When There is Nothing Left to Burn, You Have to Set Yourself on Fire: Part 2

Nate Silver at 538 looks at polls that show party identification and finds that Republicans are trending downward.

I knew Republicans weren't that popular (just take a look at the results from the last election), but check out the drop since late February.

The following chart combines the numbers from these six organizations since August 2008, while adding LOESS regression trendlines.



Per the LOESS curves, the number of Republicans has decreased by about 5 percent since Inauguration Day, from roughly 27 percent to 22 percent. The number of Democrats has also decreased slightly, however, from 38 percent to 35-36 percent. The gains have been made by independents, whose numbers have increased from 30 percent to about 36 percent, such that there are now roughly equal numbers of independents and Democrats.

This makes me think back to this post I wrote in February called When There is Nothing Left to Burn, You Have to Set Yourself on Fire. These poll numbers show that Republicans have been pretty successful at setting themselves on fire the past couple months.