More Americans are Republicans than Democrats, according to multiple Gallup polls this year, upending a trend that has been going on since 1988.
Gallup's most recent monthly poll, conducted throughout July, found that 27 percent of the country are Republicans, compared with 25 percent who are Democrats. Independents, at 45 percent, outnumber members of either party.
Many of those independents lean Republican, however. When the poll factors in the number of independents who lean Republican, 45 percent of respondents support the GOP, compared with 42 percent of respondents who either are Democrats or independents who lean Democratic.
Republicans have repeatedly outnumbered Democrats this year, the Gallup monthly polls show, reversing Democrats' longtime dominance in party identification. Since 1988, the poll has shown a trend of more Americans identifying as Democrats than Republicans. Recently, the pollster found that, from 2016 to 2020, more people either identified as or leaned Democratic, according to yearly averages.
In 2022, though, Gallup found party membership tied, just as the media started reporting on what the Associated Press called "a political shift" toward the GOP.
"Across 31 states, about two-thirds of voters who have switched their official party registrations in the past year have switched to the Republican Party," the AP reported. That shift was "pronounced"—and "dangerous for Democrats"—in the suburbs of cities such as Denver and Pittsburgh. While an expected Republican wave did not materialize in the 2022 midterms, Republicans took control of the House and won the popular vote.
The poll comes as Democratic president Joe Biden faces record-low approval ratings. A Pew Research Center poll in June found Biden's approval rating at only 35 percent. A Washington Post poll, meanwhile, found that just 38 percent of Democrats want Biden to run for reelection.