Party Identification Still Weak

What with all the partisan peacocking going on in Washington, polls like one  released this morning by Gallup serve as a welcome reminder that there are still a lot of voters out there who haven’t gotten a party ID tattooed on their foreheads.

A plurality of American adults--37 percent--identified themselves as independent in the most recent survey, conducted in mid-July. The remainder split between the Republicans and Democrats about evenly, at 29 percent and 32 percent respectively, a difference that’s within the margin of error of 3 points.

But there isn’t an election going on right now, and if history is any guide, this figure will plummet between now and November 2008. As Gallup notes, the third quarter of an off-year when there are no elections is when the percentage of independents tends to peak. Obsessive efforts to elicit a voter’s partisan identity ahead of the election tend to corral about a third of these independents into one camp or another by the time it actually matters.

The percentage of independents has wavered in 2007, dropping 10 points in January--as at least a few voters seemed to initially give the new Democratic leadership the benefit of the doubt--before peaking at 43 percent in early June. Recently, it is the Republican camp that has benefited or suffered more from the zigzags in the independent fever line. While Democratic voters have held steady at about 33 percent since mid-March, Republican voters seem to ebb and flow depending on who’s feeling particularly independent the day the pollster calls.

--Chris Wilson