The Electorate's Partisan Evaluations: Evidence of a Continuing Democratic Edge

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Abstract
Scholars have devoted a good deal of attention to studying changes in how the public evaluates the Democratic and Republican parties. However, there have been few attempts to examine the underlying components of the changes in these over all evaluations of the parties in detail. By recoding the Center for Political Studies' open-ended likes/dislikes questions for parties, this paper maps change in the underlying partisan evaluations of the electorate since 1952. The results suggest that the Democrats have remained the favored party, despite some gains by the GOP in recent years. Of the eight issues studied, the Republicans have made significant inroads only on the economic front. The findings also highlight the obstacles that face the Republican's effort to gain majority status, suggesting why it has remained the minority party for over 50 years, and why it is likely to remain in that position in the near future.

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