Assessing Colorado’s Partisanship, Ideology and Support for President – A Swing Presidential State

Gallup has just released its annual report of the state-by-state partisanship, ideological leanings and President Obama’s approval rating. The following are among the observations:

• President Obama’s overall 2014 approval was lower than 2013 by 4 point, 46% to 42%. In the West, Obama’s approval was highest in California (5th highest nationally) at 50%, and dead last in Wyoming at 19%, both nationally and in the West. Colorado came in as the 23rd most approving state, right at the President’s national average of 42%.

• Democrats have a slight 4-point national advantage over Republicans in 2014. But 43% of Americans identify as independents, dramatically up since 2008 (35%). Democratic identities have shrunk the most in the last 6 years from 36% in 2008 to 30% today.
• Republican partisan identifiers are down from 28% to 26%. When the public is pushed to identify which party they lean toward, Democrats win 45% to 42% over Republicans (in other words, only 13% of Americans truly don’t favor one party over the other). The rise of independents reflects both disenchantment with the performance of government and the growth of Millennial new voters, who tend to identify as independents, but in the Obama era, voted Democratic.
• The country has been moving to the left on the liberal to conservative self-identification scale since Bill Clinton was elected in 1992. During those 22 years, liberals have gone from 17% of the population to 24%, an increase of 7 points, about 2 points in each presidency (Clint, Bush, Obama). However, conservatism still has 14 percentage points more adherents than liberal identifiers and has increased 2 points since 1992.
• The percentage of Democrats claiming to be liberal has increased from 29% in 2000 to 44% in 2014. There has been little or no change in self-identified independents or conservatives calling themselves liberal. About 70% of Republicans have been calling themselves conservative since Obama’s election in 2008, an increase from 62% in 2000.
• Conservatives were a quarter of the Democratic Party in 2000 and are now only 19%. Independents have become somewhat more conservative, up from 29% in 2000 to 33% in 2014. The major increase took place after Obama’s election in 2009.