Barone pointed out that the advent of the Clinton Administration brought much of this out into the open.
The issues that led to the 1994 blowout didn't just materialize out of nowhere or with the Clinton administration. They were building up for years. Democrats maintained a lot of power in states that were very clearly, particularly with hindsight, moving away from them and had been for a long time. It was only a matter of time before presidential voting habits found their way further down the ballot.
In fact, I might argue that the Republican Revolution began spilling blood in '92, when Democrats lost 9 House seats despite comfortably winning the presidency and began losing their grip in numerous states
(AK, WI, MI, OH, etc) with mostly not-insignificant legislative losses that were later followed by more severe losses in '94.
I'm sure there are lots of nuances to the GOP's surge to power, but Barone's explanation doesn't really fit, imo. At least not as a "primary" explanation. Maybe a marginal one.
I would hold that the solid lead the GOP has in (A) the House of Representatives, (B) Governorships, (C) State Legislative seats, a lead that has been pretty constant since 2010, is proof that while there is not a conservative "majority", there are more conservatives than liberals.
If we're going by quantity, then it might be better to measure by
(or at least consider) which party wins the popular vote for, say, House/legislative elections state-by-state. It's no secret that for natural and unnatural reasons, in numerous states, the GOP has been winning more seats than their vote share would reasonably predict, sometimes quite a bit more. As for gubernatorial/other elections - 8 years of an incumbent Democratic president who was pretty unpopular during each midterm, one being during a slow recession recovery, it's not surprising that Democrats got bled out and it's hardly, at least in my eyes, a convincing measure of popular GOP support. To me it looks more like they got really, really lucky, in addition to having some structural advantages
(better hold on older/white voters, etc). If the GOP is so popular and desired, then they shouldn't have trouble holding onto much of their power in 2018.
I don't know when, even
if, there was a time when liberals outnumbered conservatives in Gallup's
(or anyone's) polling, but I think the better question here is which
party has more supporters overall, and that has long been the Democratic Party. The presidential PV streak shines a light on that if you ask me, but then again, it doesn't mean as much as one might think when you consider that many of them are
1) concentrated in areas where they help us less, and
2) we have a lot of low-propensity voters
