Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

Party identification

Share of registered voters who identify with the GOP has ticked up since 2017

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-the-2020-electorate-looks-like-by-party-race-and-ethnicity-age-education-and-religion/

Around a third of registered voters in the U.S. (34%) identify as independents, while 33% identify as Democrats and 29% identify as Republicans, according to a Center analysis of Americans’ partisan identification based on surveys of more than 12,000 registered voters in 2018 and 2019.

Most independents in the U.S. lean toward one of the two major parties. When taking independents’ partisan leanings into account, 49% of all registered voters either identify as Democrats or lean to the party, while 44% identify as Republicans or lean to the GOP.

Party identification among registered voters hasn’t changed dramatically over the past 25 years, but there have been some modest shifts. One such shift is that the Democratic Party’s advantage over the Republican Party in party identification has become smaller since 2017.

Of course, just because a registered voter identifies with or leans toward a particular party does not necessarily mean they will vote for a candidate of that party (or vote at all). In a study of validated voters in 2016, 5% of Democrats and Democratic leaners reported voting for Trump, and 4% of Republicans and GOP leaners reported voting for Hillary Clinton.

Education

Share of Democratic voters with no college experience has fallen sharply; much less change among the GOP

Around two-thirds of registered voters in the U.S. (65%) do not have a college degree, while 36% do. But the share of voters with a college degree has risen substantially since 1996, when 24% had one.

Voters who identify with the Democratic Party or lean toward it are much more likely than their Republican counterparts to have a college degree (41% vs. 30%). In 1996, the reverse was true: 27% of GOP voters had a college degree, compared with 22% of Democratic voters.