 1974 and 1976, triumphing at all levels of government in 1978 and electing Ronald Reagan in 1980, to usher in the conservative era.
The forces now at work already have hurt Republicans in Mr. Reagan's California -- home to many Hispanics, social liberals, the young and those always trying to be young. Now Democrats are making inroads in other once reliably Republican states -- among them Florida, Virginia, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana and even Mr. Bush's Texas.
Mark Penn, chief strategist for Sen. Clinton, says Democrats are regaining Hispanics who voted for Mr. Bush, and drawing more women and more higher-earning voters. "How permanent is it? That remains to be seen," he says. But Republicans "have to redefine themselves, and typically parties don't do that until they're forced into the wilderness and someone steps forward to bring them out of the wilderness."
In Mr. Fabrizio's 2007 survey of Republicans, more than seven out of 10 call themselves conservatives, up 16 percentage points from 55% in 1997. Those who call themselves moderate or liberal Republicans have declined 17 points, to just a quarter of the party from 42% a decade ago. It follows that the survey shows Republicans have further declined in the more moderate Northeast and gained in the more conservative South: Now 38% of Republicans are Southerners, while 16% live in the Northeast. ...
In the 1997 Fabrizio survey, Republicans were evenly split between those whose main concerns were economic issues and those whose focus was social and moral issues. This year, he found the party more segmented: In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, national-security conservatives are back, after a lapse with the end of the Cold War. Economic conservatives, though, are now a much smaller share of the party. "Moralists," Mr. Fabrizio's term for the evangelical conservatives with "laser-like focus" against abortion and gay rights, remain a quarter of the party just as in 1997.
But as other groups splinter, that now makes moralists the largest of the seven Republican subgroups Mr. Fabrizio identifies, shaping Americans' perceptions of today's Republican Party. "It is the moralists whose voices you're hearing," he says.
That's causing dissonance even within the party: By 53% to 42%, Republicans say the party "has spent too much time focusing on moral issues" rather than economic issues.
In the current survey, 17% of Republicans are 18 to 34 years old, down from 25% in 1997. Republicans 55 and older constitute 41% of the party -- up from 28% a decade ago.
WSJ
