Suggesting a true cultural shift, Republicans voting in this year’s primary elections outnumbered Democrats by four million, the first time the GOP has outdrawn the Dems in statewide primaries in the last eighty years.

Politico reports:

For the first time since 1930, more Republican voters showed up to vote in statewide primaries this year than Democrats — another sign of the huge challenges facing President Obama’s party in this year’s elections.

The new figures come from a just-released report by voter turnout expert Curtis Gans of American University.

Gans looked at 35 primaries held before Sept. 1 and found that 4 million more Republicans voted than Democrats — statistical proof of the “enthusiasm gap” that pollsters and pundits have been talking about.

That, combined with the fact that the percentage of voters who identify themselves as Democrats has been on a steady decline for decades, spells big trouble for the president’s party, Gans said: “The Democrats are at an enormous disadvantage.”

This is, of course, an astonishing turnaround from 2008 when Democrats routed Republicans across the nation. The lesson: be careful what you wish for. The economy has been extremely sluggish since voters turned it over to the donkey party, and blaming the previous administration is no longer working. (The average recession ends in ten months, whereas the current one went twice as long, and recoveries are usually much stronger than this one, with GDP growth of less than 2 percent in the most recent quarter.)

The differences between the two parties—obscured and then obliterated during the Bush administration—are becoming more clearly defined than at any time since at least the Reagan administration. The two worldviews of progressivism and classical liberalism are finally shaking out into a political realignment of the two major parties—despite the Republican and conservative elites’ resistance.

All of this appears to confirm that Tea Party power is real and a serious political force, and that the Republicans will have to accept that this “unruly mob” is their future.