Poll offers snapshot of Democratic Party

PRINCETON, N.J., Nov. 7 (UPI) -- The Democratic Party is less white and more liberal now than when it nominated Barack Obama as its U.S. presidential candidate in 2008, a poll indicated.

As a group, Democrats are more likely women and non-white and less likely to be religious or married than the U.S. population as a whole, the Gallup poll released Monday indicated. Party members also were much less likely to be conservative and much more likely to be liberal.

The Democratic population for the survey was defined as those who identified themselves as Democrats or who said they were independents who lean toward the Democratic Party, the Princeton, N.J., polling agency said.

Between the start of 2008 and today, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats or leaning Democratic fell from 50 percent to 43 percent while the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans rose from 37 percent to 40 percent, Gallup said.

The percentage of Democrats who identify their political views as liberal rose from 35 percent to 37 percent between 2008 and now, results indicated.

The proportion of Democrats identifying their race as black rose from 16 percent to 19 percent during the last three years, while the proportion of Democrats who said they were white and non-Hispanic fell from 66 percent to 63 percent.

For results based on the Gallup Daily tracking poll samples of 42,975 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents interviewed January-March 2008 and 39,202 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents interviewed June-August 2011, the margin of sampling error is 1 percentage point.