2007 Harris Polls Show Democrats Maintain Their Nine Point Lead Over Republicans

Every year, The Harris Poll^® combines the results of its nationwide telephone polls conducted throughout the year to measure party identification and political philosophy in an effort to accurately report on any modest changes from year to year. These Harris Polls conducted in 2007 show the Democrats maintaining their lead over Republicans in party identification. Currently, the Democrats lead over the Republicans is nine percentage points, the same as it was in 2006 and up from six percentage points in 2005 and three points in 2004 and 2002. Overall, the Bush presidency has seen a widening of the Democratic lead of about five points.

These are the results of Harris Polls conducted by telephone by Harris Interactive^® throughout 2006 among a total of 14,095 U.S. adults. Most Harris Polls are now conducted online, but to ensure consistency in comparison with the previous years, only the telephone surveys are included in these tables.

Other results of these surveys, which provide averages for the whole of 2007, are:

• In what may be an indication of the presidential race having started much earlier than normal and this having turned some Americans off from politics, all three partisan labels – Democrat, Republican and Independent saw a one percentage point drop. That means that from last year to this year, an additional three percent are now saying another party or that they are not sure;
• Independents comprise almost one-quarter of all adults (23%);
• While the numbers for Liberals have stayed the same at 19 percent, the number for conservatives dropped from 37 percent to 35 percent. This is now right at the average for the 2000s;
• Moderates have stayed the same at 37 percent and they now are back above conservatives by 2 percentage points.

Looking at trends over 39 years between 1968 and 2007, several clear trends (or lack of change) emerge:

• The Democratic lead over Republicans has fallen over time from 21 percentage points in the 1970s, to 11 points in the 1980s and seven points in the 1990s.The lead has averaged six percentage points in the 2000s;
• In looking at political philosophy, liberals and moderates have held steady over time, while conservatives have ranged from a low of 32 percent in the 1970s to a high of 38 percent in the 1990s. For the 40 years, moderates have been ahead of conservatives for almost all of the time. The only three exceptions are 1968, when conservatives were ahead by six points, and 1995 and 2006 when they were tied.

TABLE 1

"Regardless of how you may vote, what do you usually consider yourself – a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or some other party?"

Base: All adults

NOTE: "Other" and "Not sure" responses excluded.

*Data are not available for 1968.

"Regardless of how you may vote, what do you usually consider yourself – a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or some other party?"

Base: All adults

"How would you describe your own political philosophy – conservative, moderate, or liberal?"

Base: All adults

* Data are not available for the following years: 1969, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1993, and 1994.

NOTE: "Other" and "Not sure" responses excluded.

"How would you describe your own political philosophy – conservative, moderate, or liberal?"

Base: All adults

NOTE: "Other" and "Not sure" responses excluded.

The Harris Poll^® was conducted by telephone within the United States between January and December 2007, excluding September, among a nationwide cross section of 14,095 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region, number of adults in the household, size of place (urbanicity) and number of phone lines in the household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words "margin of error" as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.