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OK if good ol boy conservatism is so popular why do all trends show otherwise? Bush at 30%...George Allen getting the boot. People under 30 now identify with the dims by a whopping 30% over repubs. Keep it up and you’ll be left with a few guys in Utah and Alabama and a few folks in the old folks home.

It would be great if you would provide links to your statistics so we can all discuss them -- thanks!

To your point, here is an interesting Harris Interactive article from 2004. It discusses the fact that the democrats led the pubbies in overall party identification by 21% in the 70s (and Reagan was still elected). It also points out that voters' self-described party identification has never been a very good predictor of voting behavior -- so your point about voters identifying with the donks just doesn't tell us anything one way or another about the actual election.

I look forward to seeing your stats so we can discuss this further.

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=444

From the article: Washington may be highly polarized by party but this year’s presidential and Congressional elections are likely to be won by the candidates who win the support of independent and moderate voters. The battle will be won or lost at the center.

Unlike some of the other polls, The Harris Poll finds that the Democrats still retain a small lead over the Republicans in party identification, although it has declined in every decade since the 1970s. Based on over 6,000 interviews conducted by telephone last year, one-third (33%) of all adults "consider themselves" to be Democrats, 28% self-identify as Republicans and 24% as Independents.

However, the average Democratic lead in party identification has fallen from an average of 21 percentage points in the 1970s, eleven percentage points in the 1980s, and seven points in the 1990s to only five points, so far, in the 2000s. There is no mistaking the huge change in party affiliation that has taken place over the last 30 years.

Some other polls report that the Democrats and the Republicans are now virtually equal. We believe the small differences between their numbers and ours reflect the use of slightly different questions; the trends are very similar.

Of course, party identification is not a very good predictor of how people will vote. Historically, Republicans were more likely to vote Republican than Democrats were to vote Democratic; so the long-term trend is nothing but bad news for the Democrats. The only good news for them is that their modest lead has not continued to decrease over the last two years, under the Bush administration.

Of course, most people who identify as Democrats and Republicans tend to vote that way in most elections. So, in most elections whoever gets a majority of the independents (now a quarter of all adults) wins.