For the first time since the Watergate era, independents appear to have surpassed one of the major political parties to rank second in terms of party identification. This should be a big red flag for Democrats trying to understand their election losses, but this dramatic change has largely gone unnoticed by the shell-shocked party, the media and the pundit class in the past two weeks of nonstop analysis.  

While the Edison Research exit polls are still being finalized, current numbers show that the 2024 election could go down in history as the election the Democratic Party ID hit an all-time low. This extends a downward trend for Democrats that began in 2012, a shift that has the potential to make a huge difference for Republican prospects going forward. 

Exit polls ask voters which of the two major parties they identify with, or neither, as the case may be. Comparing the composition of the electorate in the 2024 presidential race with the one in 2020, Democrats dropped a significant 6 points in party ID, going from 37 percent to 31 percent and becoming, de facto, the country’s third party, behind both Republicans and independents.  

This year’s major turnabout by voters gave Republicans a historic plus-4 party ID presidential-level advantage that delivered a political hat trick for the party — the White House, Senate and House. This advantage occurred despite Republicans slipping by 1 percentage point, going from 36 percent in 2020 to 35 percent in 2024, according to the unfinalized exit polls. But for Democrats, this isn’t only their lowest party ID percentage in the period since 1984; it is far below the prior lowest performance of 36 percent in 2016. 

Additionally, this rejection of the Democrats appears to have affected battleground states as well. The Edison exit polls show Republicans with a party ID advantage over Democrats in all seven competitive states. But in five of the seven, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin, Democrats came in behind both Republicans and independents.

Equally important is the increase in the size of independents as a percentage of the electorate — going from 27 percent in 2020 to 34 percent in 2024, an increase of 7 percentage points, surpassing Democrats and closing in on Republicans, who are at 35 percent. 

The significant shift in the composition of the presidential electorate away from Democrats translates into a loss from the 2020 election of approximately 10 million fewer voters calling themselves Democrats, thrusting them into a third-party ranking rather than as one of the two traditional political parties that have dominated the electoral landscape for most of the past 50 years.  

Democrats and the media should have seen this coming. The Winston Group’s 2022 post-election analysis noted that Democrats had the lowest percentage of the electorate, 33 percent, that the party had experienced in the past 20 congressional elections. The previous low was 35 percent, which came in the Democratic defeats in the congressional elections of 2010 and 2014. Definite red-flag material. 

The drop from 2018 to 2022 translated into about 6.5 million fewer voters self-identifying as Democrats in the midterm elections. But neither Democrats nor the media seemed to understand the seriousness of this decline in the number of self-identified Democrats, convincing themselves that the lack of a red wave in the midterms was the result of the power of abortion as a vote-driving issue.  

But the underlying reason for their success wasn’t abortion; it was the fact that Republicans underperformed with independents largely due to their inability to communicate an effective economic message. That misreading of the results came back into play this year as the Harris campaign and Democrats staked the election on the abortion issue — and much to their surprise, it didn’t deliver the votes. In fact, Trump actually improved with women voters, losing them by 8 points in 2024, after losing them by 13 points in 2016 and 15 points in 2020.  

Across many states, Vice President Kamala Harris failed to garner traditional Democratic strength, but her underperformance is only a reflection of a bigger, potentially existential threat to Democrats. A quick look back at the Democrats’ party ID problem shows a trend that the party and the media have ignored.

In 2008, Democrats’ party ID in the presidential election was 39 percent. It’s been downhill, for the most part, ever since. It was 38 percent in 2012, and 2016 saw it slip to 36 percent. Democrats got a slight uptick in party ID in 2020 to 37 percent, but the preliminary results for the 2024 election show it plunging to 31 percent.

The last time we saw a national political party ID hit this level, in that case for Republicans, was during the Watergate era. It took a serious reassessment by the party and the leadership of Ronald Reagan to guide the party back from wilderness and into power in Washington.  

Now, operating in a leadership vacuum, it’s perhaps to be expected that Democrats would spend the past two weeks blaming everything and everyone for what was a catastrophic election that even a $1.5 billion spending binge in 15 weeks couldn’t win.  

“We’re not going back” was one of several Harris campaign mantras that, obviously, failed as an effective message. Harris herself turned out to be a much weaker candidate than Democrats had hoped for after forcing President Joe Biden out, but her strategic decision to remain silent on key issues alienated voters looking for substantive answers to their problems.  

Harris, with her ties to the unpopular Biden, lost the election, but the challenges facing Democrats run deeper than her flawed candidacy. Given that the party’s descent to third-party status started more than 12 years ago, maybe a more comprehensive look at their unpopular policies over the past decade might be a good first step.

David Winston is the president of The Winston Group and a longtime adviser to congressional Republicans. He previously served as the director of planning for Speaker Newt Gingrich. He advises Fortune 100 companies, foundations and nonprofit organizations on strategic planning and public policy issues, as well as serving as an election analyst for CBS News.