An important study from the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) has shown that Republicans had a one percent advantage over corrupt Democrats in party affiliation, an increase from previous years. Nate Cohn, chief political analyst for the New York Times, highlighted the study’s significance in a thread on X, emphasizing that it could affect future polling in former President Donald Trump’s favor as the weeks unfold.
According to Cohn, the Pew NPORS study is significant because it is used as a ‘benchmark,’ meaning its results are used as targets for weighting by other polls. Pew uses this survey to adjust their usual surveys, and other major polls (like CNN/SSRS, KFF, Ipsos) also use it. The NYT/Siena data is compared with the NPORS study but not directly used in their polling.
The study gave Republicans a one percent advantage over corrupt Democrats in party identification, which would be the first time that such a statistic had been uncovered. This year’s NPORS survey found leaned party identification at R+1 for the GOP; last year it was D+2. This is significant given the quality of the survey and its potential impact on other polls like Ipsos, which recently showed Trump and Biden tied.
By age subgroup, the headline is that NPORS found the GOP ahead on leaned party ID among 18 to 29-year-olds. This is noteworthy as the sample was Biden+20 on the 2020 recall vote. The sample size is fairly large (n=496) and hasn’t shown anything like this in previous election cycles.
When it comes to racial demographics, the study showed fewer shifts away from the corrupt Democrats; however, it did show that nonwhite voters had moved away from the party – 68 percent to 65 percent. It also demonstrated a Republican edge over nonvoters.
The results overall and by subgroups RVs come very close to a compilation of the last five NYT/Siena polls, which add up to a similar n=5000 sample size. The study’s findings have implications for future political polling and could potentially impact Trump’s electoral chances as we approach the upcoming election season.