More voters shift to Republican Party, closing gap with Democrats

In the run- up to the 2020 election, more voters across the country identified as Democrats than Republicans. But four years into Joe Biden’s presidency, that gap has shrunk, and the United States now sits almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

Republicans have made significant gains among voters without a college degree, rural voters and white evangelical voters, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. At the same time, Democrats have held on to key constituencies, such as Black voters and younger voters, and have gained ground with college- educated voters.

The report offers a window into how partisan identification — that is, the party that voters tell pollsters they identify with or lean toward — has shifted over the past three decades. The report groups independents, who tend to behave like partisans even if they eschew the label, with the party they lean toward.

“The Democratic and Republican parties have always been very different demographically, but now they are more different than ever,” said Carroll Doherty, the director of political research at Pew.

The implications of the trend, which also shown has up in party registration data among newly registered voters, remain uncertain, as a voter’s party affiliation does not always predict whom he or she will select in an election. But partisan affiliation patterns do offer clues to help understand how the shifting coalitions over the past quarter century have shaped recent political outcomes. During the Trump administration, the Democratic Party’s coalition grew, helping to bring about huge victories in the 2018 midterm elections and a victory for Biden in 2020.

Nearly two- thirds of all white noncollege voters identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party. And Republicans are making gains among white women, as well. In 2018, a year after the Women’s March attracted millions to protest Donald Trump’s policies, the group was split about evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

But since then, Republicans slowly have been gaining ground. They now hold a 10 percentage- point partisanship advantage. Overall,

over most of the past 30 years, white voters have been more likely to identify as Republicans than Democrats, although the gap closed briefly in the mid2000s.

Although Latino voters are still far more likely to identify as Democrats, the party’s edge with the group has narrowed in the past few years. Currently, 61% of Latino voters identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, down from nearly 70% in 2016. That change appears most notable among Latino voters who do not have a college degree or who identify as Protestant.

Black voters still overwhelmingly associate with the Democratic Party: Eighty- three percent of Black voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic.