Is this a trend?

The conventional wisdom that has been in place all year long is that the Democrats are headed for a big sweep in November 2008. One of the pieces of evidence to support that prediction has been the big lead that Democrats have taken in polls of partisan self-identification. It may be a fluke, but Rasmussen, which has been doing a running poll on just that question for years now has found an uptick in Republican self-identification and a corresponding downturn for Democratic self-classification.

The number of Americans who consider themselves to be Republicans jumped nearly two percentage points in December to 34.2%. That’s the largest market share for the Republican brand in nearly two years, since January 2006 (see history from January 2004 to present).

At the same time, the number of Democrats fell to 36.3%. That’s down a point compared to a month ago.

This could just be a one-month anomaly or it could be the start of a trend. Or at least an indication that Republicans who had inched away from the party in 2006 are returning now that they've seen what the Democrats have done when they're in control on Capitol Hill. I think that all the terrible poll results for imaginary races for the presidency between an unidentified Republican and Democrat are really indicative of nothing. Once names get filled in and we know who is going against whom this year and the campaigns get started trying to define each other, we'll be able to get a more reasonable picture of where the electorate stands. Right now, the difference between party ID is about where it was in January 2004 when Democrats had a 2.3% edge compared to the 2.1% edge they have now. Considering that the difference was as high as 6.9% a year ago, we might indeed be getting back to a sort of stasis of where the parties stand in relation to each other.

I'd like to think that predictions of the looming GOP disaster are grossly exaggerated, but there is still time for the "Stupid Party" to muck things up.