Republicans close party affiliation gap with Democrats: Survey

Republicans have narrowed the party affiliation gap with Democrats, closing on an advantage heading into the 2024 general election, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. 

The new survey released on Tuesday found the country is close to evenly split among party lines with nearly half of the registered voters, 49 percent, identifying as Democrats or leaning toward the party while 48 percent sided with Republicans or leaning towards the GOP. 

The GOP has closed the gap from four years ago when, in the lead-up to the 2020 election, Democrats had a 51-46 percent advantage over Republicans, Pew noted. 

As the country has become more diverse so has the electorate in both parties. But the changing views of Black and Hispanic voters have slightly diminished the advantage the Democratic Party had over the GOP, Pew stated.

Black voters who identify as Democrats have dropped from 91 percent in 2016 to 83 percent in 2023. Democrats have lost some support with Hispanic voters, going from 68 percent in 2016 to 61 in 2023.

The findings are different from other polls. A Gallup poll from February found that two-thirds, 66 percent, of Black adults identify or lean Democratic. 

President Biden will have some room for growth going into November as his favorability rating among Latino adults has fallen by seven percent since July, while former President Trump’s has increased six percent to 34 points, according to Pew’s survey released last month. 

The portion of Hispanic registered voters has increased from four percent to 13 percent since 1996, according to Pew. Those voters who identify as Asian went up from one to four percent.

Democrats saw an increase in Asian voters from 1996, from one percent to six percent, according to Pew.

The survey was conducted from Aug. 7-27, 2023 among 10,124 registered voters. The margin of the sampling error was 1.3 points. With party-leaning estimations which included years past, it varied from 0.7 to 1.5 points.