Democrat Party identification soared during George Bush and persists today. Democrats retain 9 point advantage over Republicans in party identification thru 2014 per Pew Poll, 1992-2014-NY Times

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The Bush crowd/GOP Establishment engineered a lasting Democrat Party renaissance:

4/10/15, "Democrats Keep Lead in Party Identification," The New York Times' The Upshot, Nate Cohn, April 11 print ed.

"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 Pew Research report 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."... via Free Rep.



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