The Cachet of Victory

On his show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh took note of some telling poll results.

Moving on to other items, I mentioned this earlier and I want to give you the exact statistical data. It's too soon to make any firm judgments here at this point, but party identification based on the latest Gallup Poll, post-election, shows that self-identified Republicans now lead Democrats 38-30, with independents at 31, meaning 38% of Americans say they're Republicans, 31% say they're independents, 30% say they're Democrats. Democrats at the bottom of the political ID scale after this race. Moderates are making a comeback if you want to say. I think these independents are actually a combination of Republicans and Democrats, that don't have the guts to identify themselves one way or another to a pollster. I'd say most of them are probably Democrats.

You know something, and I'll tell you, why this is, because before the election this was different. October 31st, you know what the same Gallup poll showed? Democrats led Republicans 37-34. On October 31st, that's the week of the election, the Sunday before the election, 37% of Americans said they were Democrats, 34% said they were Republicans. If you combine that with party ID changes from pre-election to late November and early December, Republicans have gained 11 points relevant to Democrats.

I suppose this illustrates a point of psychology: people want to be allied and identified with winners. A related question will be whether Democratic Party fundraising starts to suffer due to the Party's objective lack of power...