Democrats' prospects bleakest in 70 years, pollster says [View All]

PHILADELPHIA - The Democratic Party is approaching the 2004 elections in its weakest position since Franklin Roosevelt forged the enduring Democratic coalition 70 years ago, a prominent pollster warned Monday.


The party still has solid support from the core of Roosevelt's coalition - union members, minorities and the working poor - said pollster Mark Penn. It also enjoys solid support from gays and Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing minority.


But less than one-third of Americans now consider themselves Democrats, down from 49 percent at their peak in 1958. And Democrats lag well behind Republicans among other growing groups of voters whose loyalties swing back and forth between parties and who hold the key to close elections - including suburbanites, professionals and middle-class families with children. That leaves the party in a poor position to build the new coalition it needs to beat President Bush and build an enduring majority in an evenly divided country.

"In terms of the percentage of voters who identify themselves as Democrats, the Democratic Party is currently in its weakest position since the dawn of the New Deal," Penn told a gathering of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of centrist Democrats. "Exciting the Democratic base alone will not bring enough voters into the Democratic fold."

Penn, who was President Clinton's pollster, revealed his findings at a time when centrists are again battling liberals for dominance within the Democratic Party. Centrists fear that catering to the party's base with anti-war talk and "big government" proposals for health care will turn off other voters.

Already, said DLC founder Al From, the party is reviving an unwelcome image as the pre-Clinton party of "tax-and-spend" big government, weak on defense and captive to special interests. That image cost the party three straight presidential elections in the 1980s, From said.

"The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left," said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., chairman of the DLC.

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