According to the latest party identification poll by CBS News, Republicans lead Democrats in party identification among the voters in the United States by 2 percentage points. Interestingly, exactly what percentage of people identify as Republicans or Democrats was not released, only the two-point difference.
The media coverage around the polling data also pointed out that in February 2017, at the start of President Trump’s first term, Democrats had a five-point advantage over Republicans in the same poll. Meanwhile, in February 2021, when President Biden started his only term in office, the GOP was trailing the Democrats by six points.
Gallup, the oldest polling firm in America, also runs party identification polling, which tends to be very accurate ahead of elections. What they found falls almost perfectly in line with the CBS News poll. In 2024 46 per cent of the electorate identified themselves as Republican, and 45 per cent identified as Democrat, giving the GOP a one-point edge. This was the third consecutive year in which more people saw themselves as Republicans than Democrats according to Gallup’s polling. In 2022 President Trump’s party had a one-point margin over the Dems (45–44), which grew to two points in 2023 (45–43) before reverting back to one, as we wrote above.
This all comes in the midst of the Republicans winning the popular vote in the 2024 presidential election. President Trump triumphed over Vice President Harris by 1.5 points in the popular vote, 49.8 per cent to 48.3 per cent. This was the first time the Republican candidate won more votes nationally than the Democrat candidate since 2004, when George W Bush defeated John Kerry by 2.4 points (getting 50.7 per cent against 48.3 per cent).
Republicans, however, won the generic congressional ballot vote multiple times in the meantime. In 2010 they won it by a substantial 6.8 points; in 2014 by 5.7 points. In 2016, when Donald Trump won the presidency but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, his party still won the popular vote in the House election by 1.1 points. In 2022, when Republicans had a disappointing midterm performance given the unpopularity of President Joe Biden, they still won the generic ballot vote by 2.8 points.
However, in 2025 the GOP is doing better than most people would have expected.
Now, even mainstream media is forced to cover polls that are favourable to President Trump and his party, as evidenced by a clip of a CNN broadcast in which the aforementioned CBS party poll is discussed. The footage was shared by Elon Musk on his social media platform X.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s approval rating has remained positive in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate since the start of his second term. It currently stands at 2.3 points in the black, with 49.2 per cent of voters approving of his job in the White House, and 46.9 per cent disapproving. All this is taking place in the context of President Trump having been significantly underpollled in all three presidential elections that he had competed in.
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