Dwindling Number of Duopolist Dead-Enders Continues Its Decline

It is a truism of contemporary political discourse – and a testament to its imbecility – that the Democratic-Republican two-party state and duopoly system of government constitutes a zero sum political game, such that one party's loss is equivalent to the other party's gain. This is likely one of the primary reasons why the professional political commentariat have such difficulty comprehending the rise of unaffiliated voters. Consider the wording of a recent Rasmussen report on partisan trends which found that the number of both self-described Democrats and Republicans is on the decline, while "the number of unaffiliateds has jumped to its highest total since 2007":

In January, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell another tenth-of-a-percentage point . . . However [emphasis added] in January, the number of Republicans in the country dropped by nearly two percentage points . . . Currently, 35.4% of American adults view themselves as Democrats. . . . The number of Republicans is now down to 32.3%. . . . The number of adults not affiliated with either major party is now up to 32.3%. That’s the highest number of unaffiliateds since the summer of 2007.

Though a number of polling organizations have documented a surge in independent identification over the last year (for instance, Pew Research among others), Rasmussen Reports remained an outlier, until today. The dwindling number of dead-enders in the Democratic and Republican Parties barely constitute a two-thirds of the population when taken together.