Party ID and Key Events

Election year 2004 and the years 2001-03 were broken into five segments. Most segments combined polling conducted over a four- to eight-month period, providing a large sample size to facilitate subgroup analysis. However, because it was critical to study movement during the convention period and the 2004 fall campaign, one of the time segments broken out for 2004 (post-first debate) comprised just one poll, and another (post-GOP convention) comprised two polls. Table 4 displays the party ID distribution for each of the ten sets of data.

Note: All data from PSRA/Newsweek polls with the following exceptions: Post-Dem. Convention figures include data from the Pew's August Convention poll (8/5-10/04) and the Kaiser August Health Poll Report (8/5-5/04). Later Post-9/11 figures include data from Kaiser's December Health News Index (12/6-10/02). Pre-9/11 Baseline figures include data from Pew's June News Interest Index (6/13-17/01), Pew's July Favorability Poll (7/2-12/01), and Kaiser's August Health News Index (8/2-5/01).

The final set of party ID figures, based on polling done in the final weeks of the 2004 presidential campaign, showed party ID about even (31 percent Republican, 32 percent Democratic), in contrast to the initial set of figures from the pre-9/11 baseline survey at the bottom of the table, which showed the Democrats with a six-point edge (28 percent Republican, 34 percent Democratic). The final set of party ID numbers from the final weeks of the campaign are identical to those recorded during the Iraq war run-up and major combat period in 2003 (31 percent Republican, 32 percent Democratic), and are within a few points of those recorded in the early post-9/11 (32 percent Republican, 31 percent Democratic) and later post-9/11 (30 percent Republican, 32 percent Democratic) periods, when Bush's approval ratings were highest and the public was most united behind his campaign against terrorism.

The post-GOP convention poll, when Bush was at his highest standing in the Newsweek poll trial heat, also had the most favorable party ID figures for his party (33 percent Republican, 31 percent Democratic) In contrast, the two points at which Democratic challenger John Kerry ran strongest in the Newsweek poll were the times when party ID reverted to its pre-9/11 status, in the post-Democratic convention (29 percent Republican, 34 percent Democratic), and post-first debate (30 percent Republican, 37 percent Democratic) periods.