GOP Voters Now Outnumber Democrats, Polls Indicate

Republican Party officials released polls Wednesday demonstrating that, for the first time in a half century of polling data, more voters identify themselves as Republicans than as Democrats.

Although other experts dispute his results, Robert M. Teeter, a leading Republican pollster from Detroit, said a survey of 1,500 voters after last year’s presidential election found that 47% of the respondents identified themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, compared with 41% who called themselves Democratic or leaning Democratic.

A second poll in January--taken, Teeter said, to account for any “after-glow” that might have unduly benefited the GOP in the days after Reagan’s reelection--showed Republicans ahead, 44% to 41%.

Rep. Guy Vander Jagt (R-Mich.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the poll results will fuel a “massive” Republican effort to win control of the House of Representatives next year for the first time since 1954.

Advertising Campaign

Vander Jagt, who appeared at a press breakfast with Teeter, said the Republicans are planning a $5-million advertising campaign that will concentrate on defeating 30 House Democrats in marginally Democratic districts.

Teeter called his polling results “clearly a break with 50 years of Democratic domination” during which Republican identification generally trailed Democratic identification by 25 to 30 points.

Although other polls, including such politically independent ones as those conducted by newspapers and the Gallup and Harris organizations, have shown the Democrats still leading in party identification, the margin generally has been narrowing. A New York Times/CBS News poll last December, for example, showed Democratic identification leading by only 43% to 41%.

But pollster Louis Harris said his own polls since the election show Democrats maintaining a substantial lead--42% to 31%--in party identification. Those figures reflect the average of five polls of 6,000 respondents from Nov. 9 to Jan. 17.

‘Fundamental’ Change

Teeter’s polls are the first to show a Republican majority since polling began in the 1930s. The pollster said his findings reflect a change in party structure “so fundamental” that not even an economic downturn in President Reagan’s second term would restore Democrats to their dominant position.

In 1952, when Dwight D. Eisenhower swept the Democrats out of the White House and the Republicans last won control of the House, Democrats held a 57% to 34% lead in party identification. Their lead, as demonstrated by a consensus of polling data compiled by Teeter’s firm, Market Opinion Research, grew to as much as 60% to 30% in 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson overwhelmed Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater in the presidential race.

Whether the current upturn in Republican fortunes represents a permanent party realignment or a temporary side-effect of Reagan’s overwhelming popularity is still being debated in political circles.

GOP to Move Quickly

But Vander Jagt said Republicans will move quickly to exploit it in the 1986 congressional elections by launching direct-mail and radio and television campaigns in the 30 targeted districts in April. The GOP will pump $100,000 to $200,000 into each of the congressional districts as part of an effort to overcome the Democrats’ 253-182 lead in the House, he said.

The districts being targeted, Vander Jagt said, are those where Democrats won by close margins in 1984, those represented by “tired” Democrats who are not providing adequate services for their constituents and those traditionally represented by Republicans but now held by Democrats.

Vander Jagt released a list of 35 congressional districts where Republicans lost by fewer than 23,000 votes in 1984. On the list are two from California, those represented by Mel Levine of Santa Monica and Matthew G. Martinez of Monterey Park. Vander Jagt said he assumed his committee will target most of the Democrats in those districts for defeat.