More Americans now affiliate themselves with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, marking the first time this has happened since January 2024, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
Gallup finds that in the second quarter of 2025, an average of 46% of Americans say they identified as a Democrat or a Democratic-leaning independent, compared with the 43% who say they are a Republican or Republican-leaning independent.
That’s a change from the first quarter of the year, when an equal 45% of Americans identified with either party. And it’s an even bigger shift from the fourth quarter of 2024—when last year’s presidential election took place—when 47% identified as Republicans.
Gallup said that the shift is not unexpected since the party in power usually sees voters turn away from it in the first few months of a new administration.
“Shifts in party affiliation away from the ruling party have occurred in the first year of most recent presidential administrations. The current movement in party preferences is primarily driven by a greater share of political independents saying they lean toward the Democratic Party,” Gallup said.
Still, the Democratic Party has a lot of work to do to improve its image.
Gallup also finds that just 34% of Americans view the Democratic Party favorably, which is the lowest rating for the party since Gallup first asked the question, in 1992. The GOP performs only marginally better, with 38% viewing it favorably.
Gallup said that Democrats’ poor image is thanks to Democratic identifiers viewing their own party in an unfavorable light—likely because they want to see their party leaders fight harder against Trump’s shredding of the Constitution and the GOP’s cruel policies and evil attempts at stealing power.
“Seventy-three percent of Democrats now have a positive opinion of the party. This is down sharply from 87% in the prior reading in November and contrasts with a 91% favorable rating of the Republican Party among Republican identifiers,” Gallup said.
Indeed, it’s why Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey unleashed on his fellow Democrats on the Senate floor on Tuesday, saying, “The Democratic Party needs a wake-up call.”
“It’s time for Democrats to have a backbone. It’s time for us to fight. It’s time for us to draw lines,” Booker said.
Still, despite the Democratic Party’s struggles, Gallup added that the shift in party affiliation away from the GOP is likely a worrying sign for Republicans going into the 2026 midterms.
In each of the past few midterm elections, “midterm losses were preceded by shifts in party affiliation away from the ruling party during the president’s first year in office,” Gallup wrote.
For example, in 2017, when Trump first took office, Republicans saw a 2-percentage-point decline in the number of people who affiliated with their party. In the next year’s midterms, a blue wave led to Democrats regaining control of the House.
And in 2009, when Barack Obama first entered the White House, Democrats saw a 5-point drop in the number of Americans affiliated with the party between the first and fourth quarters of the year. A year later, Republicans romped to victory in the 2010 midterms.
At the end of the day, the laws of thermostatic politics still stand.