Study: GOP Builds First-Ever Advantage over Democrats in Party Identification

An important study from the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) showed that Republicans had a one percent advantage over Democrats in party affiliation, an increase from previous years.

Nate Cohn, chief political analyst for the New York Times, highlighted the study’s significance in a thread on X, emphasizing that it could affect future polling in former President Donald Trump’s favor as the weeks unfold.

“Perhaps the most important poll you’ve never heard of came out today: the Pew NPORS study, a large mail survey with financial incentives and a 30 percent response rate. It’s important enough that I had to open it when the email arrived,” noted Cohn.

“The survey is important because it’s used as a ‘benchmark’ — its results are used as targets for weighting by other polls,” he added. “Pew uses it to weight their usual surveys, and other polls (like CNN/SSRS, KFF, Ipsos) do too. (We don’t use it, but I do compare it to NYT/Siena data).”

The study gave Republicans one percent advantage over Democrats in party identification, which would be the first time that such a statistic had been uncovered.

Cohn noted:

The headline: NPORS found leaned party identification at R+1. That’s the first time NPORS gives the GOP a party ID edge. Last year, it was D+2. That’s significant in its own right, given the quality of the survey. But it will effect other polls — like that Ipsos poll that recently showed Trump/Biden tied.

“By subgroup, the headline is age: NPORS found the GOP ahead on leaned party ID among 18 to 29 year olds, even though the sample was Biden+20 on 2020 recall vote,” he wrote. “The sample size is fairly large (n=496) and it hasn’t shown anything like this in previous cycles.”

When it came to racial demographics, the study showed fewer shifts away from the Democrats, but it did show that nonwhite voters had moved away from the party — 68 percent to 65 percent. It also showed a Republican edge over nonvoters.

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