Wait a Minute, Are Republican Ranks Increasing?

What was going on politically in January of 2006? Well, Republicans held the majority in both the House and the Senate, and were favored to retain the majority in Congress in the Congressional elections to be held that November. Then came unanswered setbacks in Iraq starting in February of that year, ridiculous levels of pork barrel spending, and the ethics problems of GOPers like Mark Foley. As a result, Republican voters stayed home on election day, and independents swung to the Democrats to see if they could do any better. And the level of nationally  self-described GOP members started falling. That is, until now.

According to Rasmussen Reports, more adults now identify with the Republican voters that they have since January '06: Number of Republicans in U.S. Increases in December to Two-Year High:

The number of Americans who consider themselves to be Republicans jumped nearly two percentage points in December to 34.2%. That’s the largest market share for the Republican brand in nearly two years, since January 2006 (see history from January 2004 to present).
At the same time, the number of Democrats fell to 36.3%. That’s down a point compared to a month ago. During 2007, the number of Democrats has ranged from a low of 35.9% in July to a high of 37.8% in February.

These results are based upon tracking surveys of 15,000 adults per month. The margin of sampling error is less than one percentage point, with a 95% level of confidence.

I find that remarkable, since in my opinion the GOP has been slow to reform itself after getting pretty much destroyed in the 2006 elections. And Rasmussen goes on to say that the result is for "all adults", as opposed to "likely voters". But this is an encouraging sign.

What remains to be seen is if those additional GOPers get motivated to actually go out and vote. That depends largely on the actions of the Republicans in Congress during the remainder of 2008, in addition to who the GOP nominates for President. And in order to do well the GOP must again become a viable alternative for the independent vote. Congressional Republicans in particular have to do a lot more than they've done so far - that means changing their ways. If, in November, the faces most associated with Congress are Ted Stevens and Larry Craig, independents might vote for the GOP Presidential nominee (especially if the Dem nominee is Hillary) but would certainly not vote for the GOP in the House and Senate races.

[An important note: in future political polls, pay careful attention to the party affiliation number for respondents. If accurate, it should be weighted to approximately 34% Republicans and 36% Democrats, with the rest classified as not affiliated or independent. If those numbers are off, then so are the results of the poll.]