Ed Kilgore put together a great analysis on the 2010 elections and redistricting, first in the Democratic Strategist and then again at FiveThirtyEight. The information, however, is tough to digest when rendered only in text. To make it easier to comprehend I put it into this visualization.
Download the PDF here: http://bit.ly/2010redist
Pew’s update to their comprehensive Political Values study…ultimately a must read for anyone interested in politics, but nonetheless, I’ve compiled a few of the most compelling findings below:
- The proportion of independents now equals its highest level in 70 years.
- On an annual basis, the only previous year when independent identification has been this high was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran a popular independent candidacy (me: it is truly remarkable that IND numbers are this high without a cult of personality to anchor it).
- The lowest level of professed affiliation with the GOP in at least a quarter century.
- BUT little evidence that as the number of Republicans has decreased they have become much more conservative (me: this was surprising…it certainly feels like this isn’t the case).
- The Republican Party is facing formidable demographic challenges. For the first time in at least two decades, Republicans are older than Democrats on average.
This is only a handful of the great data in this report. I encourage everyone to check the rest out for themselves.
How do conservatives share lists? This academic paper tracked how political organizations exchanged donor lists using social network analysis. Some of the more interesting/relevant findings:
- (in ‘04/’05) DEM organizations were more actively involved in list exchanges than GOP orgs.
- Human Events only org to list share w/apolitical orgs: they sold list to “Health & Healing” and “Mountain Home Nutritionals”
- GOP list network would be much smaller & less active w/o conserv news mags like Weekly Standard and National Review.
