Republicans’ gains in party affiliation largely occurred in the first two years of Biden’s presidency and are echoed in many other polls. But they mark a break from Democrats’ advantage on this basic measure of party affinity through most of the past three decades.
The Pew survey provides a comprehensive look at how each party’s coalition has shifted from the mid-1990s to 2023. Since 1996, the share of U.S. registered voters who are Hispanic has grown from 4 percent to 13 percent, while the share who are Asian has grown from about 1 percent to 4 percent. In 2023, 44 percent of Democratic-leaning voters were non-White, as were 20 percent of Republican-leaning voters.
Democrats’ recent losses have been concentrated among Black and Hispanic voters, Pew found. The share of Black voters identifying or leaning Democratic fell from a high of 91 percent in 2016 to 88 percent in 2020 and 83 percent in 2023. Among Hispanic voters, Democratic identification fell from 68 percent in 2016 to 65 percent in 2020 and 61 percent last year.
Those declines are less dire for Democrats than other recent data, including 2023 Gallup polls that found 66 percent of Black adults leaned Democratic, along with 47 percent of Hispanic adults, both record lows. Both surveys suggest President Biden has substantial work to do in reassembling his winning coalition from 2020 this November. A February Pew survey found Biden’s favorability rating among Latino adults fell to 37 percent, down from 44 percent last July, while Trump’s favorability with Latinos increased from 28 percent to 34 percent over the same period.
The Pew survey found a 63 percent majority of Asian voters leaned Democratic in 2023, unchanged from 2020 but down from a high point of 81 percent in 2018. Among White voters, 56 percent leaned Republican while 41 percent leaned Democratic, close to their 55 percent-52 percent margin in 2020.
The report noted that while gender, race and ethnicity and religious affiliation have long been political dividing lines, “there also have been profound changes — in some cases as a result of demographic change, in others because of dramatic shifts in the partisan allegiances of key groups.”
One of the biggest shifts has been among White voters without college degrees, who made up a majority of the electorate in the 1990s and are still the “single largest group of voters across education levels, race and ethnicity,” according to the report. While this group was evenly divided between the parties as recently as 2007, they shifted toward Republicans during the Obama administration and were key to Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. In 2023, White voters without degrees leaned Republican by a 30-point margin, 63 percent to 33 percent.
White college graduates have shifted gradually in the opposite direction: 58 percent leaned Republican in 1994, but today 51 percent lean Democratic.
In another long-term shift, Republicans now hold a 25-point advantage among voters who live in rural counties, up from a six-point advantage in 2000. Democrats maintain a 23-point advantage among voters in urban counties — slightly narrower than in 2016 — while suburban voters have been closely divided since the turn of the century.
The survey found a modest gender gap, with women leaning Democratic by a seven-point margin and men leaning Republican by six points. Marital status appears to matter more: Married women were about twice as likely to lean Republican as women who had never married (50 percent vs. 24 percent), while married men were 22 points more likely to lean Republican than those who had never wed. Parents of children under 18 were also significantly more likely to identify as Republicans than those without children, regardless of voters’ age or gender.
Pew found continued Democratic strength among younger voters, with 66 percent of those ages 18 to 24 and 64 of those ages 25 to 29 identifying as or leaning Democratic. Those results contrast with recent polls suggesting that Biden and Democrats have lost ground with younger voters.
Polls of younger Americans’ attitudes can vary for a wide variety of reasons: Many are not registered to vote, the group pays less attention to politics, and they tend to be harder to reach in polls. Pew found just over half of voters under age 25 identified with either the Democratic Party or Republican Party — “about half instead said they are something else or independent, with 28 percent leaning Democratic and 20 percent leaning Republican.” Other polls have found that younger Americans are more critical than older Americans of Israel’s and Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war that began in October, after Pew’s survey was conducted.
The Pew study also provided a detailed look at the degree to which religious groups differ in their political views. Republican identification was strongest among White evangelical Protestants (85 percent) and Mormons (75 percent), while Democratic identification was strongest among Black Protestants (84 percent), atheists (84 percent) and agnostics (78 percent). The survey found that Catholics overall leaned Republican by a 52 percent to 44 percent margin, a shift from recent years when the group was closely divided between the parties.
The survey was conducted Aug. 7-27, 2023, among 10,124 registered voters who are members of the Pew American Trends Panel, which was recruited through random sampling of U.S. households. The margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus 1.3 percentage points; error margins for party-leaning estimates from prior years ranged from 0.7 to 1.5 points.
Emily Guskin contributed to this report.