The 2024 election featured far more Republicans than Democrats in the electorate, reversing a longtime trend in party identification dating back to the New Deal in the 1930s.
Exit polls showed Republicans outnumbering Democrats by 5 points in the AP VoteCast Survey and 4 points in network exit polls, writes Republican Party pollster and political strategist Patrick Ruffini on his Substack webpage, The Intersection, on Tuesday.
Until the current election, Republicans only came out even with Democrats during the 1994 “Republican Revolution” and the period just after the 9/11 attacks.
Before late President Ronald Reagan revamped the GOP’s image during the 1980s, Democrats had held the advantage in their party’s identification, which sometimes reached a 2-1 margin during the 1960s and 1970s, Ruffini notes.
Reagan’s landslide in 1984 narrowed the Democrats’ advantage, even though Republicans won several national elections before then, including with late President Richard Nixon’s win in 1972 by 23 points.
But in 2024, it was the first time Republican identifiers outnumbered Democrats, coming four years after 2020, when the Republican and Democrat turnout was roughly even.
