Rasmussen: Record Number of Republicans in US
Rasmussen has been tracking partisan trends for a decade and this past August saw a record number of Americans telling the pollster that they identify themselves as Republicans:
After falling for two straight months, the number of Americans who consider themselves Republicans jumped nearly three points in August.
During August, 37.6% of Americans considered themselves Republicans. That’s up from 34.9% in July and 35.4% in June. It’s also the largest number of Republicans ever recorded by Rasmussen Report since monthly tracking began in November 2002. The previous peak for the GOP was 37.3% in September 2004.
There appear to be a lot of right-leaning independents who identify themselves as Republicans on a limited basis. Not really party adherents in the traditional sense, their allegiance depends on current events, personalities, maybe even what side of the bed they woke up on.
They can safely be considered Romney voters, however, and that’s really all that matters.
Rasmussen’s Daily Tracking Poll of the presidential race also contained good news for Romnmey. In the first 3-day average that has been completed since the convention ended, Romney leads Obama 48-44. This represents a modest 6 point bounce for the Republican compared to his support just prior to the RNC when he trailed the president by 2 points.
The pollster’s Swing State Tracking survey shows Romney up by 2 points in 11 important states.
Rick – All the convention did was restore Romney to the position he was in before the Akin controversy broke; and we can be thankful the convention did that. The Akin controverys had a very, very detrimental effect on Romney’s position even though he denounced what Akin said. The moral of that is, Republicans need to guard against statements that will hurt the top of the ticket, and that especially true in the final week or two of the campaign.
I don’t think the Akin business made anybody less likely to vote for Romney who was ever even considering voting for him in the first place. Anyone who’s deciding how to vote in 2012 based on abortion is either an imbecile or already decided two years ago how they’ll vote in November.
McGehee – What I am saying is based on the Rasmussen poll which is a daily poll of likely voters. Prior to the Akin business, Romney, at the national level, was frequently above Obama, very occasionally dipping below. Then came the Akin business and within the 3-day roll-over of the poll, Romney was below Obama; and that’s where he stayed until he got the convention bounce. So, now, Romney is back to where he was before the Akin business.
But I agree with you about the abortion business. In one of my comments here on PJM, I said I did not know what to be more distressed about: That (some) voters consider abortion so important that it trumps everything, or that Republican consider it so important that they are willing to lose a Presidential race over it.
What’s fascinating in the trends is that the D numbers are so much steadier than the R numbers. Don’t know what to make of that. Lot of fair weather R’s who turn indy when they don’t like what the party’s up to, I suppose.