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>Independents Are Still the Largest Political Group in the U.S. Really? I find this kind of hard to believe. I call myself an "independent", but I vote 90% o

>Independents Are Still the Largest Political Group in the U.S. Really? I find this kind of hard to believe. I call myself an "independent", but I vote 90% of the time for one party. I wish we had metadata on voting information so we could see how many people are straight-ticket voters, because I have to imagine that it's a lot. I think most of the election swings come from apathetic voters coming out.

Glyptodon 5y ago
I call myself an independent and used to reliably vote for a mix of both parties and third parties, particularly locally. But I'm now more or less aligned with Democrats that in many respects I don't agree with just because they aren't theocrat monarchist traitors.
cool_dude85 5y ago
I don't have hard data at hand, but I think most investigations into this phenomenon show the same pattern. People identify as independent when given the choice between that, R, or D, but in practice many of those vote almost exclusively for one party. My recollection is that there are somewhat more people who identify as Independent who vote primarily for Republicans, but that might not be true.
tharne 5y ago
You're both right. "Unaffiliated" votes are the single largest voting block in the U.S. However, the vast majority of unaffiliated votes reliably vote for the same party in each election, so while they are officially independent of a party, in practice they associate themselves with a party in the way they vote. This discovery and the ability to quantify it was one of the breakthroughs of the Obama campaign in 2008 (the Bush campaign did this too, but the Obama folks really brought it to the next level).
chasd00 5y ago
Unfortunately, what the mainstream would consider non-independent is someone that would vote for one party 100% of the time even if completely uninformed. Basically, a political zealot and there are a LOT on both sides. Everyone else? Independent voter.
StewardMcOy 5y ago
The question on the poll was which party the person considered themselves affiliated with, but not who they vote for. As other commenters noted, self-declared independents typically always vote for one party. If you look at the earlier questions in the article, it accounts for this by placing these "independent" voters into either the Democratic or Republican buckets.
jjk166 5y ago
Most independents have strong political beliefs, they just don't necessarily align neatly with the parties. Many are single issue voters or subscribe to non-centrist ideologies. The contested middle is mostly a myth. Of course there are genuinely apathetic people out there, but typically they are staying home on election day. If they do feel a civic duty to vote, they can vote third party. What shifts is the passion people have for one party or another. If you normally vote democrat but don't consider yourself a democrat, odds are you are dissatisfied in some way with the democratic platform or candidate; you're not going to vote for a republican instead, but maybe you're not going to stand in line at the polling booth for the democrat either. At least for the past several elections, victory has come with energizing the base. In 2016, for example, there wasn't some noticeable shift to the right, Clinton only got 62000 fewer votes than Obama won with in 2012, but Trump got 2 million more votes than Romney did in 2012, because people who stayed home in 2012 came out in support of him in 2016. Conversely in 2020, Trump received 11 million more votes than he did in 2016, but Biden received over 15 million more votes than Clinton. Between the changes in overall election turnout and variance in third party voting, there's been no net shifting of votes from one side to the other in between any presidential election this century. Now it's a little more complicated than just getting people to come out, getting high turnout in the right areas is critical, so that fudges things a little bit. For example in 2016 Clinton had very comparable overall numbers to Obama in 2012, but she had dramatically less support in midwestern urban centers and stronger support in the south, which is pretty useless in the electoral college. But again, its not that people in the midwestern cities were voting for trump, they were staying home while suburban midwestern blue collar workers who traditionally didn't vote turned out.

Glyptodon 5y ago

I call myself an independent and used to reliably vote for a mix of both parties and third parties, particularly locally. But I'm now more or less aligned with Democrats that in many respects I don't agree with just because they aren't theocrat monarchist traitors.

cool_dude85 5y ago

I don't have hard data at hand, but I think most investigations into this phenomenon show the same pattern. People identify as independent when given the choice between that, R, or D, but in practice many of those vote almost exclusively for one party. My recollection is that there are somewhat more people who identify as Independent who vote primarily for Republicans, but that might not be true.

tharne 5y ago

You're both right. "Unaffiliated" votes are the single largest voting block in the U.S. However, the vast majority of unaffiliated votes reliably vote for the same party in each election, so while they are officially independent of a party, in practice they associate themselves with a party in the way they vote. This discovery and the ability to quantify it was one of the breakthroughs of the Obama campaign in 2008 (the Bush campaign did this too, but the Obama folks really brought it to the next level).

chasd00 5y ago

Unfortunately, what the mainstream would consider non-independent is someone that would vote for one party 100% of the time even if completely uninformed. Basically, a political zealot and there are a LOT on both sides. Everyone else? Independent voter.

StewardMcOy 5y ago

The question on the poll was which party the person considered themselves affiliated with, but not who they vote for. As other commenters noted, self-declared independents typically always vote for one party. If you look at the earlier questions in the article, it accounts for this by placing these "independent" voters into either the Democratic or Republican buckets.

jjk166 5y ago

Most independents have strong political beliefs, they just don't necessarily align neatly with the parties. Many are single issue voters or subscribe to non-centrist ideologies. The contested middle is mostly a myth. Of course there are genuinely apathetic people out there, but typically they are staying home on election day. If they do feel a civic duty to vote, they can vote third party. What shifts is the passion people have for one party or another. If you normally vote democrat but don't consider yourself a democrat, odds are you are dissatisfied in some way with the democratic platform or candidate; you're not going to vote for a republican instead, but maybe you're not going to stand in line at the polling booth for the democrat either. At least for the past several elections, victory has come with energizing the base. In 2016, for example, there wasn't some noticeable shift to the right, Clinton only got 62000 fewer votes than Obama won with in 2012, but Trump got 2 million more votes than Romney did in 2012, because people who stayed home in 2012 came out in support of him in 2016. Conversely in 2020, Trump received 11 million more votes than he did in 2016, but Biden received over 15 million more votes than Clinton. Between the changes in overall election turnout and variance in third party voting, there's been no net shifting of votes from one side to the other in between any presidential election this century. Now it's a little more complicated than just getting people to come out, getting high turnout in the right areas is critical, so that fudges things a little bit. For example in 2016 Clinton had very comparable overall numbers to Obama in 2012, but she had dramatically less support in midwestern urban centers and stronger support in the south, which is pretty useless in the electoral college. But again, its not that people in the midwestern cities were voting for trump, they were staying home while suburban midwestern blue collar workers who traditionally didn't vote turned out.