Americans' political party preferences shifted to Republicans in recent months

Line chart showing party preferences across quarters in 2021. Party preferences shifted to favor Republicans at the end of 2021.

A new Gallup analysis examined how Americans’ partisan preferences shifted over the course of the year 2021, with findings that indicate momentum for Republicans heading into this midterm election year.

Gallup found that Americans’ partisan preferences were relatively stable when looking at the entire year 2021. But when the year was broken down into quarters, there was a discernible shift. In the first quarter of 2021, Democrats had a 9-point advantage over Republicans, but by the final quarter of the year that had shifted sharply to a 5-point Republican advantage, according to Gallup’s aggregate data.

“Both the 9-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter and the 5-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter are among the largest Gallup has measured for each party in any quarter since it began regularly measuring party identification and leaning in 1991,” writes Gallup senior editor Jeffrey Jones.