2008 proving to be the anti-party year

When the curtain drops on this election year, expect leaders from one or both parties to come out for a curtain call, hoping to bask in the applause of their adoring and faithful fans. But all they may get is cat-calls. This is an anti-party election season, and even the party whose nominees win the presidential and congressional elections won’t necessarily be a winning party.

To know that this is an anti-party year, you have to start by looking at the polls. Gallup kicked off the year with a Jan. 14 release stating that the average GOP identification in its 2007 polls fell to the lowest level in two decades, just 27.7 percent. And it hasn’t gotten much better as the year has progressed. In the latest Gallup survey, the GOP share climbed to only 30 percent.

But the Democrats aren’t necessarily benefiting. Just 34 percent of Americans identify as a Democrat in the latest Gallup survey, barely above the 32.5 percent average the Democrats earned in Gallup’s 2007 polls.

The winner today is independent identification. In Gallup’s two June polls, more Americans identified themselves as independents than as Republican or Democrats. In fact, in eight of 15 major Gallup surveys released since the beginning of the year, independent identifiers outnumbered Democrats or Republicans.

I should acknowledge, however, that Gallup recently reported a shift in the ID of some independents toward the Democrats, so this is worth watching as the year unfolds.

But even if the topline Democratic numbers grow, does that really indicate much about party fidelity and efficacy? I don’t think so, and I’ll use Wall Street Journal polls to bolster the point. In the latest survey of Americans by that organization, while 43 percent express a positive attitude toward the Democratic Party, just 16 percent are “very positive.” Meanwhile, in the same poll, just 7 percent are very positive about the Republican Party. So, at best, less than one in four Americans is solidly impressed with either party. In contrast, 25 percent hold a very negative impression of the Republican Party and 19 percent are very negative about the Democratic Party.

But it’s not just the numbers that validate our anti-party mood. Consider the candidates who won their respective party nominations. Clearly, the outsider, anti-establishment candidacies prevailed — Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) won. McCain should thank his lucky stars for the advisers who led him to jettison his awkward and unnatural early attempt to curry favor with the Republican establishment. Once he or his advisers figured out that Mitt Romney had the establishment sewn up for the most part, they rationally got back to being the maverick that appeals, ironically, even to most Republican voters.

I think Obama and his principal consultant, David Axelrod, have best understood this anti-party mood for years, since Obama ran for the U.S. Senate from Illinois. While Hillary Clinton ran as if her insider establishment links made her a lock for nomination, Obama, Axelrod and their guerrilla forces were laying booby traps. And they pulled off a coup.

There are other signs that the party is over. Rumors are surfacing that the Democratic convention might be cut short, forcing Denver’s boosterish Mayor John Hickenlooper to issue a strong denial. “I can guarantee you that’s not happening.” Maybe, but here’s something else that isn’t happening — viewership. Almost no real Americans are interested. Even the obscure, ratings-starved cable networks that normally carry a convention are probably realizing that the audience watching will be too small to matter. Perhaps Mayor Hickenlooper, who once parachuted from a plane to make a campaign ad interesting, should parachute into Invesco Field with the microphone for Obama’s acceptance speech. That would be interesting TV and validate the mayor’s promise that “Thursday night in Denver will be very special.” But political party speechmaking as usual is no fun at all.

It is also significant to me that the election operative teams guiding this election, men and women like Axelrod, are frequently from outside the normal list of “national” partisan consultants. I look at the lists of media and polling consultants and see lots of new and different names. The party insiders that usually pull the strings have been cut out of the action this time. Just like Clinton’s superdelegates, they have had to acquiesce to the immutable force of barbarians at the gate.

The persistence of third parties and independent candidacies is also threatening the party franchises. While Ralph Nader, the Green Party, and Bob Barr and the Libertarians are not going to win, they are starting to play a persistent role of spoiler and the anti-major-party mood just makes it simple for them. Barr, like Axelrod, seems to understand that party ties aren’t what they used to be and he’s going to use that skillfully.

He could find an audience. A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll conducted in June 2006 asked whether it would be a good or bad idea if “a third national political party were formed that would run candidates … (for office) … against the Republican and Democratic candidates.” Fifty percent said it was a good idea and only 37 percent felt it was a bad idea. So that leaves 63 percent open to Barr, Nader, Greens and so forth. If Ross Perot ran today, does anyone doubt what havoc he could create in this environment? “Crazy,” Perot’s favorite motif, wouldn’t be strong enough a description.

It’s always dangerous to signal the death of our two major political parties. Like the alligator and the cockroach, they are likely to survive through the eons, through cataclysms and calamity. But their relevance to voters and candidates seems to be on the wane. Party leaders, even the so-called winners in November, must be cautious about taking too much credit for anything that happens.

Hill is director of Hill Research Consultants, a Texas-based firm that has polled for GOP candidates and causes since 1988.