By rights, Republicans should be ascendant. The Democrats are in disarray. Their ideas are deeply unpopular–open borders, men in women’s sports, soft on crime, $37 trillion in debt, woke national defense, perpetrators of the worst scandal in American history, and so on. Beyond that, they are crazy. And they don’t have a single attractive spokesman or spokeswoman. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been triumphant, enacting one popular policy after another, while scoring victory after victory for the American people.
And yet…voters apparently can’t tell the difference. Rasmussen finds that the parties are equal in the eyes of likely voters:
Six months into President Donald Trump’s second term, the two major parties are almost evenly matched in terms of voters’ approval.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters have a favorable impression of the Republican Party, while 47% view the Democratic Party favorably.
There are more data at the link, but the only significant difference between the parties in this data set is that more people hate the Republicans:
Overall, the differences in the two parties’ favorability are minor, the most significant being that more voters (36%) have a Very Unfavorable opinion of the GOP compared to 31% with a Very Unfavorable impression of Democrats. That’s mainly due to more negative views of Republicans among independent voters.
I have seen similar poll data elsewhere. It is hard to reconcile these numbers with the reality of what the parties stand for, and how they have been performing. What accounts for the mysterious appeal of the Democratic Party?
I think there are only two possible explanations, both of which I believe apply. The first is that an enormous number of Americans depend on government in one way or another. The United States has a GDP of around $28 trillion, and total government spending of around $11 trillion. This means that approximately 39% of all checks written are written by government. That creates an enormous financial incentive for millions of people to support the party of more government spending, the Democrats.
The second factor is the monolithic pro-Democrat fervor of our K-12 schools, academia, the press, the entertainment industry, government-funded nonprofits, and so on. These institutions have certainly lost power over the last 25 years, but that doesn’t mean they are entirely toothless. Believe it or not, there are still people who read the New York Times and watch CNN, and believe the nonsense they peddle.
One wonders, sometimes, what the Democrats will have to do in order to experience the repudiation they so richly deserve.
