Recently I tweeted about shifts in aggregate party ID, following Gallup’s release of shifts in their polls. I find 4 other pollsters showing the D-R margin tightening, though not as much as Gallup. Blog version: pollsandvotes.com/?p=217

But what about individual change?

For tracking individual change we need panel data. Thanks to Democracy Fund and Voter Study Group we have a public panel from 2011 through 2020.

I prefer fresh cross sections for tracking aggregate shifts, but panels are THE thing for individual change.

See (or rather hear) the @FiveThirtyEight podcast of Jan 31 for a discussion that includes issues about party leaners that we’ll see in about one tweet here. How much more movable are leaners? Here strength of partisanship matters.

VSG uses the “Michigan” party id item: “Generally speaking do you think of yourself as…” followed by “strong or not so strong” or by “lean to Dem or Rep” to make a 7 point scale.

Below is the 2016-2020 panel turnover. Rows 2016, columns 2020.

Strong partisans are different from any of the 5 middle groups. Strong partisans are 90% likely to still be in same category after 4 years. The middle 5 groups are about 64% likely to be same category.

If you think party is forever, you are thinking about strong partisans.

Weak partisans (“not very strong”) either stay there (62% or 66%) or are more likely to shift into strong (19% or 20%) though 15-20% scatters toward the other party. These are pretty partisan but 1/5 weaken or shift direction. Similar for both D & R.

Leaners D (61%) & R (66%) stay leaners but some (D 12%, R 14%) jump to strong for the party. About as many (D 14%, R 13%) shift to pure independent. Add weak and about 20% become stronger partisans, 12-14 pure independent and 5%D and 2%R shift to other party

And pure independents also remain 62% unchanged. Those who shifted in this 2016-20 period were a bit more likely to shift toward R, though shifting into lean was most common (D10%, R16%)

This seems consistent w Trump attracting previously less involved voters, esp pure Inds.

Party is sticky & especially so for strong partisans. Leaners are more apt to move toward their party but a few move away. Inds also stick as much as weak & leaners, but were drawn to GOP a little more in 2016-20

There was a lot of symmetry in the movements but a slight GOP edge.